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Photoreading Is It Better Than Speedreading?

anitobopper — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:43:57 +0000

I stumbled upon an article by Karen Lavelle on her hubpage about Photoreading and got interested on how to do it.

Here’s wiki’s summary on the subject:
***The PhotoReading method consists of several steps. First, the reader puts himself or herself into an accelerated learning state through hypnosis.

The reader then reads a book’s table of contents, index, and similar non-essential matter, as well as glancing at various parts of the book; this is to gain an idea of the book’s structure.

After this, the reader stares at the pages of the book, changing page every second or so. Then, some time later (up to a day afterward), the reader begins to peruse the book to fill in the details and concepts missed by the preview and photoread steps.

The reader “fills in” details by asking questions of what the book could teach, creating mind maps, scanning (glancing) down pages and dipping (reading normally) paragraphs that stand out or skittering (reading at angles instead of horizontally) each paragraph.***

After doing the last step, you now have all the information you need to know about the book. Can this be done or is it just science fiction?

Here are some of the “how-to” steps I gathered on photoreading:
step 1. – You must have a ‘purpose’ when photoreading a book. This will help you focus on whatever it is you want to benefit from the book.

step 2. – Go to a relaxed state of consciousness. Start by closing your eyes, taking a deep breath, count from 10 to 1 relaxing each part of your body from foot to head as you count down until you reach 1. After reaching 1, your mind is now in the alpha stage – a relaxed state of alertness where you are alert but in a sort of trans-like meditative state. It’s a bit something like the feeling you have before getting up in the morning.

step 3. Open your eyes and start previewing the book. This is similar to doing a reconnaissance mission. When you preview, be aware of ‘trigger words’. Write them in colored pens to help you distinguish keywords that would catch your attention. This process allows your mind to switch from the left and right side of the brain, making it function as one whole system. Allow 3 minutes to preview the book.

step 4. Before proceeding, count from 5 to 1 to further relax your mind. At this stage you now give yourself affirmations to help your subconscious retain most information when you start photoreading the book. This is like programming your subconscious to do exactly what it is you want your mind to do.

Start photoreading by flipping through the book focusing on the center and four corners of the book. In just 5-7 min of doing this, your subconscious will have absorbed everything on the book while your conscious mind would look at it as just a blur.

At the end of doing this, your conscious mind would be sort of lost between pages. But subconsciously, you have absorbed everything written on the book.

If you have time, let it marinate in your subconscious overnight.

The final trick in photoreading is how to get all the information stored in your subconscious mind out to the conscious mind. The photoreading course has several activation techniques to do this. I sort of only have gotten hold of one technique.

step 5. To ‘activate’ what is stored in your subconscious, again go to a relaxed state by counting from 10 to 1 as you did in step 2. When you reach the alpha stage, open your eyes and move them rapidly at the center of each page and let your subconscious mind guide you. Let it be your filter to choose which information you will use or discard.

This is where you “fill in” details by asking questions what the book could teach, creating mind maps, ‘scanning’ (glancing) down pages and ‘dipping’ (reading normally) paragraphs that stand out or ‘skittering’ (reading at angles instead of horizontally) each paragraph.

While doing this, let your conscious mind literally grab the information. Then move on to the next information. Do this for about 6 minutes per info. Repeat until you reach the end of the book.

After doing all of the above, you’ve already gained enough information to know what it is you need to know about a book. That’s all there is to it.

If you’re doing this for the first time, just go with the flow and not ask yourself if you’re doing it the right or wrong way. Eventually you’ll get the hang of it just like riding a bike. Somewhere along the way you’ll reach your “aha” moment and it will become a mind imprint that will help you progress further as you practice photoreading.

I haven’t really tried it to know if it works or not. But as in any kind of endeavor, practice makes perfect. You’ll need to have patience, practice and determination to finally nail it.

The author, Karen LaVelle, however, says she has harnessed the power of photoreading and was able to teach herself how to expertly garden by reading 12 books on the subject in about 2 hours. Her verdict is that photoreading wins over speedreading hands down.

Well, if Karen can do it, don’t you think you can too?

Photoreading Is It Better Than Speedreading?

Big Brother In Your iPhone3G

anitobopper — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:43:58 +0000

Apple’s iPhone has just been released last month worldwide and here in the Philippines, it’s going to be launched this Aug. 22, 2008. I’ve been reading about the apps that you can use in iPhone and something caught my attention regarding Apple’s ability to spy on your iPhone and if it doesn’t like what it sees, zzzzaaapppp!!! The app you’re using is dead.

Sounds like Big Brother to me. If you’ve seen an old movie “Enemy of the State” featuring Will Smith or even “Prison Break”, you have to be concerned with what application(s) you’re running on your iPhone.

But what if not just Apple happened to get inside your iPhone but some nut-job who happen to know how to extract information from your phone? Not that it’s ok for me to let Apple spy on my iPhone in the first place. Your calls, text messages, mp3s, pictures and videos you took from a one night stand and whatever incriminating information you’ve got stored in there is now fair game.

Am I just being paranoid is there really cause to be concerned? Your privacy is now open to anyone, not just Apple. But do you really want Apple to know what app you’re using in your iPhone which btw you both paid for legally in the first place? I think there’s still a privacy issue to be dealt with here.

Well, since I can’t afford to get one right now, I’ll probably resign myself to just using my crappy Jurassic Nokia 3210 for now. It still sends text messages though, sometimes in hieroglyphics! The gift my sister gave me, a Nokia 1200 doesn’t want to send text messages anymore and when I try to call, it reboots to “enter PIN code:”. Aaaarrrggg!!!

First my pc, now my celphone, life’s a peach, really! Now, if only I can convince visitors to click on my adsense! Well, just a suggestion, I don’t want Google to indefinitely hold my adsense checks, you know what I mean.

More on iPhone’s apps:
pcworld.com
infromationweek.com
theinquirer.net

Big Brother In Your iPhone3G

HD Space and Other PC Problems

anitobopper — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:19:48 +0000

I haven’t posted for quite sometime now since my PCs been acting up lately. It’s been a bit slower than usual and upon a little investigation, I found out that my HD is almost full and fragmented. Coupled that with an old pc problem, booting and no display on the monitor, it kinda sucked.

Flashback to when I assembled it a few years back, after a few months of using it, it suddenly hanged and refused to work. I rebooted it only to find out that it won’t display anything on the monitor. I thought it was a video card problem. I took it to a friend and his tech just cleaned the memory chip with an eraser, slipped it in another slot and it worked back just fine again.

So everytime this thing happens, I only have to clean the memory chip and the slot and it would work again. I’m suspecting either the memory chip is faulty or the slot on my motherboard is. I even took it to where I bought the parts and have them check it out but they couldn’t find anything wrong with it, since it was working, even though I wanted to replace the items, I couldn’t.

Anyway, through the years, I have been accumulating files such as pdfs, docs, jpgs, csv and even flv files that my disk space is now down to about 2-3 gigs of free disk space. Some files I transferred to CDs and flash drives but in just about a day or two of adding or downloading more files it goes back to just around 11-16% free disk space. I even uninstalled several apps that I don’t use just to free more space but what it boils down to really was the need for more disk space.

Only thing to do is either get a second drive or get an external one. I’m still weighing my options since the other problem – no display on the monitor, seems to come out of nowhere and continuous to be a pest.

The past couple of days though, my pc seems to work fine. So I’m back to saving files to CDs and freeing a few disk space here and there. I hope things go well from here so that I’ll be able to probably get an external usb drive, maybe a western digital passport perhaps to finally solve my disk space problem.

Flash Drives- USB external drives

HD Space and Other PC Problems

Retire At 52

anitobopper — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:48:34 +0000

How many of us can do what this guy has accomplished? Retiring at the ripe young age of 52 with a hundred or so billion dollars at his disposal is probably just a dream for most of us in this planet but this guy has made his mark in history.

The head of the so called “Evil Empire” is finally retiring at age 52. If you still haven’t got a clue to which person I’m referring to, it’s non other than the gazillionaire Bill Gates of Microsoft. Not bad for a Harvard dropout. He has been on the top 10 billionaire list for the past years and continues to do so.

Now that he’s retired, he will now focus his attention to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A foundation he spearheaded to help worldwide poverty, education and global health. Well, we can really benefit from the foundation, how ‘bout sending me a few millions in my bank account for starters? My account number is …….

Going back to year 1975, together with his school mate Paul Allen, they started their very first company with just 11 employees. Their main focus at that time was to produce software that would run in every PC, in every home. “Windows” was eventually created with that idea. From then on to the present, the OS is still being used in about 90% of PCs in the world.

Although they found success with their endeavor, in the late 90’s they also incurred the ire of the Justice Department and charged Microsoft with engaging in anticompetitive and exclusionary practices designed to maintain its monopoly in personal computer operating systems and to extend that monopoly to Internet browsing software. It was a long lasting battle, but since Microsoft had more than enough financial resources at their disposal, they opted to just settle the cases which got them off the hook legally.

Microsoft’s position today is not as big as it was prior to the internet. They were late in jumping into the net bandwagon in the mid 90’s that’s why Microsoft lags behind Yahoo and Google in the search engine market battle. Its latest OS version, Vista, isn’t doing any better than its predecessor, Windows XP. One reason is that the OS has become too large to accommodate the ever growing capacity needs of current hardware in the market. They might need to overhaul the entire code or might as well start with a new one from scratch to make it more adaptable to newer technology.

Be that as it may, don’t put Microsoft down and out as yet. They might come out with a big surprise in the near future. Microsoft is aiming its guns now on “cloud computing”. If you’re not familiar with the term, I wrote about it a month ago – “Cloud computing, what’s it all about…..” This area is where breaking new grounds could also bring in big profits for anyone landing on top of the heap.

In the meantime, Bill Gates is now headed on a new journey as a philanthropist with his foundation - from the head of the “Evil Empire” to the “Giving Empire”? Hmmm…. Maybe I can end this post with the slogan – “Where do you want to go today?”

Resources:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91912859
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/technology/27soft.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

Retire At 52

Air Drums by Mr Bean

anitobopper — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 03:44:23 +0000

I don’t usually post videos here but when I chanced upon this one, I couldn’t help myself laugh at his antics. He’s non other than Rowan Atkinson aka Mr. Bean. If you have heard of “air guitar”, this is his version of “air drums”. Enjoy!

If you can’t get enough of him, here’s something I just added on my iMac post I wrote a few months ago. Just click on this link – New iMac.

Air Drums by Mr Bean

Gifts for Father’s Day

anitobopper — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 03:51:25 +0000

Last month we gave our moms’ gifts and goodies on her special day. And this second week of June, it’s time to give Dads the same token. But if you find yourselves too busy to look for gifts or have no clue what Dad wants on his special day, maybe you can just give him a gift certificate instead? That way, you’ll hit two birds with one stone. Here’s one:

It may be a little bit taxing on the part of the parents in this part of the globe (Philippines) since it’s just about the start of a new school year and the price of oil and gas is in its all time high, it’s scandalous! I think it’s high time we look for other alternatives for fuel. This way, we can make oil extinct and let these oil producers drink all their oil, since no one will be using them anymore anyway. That will be day!

I was watching David Letterman the other night, I forgot the name of his guest but they were talking about other sources of energy being introduced by aliens from outer space? Hmmm…. I hope it’s true, so we can get rid of these oil companies holding the world hostage with their ‘precious’ commodity.

Around the world gasoline is priced around $3-6+ a gallon while in Saudi Arabia it’s just around $0.91. Now we can clearly see who’s holding the short end of the stick. You can see here - http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/ for yourself.

But since it’s Father’s Day, despite gas’ ridiculous prices, we can always find something to give Dads of all ages, simple gifts like watches to hobby tools as a simple gesture of our appreciation. Just click on the links below. You’ll be glad you did!

Happy Father’s Day!

Dremel Rotary Tools

Gifts for Father’s Day

Image Editor, Viewer and Screen Capture Applications

anitobopper — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:10:20 +0000

Here’s something I came across while looking for FREE image editors. I usually use Macromedia’s Fireworks or Photoshop to edit pics. An example would be Firework’s gif animation on the right with the radio tuner gif.

But if you don’t have any of the ones I mentioned, here are a few FREE image editors that you can download and use. Oh btw, if your browser is Explorer it won’t animate. Use Firefox instead to view the animation on the right.

Here’s one that lets you edit pics:
Gimp 2.4

photo enhancement
digital retouching
uses available formats - jpeg, gif, tiff, png psd

If you want to try a different image viewer or want to use your own pics for a screen saver go to:
IrfanView 4.10

nice way to view images
paint option, color depth (edit)
create slideshows
batch convert images
image capture

Here’s something I use if the site doesn’t want you to right click and save pics. Ok, I know website owners do this to protect their precious pics. But as long as you give credit to where you snatched the pic i.e. post the link on your site, and NOT claim it as your own, at least you give courtesy to the real owner and give backlinks to their site. I think they won’t mind a little boost in their PR ranking.

For this, I use Captura 1.0 screen capture:
You have 3 options to take the screenshot

Capture a section of the screen
Capture the full screen
Capture the full screen after 10 seconds

To download go to:
http://www.hernansoft.com/products.html or to
http://www.brothersoft.com/captura-17571.html

Lastly, if you want to edit gifs but don’t want to download any application to your desktop, here’s the site to go to: GifWorks
Upload the pic to the site, edit it and save it to your desktop. Most of the editing uses dropdown menus. It’s basically straightforward so it won’t be that hard to do.

I hope you have fun with these apps, happy image editing. Cheers!

Image Editor, Viewer and Screen Capture Applications

Nintendo Wii Fit Balance Board

anitobopper — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:39:04 +0000

If you think gaming turns you into a couch potato, think again. Nintendo has just come out with its latest release, the Nintendo wii-fit balance board. Wii–fit will change the way you think about gaming. It is intended to give gamers fun while keeping them fit at the same time.

Although games primarily target the younger generation, Nintendo’s wii-fit now targets the not so young generation that still wants to play games while keeping them fit as well.

Among Nintendo’s features are 40 aerobic exercises designed to improve strength, balance and complete fitness. Nintendo describes Wii Fit as a combination of fitness and fun while promoting good health. Users can take a test each day by using the Wii Balance Board accessory to measure their Body Mass Index (BMI) and body control. With a nice price tag, it sure beats other expensive exercise equipment in the market.

Nintendo Wii Fit Balance Board

Cloud Computing, What’s It All About?

anitobopper — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:16:44 +0000

Ever heard of cloud computing? It’s basically a loose term that refers to a combination of software application and services from PCs to centralized data centers available through the internet and can be accessed on demand 24/7.

At the forefront using cloud computing technology is Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Sun, IBM and as of late, Microsoft, among others.

Microsoft recently introduced its “Live Mesh system”. Microsoft views this as a software platform in the data center for an evolving array of services, ranging from remote control of computers and electronic devices to data storage.

IBM on the other hand, has a system dubbed as “Blue Cloud”. This enables banks and other customers distribute their programs across large numbers of machines to deliver faster, more sophisticated data analysis.

Amazon, Yahoo and Google use their APIs to help users integrate their own sites seamlessly with the various services they are offering.

So if you’re interested in catching the next big wave, now is the time to join the bandwagon, who knows, you might have an idea or two that could radically change the way we do things online.

If you want to learn more about cloud computing, just visit this link.

Cloud Computing, What’s It All About?

Happy Mother’s Day!

anitobopper — Fri, 09 May 2008 08:19:06 +0000

It’s the month of May and in this part of the globe(Philippines), it’s mid summer and mostly it’s time for barrio fiestas, santacruzan and you’ll see lots of fruits being sold and halo-halo on street corners. I like to eat or drink our very own sweet mangoes. It such a treat! And before I forget, it’s the month specially dedicated to one of the most important person in our lives, our Moms!

Although most of the time we tend to forget that she’s always been there for us especially when we were kids, and now that we our already grown ups or maybe we ourselves are in the same boat(parents), we now realize how difficult it must have been for her.

One advice I’d like to give to kids is - Don’t be such a pain to your parents, especially to your mom. Even though sometimes your relationship may not be all too perfect, someday you’ll realize that she is just looking out for you the best way she knows how. Just give her some slack, you’ll be glad you did.

So to celebrate the occasion, here are some gifts you might want to give her on this special day.

Happy Mother’s Day, Ma!!

Happy Mother’s Day!