1. Find a PhD

FindaPhd is the lucky place where you find fellow geeks and nerds, a pretty busy Postgraduate Forum provides advices and opinions on your queries about research life and how to find funds, scholarships. Upon the success of this site, two new sites FindaMasters and FindaPostDoc have been started and serving the student researchers actively busy exchange of advice and opinion on PhD life.

2. Google Book Search

You know Google book search exists, but have you tried citing from those books. Often, I had to produce a write-up, essay or the last-minute paper for a conference. When I dotn have enough time to pull out a strong reference from books, I issue a Google book search, up comes the results from book with snippets view showing paragraphs and texts that I were exactly looking for. I paraphrase them and correctly reference them. Neat hack.

3. Book Finder

If you are looking for any kind of book, whether it is rare or out-of-print, specific edition – You will find it at Bookfinder. Over 125 millions book titles to search, you can actually buy new and old-books from this site. They achieve by doing a search through every major catalog available online.

4. Free Note-taking

Mynoteit is a web service that you need to manage all writing works at uni. With mynoteit, you can upload office documents, scanned notes and audio lectures at one place. Yuo can access them at will with even with your mobile.You can join groups of students who are taking the similar subject all over the world. You can bookmark your assignment dates, deadlines at one place.

5. Re”Search Engine”

Scirus is a popular search engine among research community. Scirus searches for scientific information with its comprehensive trusted network of article bases like Science Direct, PubMed and other journal databases. The results are highly relevant and you can choose the keywords used by authors to search for relevant scientific domain. You get the results in three categories, journal results, preferred web results and web results. If you try Scirus once, you will stick to it. It saved me lot of my research time.

6. Digital Theses Networks

Australia is probably, the only country where every research student is asked to deposit a digital copy of their theses to a national database for a common cause. The Australasian Digital Theses Program is very popular among the researchers as every university in Australia is participating in it. A similar initiative is being carried out at the international level, which is PhDData.org – a 5 year old program which aims to collect the research theses from the universities around the world. There is also another initiative named “Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations” that looks promising as well.

7. Bibliography made easy

It’s a pain to follow the style guide of various journal styles when you are writing a paper. Tools such as EndNote help in maintaining your database of references. If you are looking for an online tool, then Ottobib is a really useful. You can store, organize your references, and Ottobib will format it to a style when you need. There is another web service that does a similar job , which is Easybib.

8. Job portals for researchers

Monster has a special site Phd jobs that lists research oriented jobs. There are sites where you can find Policy jobs, Political jobs, Ethical jobs, Market Research jobs, Museum jobs, PostDoc jobs, Law jobs and Human Rights jobs. All these sites provide world-wide listings of opportunities specific to researchers.

9. Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations

The benefits of Google Docs are obvious, you can maintain your documents and edit on the run. Particularly useful when you are traveling for field visits and you do not have access to your favourite Desktop Office applications. I used to upload a copy of my thesis chapters in Google Docs and share it with my supervisor. He would comment and add suggestions. If you are thinking of developing a document with your peer researchers – across boundaries, you have to use this. No more copying drafts, final versions and confusions on which one is what. With the added spreadsheets and presentations, it is a cool collection of tools for storing documents on the move.

10. List Sharing

Tadalist is about having a to-do list on the web. You can share between your supervisors to track your progress and communicate with your fellow researchers to meet the research deadlines or to organise a holiday.

11. Phd Comics

We are researchers, so what. We need fun, right? I have seen no other humour site that caters exclusive to researchers and PhD students life. PhDComics is awesome because, the site was started by a student and has plenty of cartoon strips on any conceivable aspect of Phd life.

12. Tracks almost everything

An easy way to track all the favourite blogs / research web sites in my subject is to use Google Reader. I use the ‘Star’ function to mark the essential posts, and use them later. A thousand eyes are looking for me and blogging things that are important and I follow them at one place with my reader. Great help – is it not?

13. Research Channel

Research channel is a site that offers videos on various research topics. Research Channel functions as a nonprofit media company with a mission to connect the world research community with latest developments, insights and discoveries across the globe. Anyone can watch the videos for free. But, if you are a researcher or research organisation who wish to contribute video content, you have to apply for a membership to the research channel. All the video submissions are strictly moderated.

14. Wikipedia

Often, the power of Wikipedia is grossly under-rated by the research people, who dismiss it based on the credibility. Well, that is an acceptable fact but from Wikipedia, you will get to know about a human view of a topic. You may get to know the latest happenings or the first hand information on a cutting-edge technology in your field (equivalent of gossips in the film industry).

15. MIT Web

Massachusetts institute of technology maintains a comprehensive web portal on the current research happenings at MIT and covers news and research events that affect humanity. The research covers any conceivable topic under various categories .

16. Eduforge – Free software for education

Just what Sourcefourge did for a programming and application development, eduforge does it for research community. It provides a free, open access to share ideas, form collaborative research groups, content and software development to solve specific research problems.

17. SuTree – Watch and learn

SuTree is a YouTube stye video site for Do-It-Yourself projects. You can watch videos and learn rather than reading plain texts and procedures. You can learn something new, every day. SuTree does not host your videos, users host them on youtube or google videos and provide a link and embed the videos here. These videos are voted by the community and the editors hand-pick them and monitor to keep the scum out of the site.

18. Wridea – Free ideas

Wridea is the place where ideas get into shape. You can record your ideas, browse others’ ideas, rate them, improve them and what not. The design and performance of the site is awesome and you can create unlimited pages for free. Liberate your ideas and watch them grow.

19. World Lecture Hall

World Lecture Hall is the place where you can find course materials developed by the teaching faculty around the world in almost any language. Some courses are only available online, but most of them can be downloaded for offline use. It is a great collection of lectures – a good bookmark.

Academic Materials can also be found at this blog post – 134 free academic podcasts organised by topics.

20. University Channel

University Channel is another directory of lectures (videos, audio and text presentations) developed and hosted by Princeton university. it not only lists the academic lectures and presentations, but also some of the key public affairs lectures, panel discussions and events from the best industrial conferences and academic institutions all over the world.

21. Backpackit- organize your life

You have to experience Backpackit to believe it – this site will be tremendously helpful for keeping track of your research developments. You can track your tasks, references (who said what – over phone / email), appointments, action items etc. If you are looking for an efficient organizing tool, this is the one for you.

22. FreeMind – Free mind maps

If you are looking for a tool to create and organize your thoughts and ideas, mind maps are the best way. With freemind – a java based open source program, you can develop complex yet, easy to organize mindmaps.

23. Free Data and Texts

Freelunch.com – Free economic data for you to download
Geographic Data – Free geographic data (worldwide)
World Bank Economy – Data collected and organised by the World Bank
Project Gutenburg – Free literature (almost any subject)
Bibliomania – free literature online
Literature collection – free literature
Citeseer – Massive resource for papers related to Computer Science.
Algorithms Base – Over 250 algorithms at one place
Tree of Life – Large Biology project that aims to organize the evolution of life.

24. Free Newspaper Archive

Paper of Record is the largest newspaper archive on the web. You can get snapshots of news articles from leading newspapers of the world from pre-1600 era to the current date. You can search through the archive and download the clips as images (gif). You have a quota of 250 mb every day.

25. Citations Database

Refbase is the place where people are sharing their citations and organising them at one place. You can download a copy of the refbase on your PC and connect to the server periodically to update them. Also try CiteSeer for searching through millions of citations.

Bonus Resources:

1. Find quotations

With ThinkExist, you can find a nice quotes for your thesis and papers. The quote is accompanied by the essential information about the author/speaker which will be useful to reference.

2. Research webpages

Research pages at Major companies who likes to share their ongoing developments and trials:

Google Research Blog
Research at Philips
Sun Research
Microsoft Research
IBM Research centre
Yahoo Research Labs
Honda Research
GE Global Research
General Motors Collaborative research centre
Sports Research Centre, Canada

3. All Biographies

Find anyone’s biography here – you can search by a keyword, birth date or place of birth.

Did I miss anything? Which sites are useful for conducting researches?

There are many ways and resources through which one can get information about different online courses. There is lot of material available about 642-503 courses on Google. One can also check Wikipedia for PMI-001 course information. If one is looking for hardcopy or soft copy of 642-825 courses then one can get it on book finder website. Free material of 642-901 courses is also available on free note-taking site. People who are interested in smart business communication systems 650-178 course then they can get interactive test guides on Eduforge – Free software for education site. The world lecture hall site can give free lectures of different course like 70-272 and so on. If you are interested in 70-270 course then its helping guide can easily be searched on yahoo. So there are so any sites from where one can get many helping guide for these courses and thus make exams easy to pass.

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Superman takes over!

SUPERMAN can do anything.

Don’t touch

A cat’s tail can be used as CD holder

Hello, is anyone speaking any secrets out there?

A pig that is trying to bite off.

A cute Honeybee hovering on the Escape Key

Yellow dog hangs over Mouse wire.

Yo yo…!

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There are 414 screenshots in the flickr set and it is continuously growing in numbers.

Click on the image to start the slideshow.

Click on the “Options” link in the right-bottom corner to show the title and description. The description contains the actual link to every website.

Pretty, pretty – is it not?

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Some wiki articles for samples:

Save Face on Facebook: Facebook Etiquette

• One should not friend another whom they have no association or connection with whatsoever. Doing so makes you what I like to call a ‘creeper’.

• Poke with moderation and caution (I stand firmly by this etiquette principle).

• When speaking with someone whom you have been casually ‘facebook stalking’, try to pretend you do not know everything about them. Avoid comments like: “So, I saw you and Mike broke up on facebook…”

Get Back Into Work Mode After Vacation

1. If possible, take a few afternoons off. Or at least, leave early. Most people, especially after a relatively isolated vacation, find themselves easily distracted and often waste the day away dawdling or worse yet, reminiscing about vacation. After vacations is the best time to exercise your flex time.
2. Take an extra day. Schedule your vacation so that it ends one day before you’re due back into the office. This allows time for you to get back into your regular routine. Pretend it’s Sunday… okay Sunday evening. Unpack, do some laundry, check your email, and rinse that crazy notion of early retirement out of your hair.

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1. USB extension cord

2. USB Power point

3. USB Rubbish bin

4. USB Syringe

5. USB Plug-n-Play cable

6. USB Lock with Key

7. USB Phone Hand Receiver

8. USB Photo Frame

9. USB Belt

10. USB Kid’s Talk Phone

11. USB Wedding Rings?

12. USB Multi-threaded belt.

13. USB Stethoscope

14. USB Tie

15. USB Toolset?

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Click on the image to see it bigger.

The footer now contains the links to Orkut blog, Help forums, and the ways to interact with Orkut management.

The Friends page looks very pleasing to eyes.

Orkut releases the new design in phases, some may get their home page upgraded to new design where as others may need to wait for few more days.

Do you like the new design?

The official press post here:
orkut Blog: Redesign Preview: It’s the little things…

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Like you, I have been chasing my architect friends to explain my dream house in words, until I found this great web service that lets you do / change / re-do your house plan.

You can design the floor, drag and drop furnitures (over 300+ to choose from), then once you completed the design either you can save it as .jpg file or directly publish over your blog.

The floor plan will have accurate measurements so in case, if you want to talk to building professionals, shoot them an email with the image of a dream house.

How cool is that?

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Yes, every blogger aims to achieve all of these and more (money and fame) from blogging. We want the benefits of being a professional blogger – but, do we do exactly what probloggers do?

Here is the habits of highly effective bloggers who earn the money and fame in the blogosphere.

1. Professional bloggers are honest in their dealings: Yes, they understand that you can not mock around if they aim to earn money and fame from blogging. They are very serious about their blogging and they work hard something unique for their readers. Be it the blog’s design, content, search engine optimisation or marketing – they give their heart into everything. No pain, no gain.
2. They give before they get: Every successful blogger would agree that there is a certain period of time – where you are expected to give all your energy into your blog. You can not expect your blog to earn bucks in the early days. Those who wait, shall reap big rewards.

3. Probloggers are not afraid of mistakes: Everyone makes mistakes (or shall we call them as experiments or trials?) when we venture into an unknown territory. The mother of all mistakes is ‘not learning from your mistakes’. They experiment boldly – try new methods and techniques to improve their blog, different sources to build traffic, readership. They constantly get feedback and quickly learn and adjust their strategies.

4. They have set clear goals: What you want to achieve through blogging? How much readership do you want to build? How much you want to earn? What is the time frame to achieve? Do you have a blogging schedule? Very few bloggers are very clear about what they want to achieve with their blogs. Set realistic goals for your blog – think on them.

5. Money comes last: You get paid for the work you already did. This truth applies to blogging as well. It is very common that blogs do not earn much money in the initial months – but once you have the content, readership and traffic, you will get plenty of money. Probloggers understand this. Do not stop if your blog does not earn quick dollars.

6. Probloggers read a lot: Books. Blogs. RSS feeds. They follow, skim through every possible reading material in their specialty (niche) area. They meet fellow bloggers, attend conferences and learn outside the online sources to inform their blog readers. Unless you read, you will not have authority in your writing. Read more.

7. They understand users: They follow what users like. They track user behaviors on how they respond to a new design, a blog post and quickly adapt to the readers. If you are not in touch with your readers, then you are already lost. They send out newsletters, freebies to reward the users. With readers, you grow.

More importantly, they are passionate about blogging. They strive hard to reach new heights. They would sacrifice anything for the sake of blogging (at least till they retire).

What do you think the essential quality of a professional blogger? Have I missed anything? Comment on.

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Official Techical Specifications:

Positive Features (Why you will go for Apple iPhone):

1) The design is great, and we have not seen such a good designed gadget for a long time.

2) Touch screen feature is the most-talked-about one. It has a glass screen to minimise scratching marks.

3) It is the most anticipated gadget for the year in US. Well, we copy that.

4) Wirless Internet. Now, you can check your emails, facebook messages and orkut scraps while you are on the move.

5) Google is going to release exclusive web applications for Smart Phones especially, for the Apple iPhones.

6) The iPhone weighs 127.57 grams to be exact which is roughly equivalent of 1 box of 24 crayons.

Negative Points (Why I wont buy the first version):

1) Wow, it has a 2 mega-pixel camera. Duh, it is the age of 5 mp cam, bro. Wake up.

2) You need to pay A$ 590 for a 4GB storage and A$ 700 for an 8GB storage. Is that all?

3) You can only browse the web for 6 hours. Just 6 hours? At least I want that to be 8 hrs, dude.

4) The talktime is 8 hrs (Great). Recently, another smartphone, O2 Jet , was launched with 10 hours of talk and 540 hours of standby that costs just A$140.

5) Even though, Apple iPhone is open for sale from June 29th (2007) in the USA, it wont be available in Australian stores until 2008. So, unless I touch and feel, I wont buy it.

Well, those are the points that you need to ask yourself before you buy the ‘Big Product’. Will you go for it, still?

By the way, if you want a Free iPhone, take this offer. Easy.

If you like this post, I recommend you to subscribe to How to Live Online

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from The Mind of a Web Developer: An Illustrated Diagram

Matt who designed this illustration runs Mingle² is a completely free online dating website built with one goal in mind: making online dating easy, fun and accessible to everyone.

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