Read summaries - save time
I’ve just read 6 books in an hour - thanks to the best collection of book summaries.
Passing Time in The Loo - the best of collection of 150+ books summaries
Not just easy peasy books, but Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), For whom the bell tolls (Hemingway), Don Quixote, Das Kapital (Marx), The Origin of Species (Darwin) and - by way of light relief - Shakespeare’s King Lear. All books I ‘wanted to have read’ but didn’t think I’d ever get round to reading and. To be honest, wasn’t really looking forward to reading). How did I do it? I read brilliant two-page summaries in ‘Passing Time in the Loo‘. I got the stories, a flavour of the books and some info on their relevance. And I didn’t feel bad about it because research shows that people remember more from summaries than from reading the books. And loads more goodies to choose from tomorrow. Just checked out the publisher’s website (Passing Time in The Loo - 150+ classic books summaries) and they’re doing a deal - buy Passing Time in the Loo vol I or vol II and get the best of Shakespeare’s summaries free. Better than Amazon! But watch out - don’t be tempted to get ‘The Great American Bathroom Book’ or ‘Touch of Classics’ as well - they’re just the ‘loo’ books under different titles. Read more about the importance of summaries and how they help with remembering information
Sleep more. Researchers say an afternoon nap prepares the brain to learn better and remember more
How siestas help you remember more
Sleep Pods devised by MetroNap
“It has already been established that those who siesta are less likely to die of heart disease (people who siesta for 20-30 minutes each day are 30% less likely to suffer from heart disease as sleep lowers stress on the heart). Now, Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. A post-prandial snooze, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning. The ideal nap, follows a cycle of between 90 and 100 minutes (according the research, napping for 90 minutes after lunch can improve your productivity by up to 10%). The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a siesta. The grogginess that results from an unrefreshing siesta is termed “sleep inertia”. This happens when the brain is woken from a deep sleep with its cells still firing at a slow rhythm and its temperature and blood flow decreased. Sara Mednick, from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that non-habitual nappers suffer from this more often than those who siesta regularly. It may be that those who have a tendency to wake up groggy are choosing not to siesta in the first place. Perhaps, though, as in so many things, it is practice that makes perfect.” Read the full story in Economist
Cool bookshelves fighting back - for the love of books
Puntmobles Perec Wall-hung Shelf - click on the image to buy it
With iPad and Kindle paving the way for the virtual bookland on one hand and bookless world on the other, designers are turning humble book storage into a work of art. See our selection of cool bookshelves see our Links/Reading resources page. “There’s been a bibliophile backlash. Books have morphed from being ’stuff to store’ into a decorating opportunity.”
Read the full article with all the links to the top bookshelves designers.
Memory control discovered in forgetful flies
You may not like forgetting things but a new research suggests that any healthy brain need to be able to loose old memories. A protein has been discovered in flies that is the key to forgetting. At this time the scientists don’t know if this protein has the same role in people. If people forget in similar fashion as flies do, this could pave the way to new ways to enhance memories or erase unwanted ones. Read the whole story in the NewScientist
Competition for the iPad - the Bonnier Mag+ project
Watch this video prototype of the Mag+ project. It could be a serious competitor to the iPad that Apple recently announced. You want to curl up with a book or magazine and lose yourself in. Can Mag+ project portable tablet e-reader deliver that experience?
Read how mobile tablet devices will change the world of computing.
How do you store 35 million books?
35 million books could be stored on a single cartridge made using a new type of storage tape developed by IBM and Fujitsu. Can iPad beat that? Not for some time. This new cartridge has the capacity to hold up to 35TB of uncompressed data. This is about 44 times the capacity of today’s IBM LTO Generation 4 cartridge. A capacity of 35TB of data is sufficient to store the text of 35 million books, which would require 248 miles (399 km) of bookshelves. The biggest bookshop in Europe - Waterstones in Piccadilly, London UK SW1Y 6WW (tel 020 7851 2400) stores about 250 000 books on four floors in over eight and a half miles of shelving.
The books that change the world: The Checklist Manifesto - How To Get Things Right
In The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right (Profile), a surgeon Atul Gawande proposes how simple procedural checklists have a fundamental effect on the number of patients who recovered after operations (up to 47% more people survived in hospitals where checklist were used - next time you have an operation make sure to request that they use a checklist!). The book offers amazing insights into the power of simple to-do lists. The applications and implications are tremendous. This book is changing and improving the lives of thousands of people while you’re reading this. Read it to improve yours.
Speed reading made easy on the iPad via iBook Store - revolution in ebook reading
Amazon Kindle tried to do it and Apple just did it! Apple revolutionised listening to music and now they’ve revolutionised ebook reading with the iPad via iBook Store. Five big partners… Penguin, Harper Collins, Macmillion, Simon & Shuster, Hachette Book Group… and more will sell their ebooks via iBook Store to be read on the iPad.
“It has a bookshelf. In addition there’s a button which is the store — we’ve created the new iBook Store. You can download right onto your iPad.” The store is very similar to iTunes. Same modal pop-overs. Pricing doesn’t look too bad. The book page display is nice. You can turn pages slowly or fast for speed reading. “You can change the font… whatever you want. And that is iBooks.” “So iBooks again, a great reader, a great online bookstore. All in one really great app. We use the ePub format. We’re very excited about this.” said Steve Jobs at the launch of the iPad and iBooks Store today in San Francisco (6pm London time). Read how mobile tablet devices will change the world of computing.
iBooks Store on the iPod - speed reading ebooks on the go
Watch Apple video on the iPad below (if you want to just watch the iBook Store and the ebook reader skip to minute 4)
For more info go to the iPad, iBooks Store and ebook reading
Read more on speed reading on Stanza free ebook reader for iPhone
The 10 best brain-training websites
The neuroscientist Dr Kawashima helped to develop Brain Training, the Nintendo game that suppose to help us develop our minds. Check the best online brain-training programms.
3D Books - Embedded electronics bring pop-up books to life
Move over Kindle, there’s a new type of electronic book on the scene - and this one’s got pop-ups. The interactive pages come alive with LED lights, sounds and even vibrate in response to touch.
The Electronic Popable book, developed by the High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab, has electronic circuitry embedded in its pages that turns the tabs, flaps and wheels of a traditional pop-up into switches and a variety of sensors. The interactive pages come alive with LED lights, sounds and even vibrate in response to touch.
Watch the Electronic Popable book in action
Venus fly traps spring up invitingly from one page; sensors in the trap’s jaws respond to the user’s touch, gently closing around the probing finger as it withdraws. The sensors control the amount of electric current flowing through springs in the leaf. The springs are made of the shape memory alloy nickel-titanium and contract to close the leaf shut as their coils are heated by the current. The leaves reopen as the wire cools.
To create the pages for the book, mechanical engineer Jie Qi and Lab director Leah Buechley used off-the-shelf electrically conductive paints and fabrics, adding custom-made magnetic components programmed using a standard integrated circuit. “The innovation was in finding new uses for these easily available materials,” Qi says.
This battery-operated pop-up book will be presented at the Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interfaces conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next week.
Source: NewScientist