Your crafty older relatives used to have to mail-order their video tutorials or wait for “This Old House” reruns to get their DIY on, but the age of streaming video has been good to those who like to tinker and try out neat tricks. From prying open beer bottles with telephone bills to picking locks, from sealing chips to folding T-shirts. Get ready to fill some weekend project time.
Link: Lifehacker
Textbook Revolution is the web’s source for free educational materials. This is a student-run, volunteer-operated website started in response to the textbook industry’s constant drive to maximize profits instead of educational value.
TBR’s mission is to drive the adoption of free textbooks by teachers and professors. We want to get these books into classrooms. Their approach is to bring all of the free textbooks we can find together in one place, review them, and let the best rise to the top and find their way into the hands of students in classrooms around the world.
Link: Textbook Revolution
Jotting a simple list is a great way to brainstorm, but when you want to visualize, organize, and untangle a deep set of ideas, you want a mind map. Web-based mind mapping tool MindMeister offers a simple interface to create mind maps collaboratively or on the go. We’ve mentioned a few mind mapping apps in the past, and showed you how to mind map meetings as an alternative to linear note-taking. But if you haven’t tried mind mapping yet, MindMeister is a great place to start. Let’s dive into MindMeister to give mind mapping a go without downloading a thing.
Link: Lifehacker
If you try to get out of your cellphone contract without paying one of those blasted (and newly illegal in California) early termination fees, you’re going to need a meticulously planned and researched counterargument for everything they throw at you. It’s not a small undertaking, and you’ll meet hostile resistance every step of the way. But it is possible.
Ely Rosentock made the above video laying out every argument they’ll use against you and every counterargument you should use to refute it. It’s essentially a guide to refuting their script, and it’s awesome. He discusses Verizon specifically, but it should apply to all the carriers. So, contractually-trapped friends, go forth and break free!
Link: Gizmodo