Category: Web tools

I’m a big fan of sketching diagrams on the computer to get to grips with complex ideas and processes - I’ve written before about dia, my favourite desktop diagram tool.  Here’s an online tool, Gliffy,  that looks like it does a similar job.

You can add shapes and connectors from various different palettes and set colours and other attributes.  Impressively, it has export to a number of file formats that mean you could download your diagram and open it in another editor, or put it on a web page. You have to sign up but it’s free, although they do also have a premium account.

Continuing in the theme of simple online tools, here’s WorkHack - an online whiteboard to-do list that’s as simple as it gets. There no signup or login required, just enter the tasks, set the priority, and rearrange them. I wouldn’t use this for organising a large project, but when you have a bunch of tasks at the start of the day and you want to get them all written down in order, use this.

For all that academic research is supposed to be about original thought, there are times when life is made easier by a bit of rote learning. Here are a few things that I had to learn by rote during my PhD degree:

• Prominent papers and their results
• The meaning of various keywords in programming languages
• Names of taxonomic groups of animals
• Amino acid codes

Lifehacker links to CueFlash, a nice online flashcard app which lets you build decks of virtual flashcards and test yourself using them.  It’s a very simple interface and is free to sign up to. If you find the flashcard paradigm useful for learning this type of information, give it a try.