After last week’s article regarding MOOCs I got a great email from Donnie telling me about using one for the past year or so and learning to speak Spanish. Another freebie. The site is DuoLingo.com which currently provides ten languages: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish and Turkish. I do not know how good it is but Donnie has been very encouraged by how much he has learned. To be honest I started trying out Irish but, alas it was too much for me to worry about. Give it a try if you are interested and let me know how it works.
Over the weeks readers have pointed out other good sites. First, keep them coming and second, we will take a look at a couple of fun ones from you and third, "Thanks!" I appreciate all the emails including questions, problems and recommendations you send me. I will always write back, if only to say thanks.
I wrote about this one many years ago but I thought it may be time to talk about it again and so did Jen. This is a sort of sneaky way to win eBay auctions. Go to AuctionSniper.com and try it out if you bid at eBay from time-to-time. Auction Sniper is an eBay automation tool which "snipes" by automatically processing your eBay bids. You set your maximum bid amount and during the closing seconds of an auction it pops your bid in there, if it is still enough to win. Many times you will win the bid and sometimes you won’t. It is not foolproof but I have tried it and won a couple of times using it. At this time your first three wins are free. After the three freebies you pay 1% of the winning price with a minimum of $0.25 and a maximum of $9.95. You only pay if you win.
How about some online games from days of old? Robert sent me the link to "Game Oldies (game-oldies.com). Go there and play old NES, SEGA, Commodore and other games from years ago. I tried out Arkanoid which was one of my favorites when I was much, much younger and had time to play. There are hundreds of games at this site, so look around for your golden oldie. Gameplay will go from good to bad depending on the speed of your internet connection and the game you play.
Last one for today is, F.lux sent to me from Julie. I have been using this one for years and forgot all about it, even though I see it working every day I use my desktop computer. Flux (justgetflux.com) supports the theory you may have heard on medical shows. It is conceivable that you may be staying up later at night because of your computer. Some medical folks say this is because your computer screen is too bright and keeps your brain turned on if you read it at night, possibly making it hard to sleep.
F.lux uses your computer’s location and system time to adapt the colors to warmer colors at night and sunlight-like colors during the day (the normal setting). At first I noticed a difference but forgot about it after a couple of hours of work. Give it a try and see if you sleep any better. I just like the way it "fixes" the screen at night for me.
