Timeless Tales

These days when you want to learn how to do something, the web is usually a wise first port of call. One of the many positive developments of Web 2.0 has been the rise of a whole bunch of high quality web apps dedicated to sharing knowledge online.

In this post, I want to help you tap into 14 innovative social and non-social communities dedicated to helping you learn online: from being more productive to playing guitar along to your favorite song.

Learn to cook

1. imcooked is a web community dedicated to filming and uploading cooking videos.

2. iFoods.tv is another food video community, but this one features professionally produced tutorial videos.

Learn to mix drinks with what you have

3. ExtraTasty allows you to search drink recipes or enter the ingredients you have into the ‘My Bar’ section of the site. Doing so will narrow down the search to only drinks you can make with the ingredients you currently have in your bar.

Learn what rare words mean

4. Definr is a minimalist web interface that performs one important function: to instantly define the word you input. You’ll receive search results almost before you’ve finished typing, and can get a definition with a single click.

Learn to play music

5. Show Me How To Play is the musician’s web app. There’s plenty of free videos available you can use to learn some really great tracks.

Learn another language

6. italki helps you find a language partner, get answers, share files, get language resources and join groups. If you’re learning a language but don’t know anyone to practice with, this web app could be the answer to your woes.

Learn how to make stuff

7. Instructables is an online community of enterprising DIY fanatics who share and use tutorials on doing just about everything under the sun: from building a gingerbread house to constructing a garage from the ground up.

Learn where the cool events are happening

8. Flavorpill is a very hip events aggregator for key American cities.

Learn to live sustainably

9. Make Me Sustainable is a social community for people trying to live in a more sustainable way. The Carbon and Energy Portfolio Manager is a neat way to keep tabs on your impact.

10. Carbonrally promises to help you reduce global warming (in a small way) by undertaking quick and easy challenges.

Learn to manage your finances

11. Mint is an award-winning secure web app to help you manage your finances. It helps you track debt, view multiple accounts simultaneously and keep track of your income and your expenses. The slick interface also includes a number of visualization options.

Learn to be more productive

12. Remember the Milk helps you create simple to-do lists for everyday tasks.

Learn where to go

13. Wikitravel is a user-generated worldwide travel guide currently serving over 17,000 locations. If you don’t want to spend money on a glossy travel guide, Wikitravel should do the trick.

Learn where your site’s visitors are clicking

14. Crazy Egg generates a heat map of your site to help visualize where your visitors are clicking and navigating. Measure the performance of ads and which elements of your navigation aren’t working as they should be.

please share in the comments about any other good Web Apps you knw..

Do you have problems in exercising or sticking to a routine? Well, personally thats one of my major problems is sticking to a routine of exercising. This is a pretty useful article..helps us not to procrastinate.

Exercise helps keep you happy and vital. Studies show that folks who exercise are healthier, cheerier, more energetic, think more clearly, sleep better, and have delayed onset of dementia. What’s more, they get relief from anxiety and mild depression—comparable to medication and therapy.

But of course, no one really disputes the benefit of exercise. The trick is actually DOING IT.

My own favorite activity is reading in bed—preferably, while snacking. It took me a while, but I’ve managed to get myself into the habit of exercising regularly.

These ten strategies helped me stick to my routine:

1. Always exercise on Monday. Starting the week on the right foot makes it easier to stick to your plan.

2. Never skip exercising for two days in a row. You can skip a day, but the next day, you must exercise no matter how inconvenient. This rule dramatically increased the number of times I exercise over the course of a month.

3. Remember, exercise GIVES energy. If you feel too tired to exercise, remember that exercise boosts energy. It took me a long time to notice that I’d drag myself to the gym, work out for forty minutes, and leave feeling far more energetic than when I went in.

4. Any work-out “counts.” Give yourself credit for the least effort. My father, a runner, always said that all he had to do was put on his running shoes and close the door behind him. Why does this work? Because if I know I can quit after five minutes, I get started—and once I start, I usually follow through with my usual routine. Getting out the door is by FAR the toughest part.

5. You don’t have to shower. One problem—mostly for women—is that taking a shower can take too much time. Look for exercise like strength-training, yoga, or walking, that don’t make you sweaty.

6. Throw money at the problem. Spend more to go to a more convenient gym, or to get an iPod, or to work with a trainer. Exercise pays off BIG in your quality of life, so this is a place to splurge.

7. Don’t set the bar too high. I have a friend who thinks it’s not worth exercising unless she’s training for a marathon – and so she never exercises. She’d be better off going for a one-mile run five times a week.

8. Don’t kid yourself. Belonging to a gym doesn’t mean that you go to the gym. Having been in good shape in college doesn’t mean you’re in good shape today. Be honest about what your habits really are now.

9. You have time. Just take a twenty-minute walk. If you can’t do more, do that! Just a twenty-minute walk will really pay off.

10. Exercise for SANITY not VANITY. I find it more motivating to think about the fact that exercise is going to make me feel happier, calmer, and more energetic, right now, rather than to think about vaguer long-term benefits, like strengthened immunity or longer life. It’s not clear that exercise has much impact on weight loss, so don’t be give up when the pounds don’t fall off. It’s worth doing for so many other reasons.

Written by Gretchen Rubin for Happiness Project

Whatever we want in life, a partner, more money, good health, a fulfilling career, or enlightenment, it all comes down to the same thing: behind all the wishes, behind all the desires, and beyond every symbol, we want to feel happy. After all, if we feel completely happy, what more do we need? And if we don’t feel happy, there is not a relationship or career that can satisfy us.

All men and women want to find happiness, but you don’t find happiness anymore than an artist finds a beautiful statue; he or she sculpts it from a shapeless stone. A musician doesn’t find an intricate melody; he or she composes it from the eight note scale.

Happiness is not an acquisition, it’s a skill. We don’t experience happiness because of something that we’re getting, like a raise or money. We experience happiness because of how we’re living. For example, having a tennis racket doesn’t make you a good tennis player, learning how to play tennis does. Having material things doesn’t make you happy; living each moment of the day to the fullest does. Happiness is living in the present moment. You experience happiness when you know exactly where you are in your life at a given moment, and experience that moment to the fullest.

Getting the things you want in life won’t make you happy unless you know how to enjoy every moment. For example, if you don’t know how to enjoy five hundred dollars, you will not enjoy five thousand dollars when you get it, or even five hundred thousand dollars. If you can’t enjoy taking a walk in your neighborhood, and you travel to Hawaii, Paris, or Rome, you won’t be any happier there either. Now I’m not saying having money or taking more trips doesn’t make your life easier or more fun. It does. But those things don’t make you deeply happy because they can’t. Only enjoying life’s real moments can.

If we look closely at our lives, most of us don’t feel very happy much of the time because we focus our attention on precisely the things that make us feel bad, our problems, and the issues we have in our personal and business lives. Most of us find happiness elusive because we aren’t exactly sure what it looks like. Like a rainbow, it appears before us at times, but it’s always temporary.

Working toward material success, expanded awareness, and love helps to make our lives exciting and meaningful. Yet, the urge to find happiness may be our deepest human drive. Despite our achievement and successes, many of us have a sense that something is still missing in our life. And it is this feeling that causes us to continue to search for happiness.

Wanting to grow, expand, explore, and improve are natural human drives. But many of us think that when we find what we’re looking for, it will make us happy. Only to find that it doesn’t. And when we keep trying to find happiness it only serves to reinforce our dilemma of never being able to find it. The more we search for happiness, the more it reflects our resistance or avoidance of life right now. The past is behind us and the future has yet to come, what we have is now. We all have the choice to be happy now or never.

Most of our stress and suffering in life comes from our mind’s resistance to what is. Happiness isn’t about getting what we want as much as wanting what we get. If our lives meet our basic needs for clothing, food, and shelter, then any unhappiness you feel comes from your mind’s resistance. If you take this same resistant mind with you into the future, this unhappiness will remain with you no matter how delightful your external circumstances are.

I don’t mean to imply that the discipline of creating happiness is easy. It’s not. And any process of learning involves mistakes and failures; but it gets easier over time.

Happy people create happiness. It’s the most contagious energy on earth. But, you can’t pretend to be happy or engage in denial or repression. If you do, you’ll only be fooling yourself. When you create happiness, you fully acknowledge and honor whatever emotions are passing through. You watch them like clouds passing by, but you focus your attention on the sunshine above the clouds. By doing this, you are intentionally creating a space of unconditional happiness. And this is much different from just saying “I’m happy” or bravely pretending to be happy. It’s the only happiness that is not dependent on outside circumstances.

If I could give you a formula for happiness, it would be: Become fully conscious of what you’re doing, perceiving, or experiencing in a given moment. Once you’re conscious of it, allow yourself to break through that illusion of separation and connect with the person, thing, or feeling. Then surrender totally into that connection and experience. Now you should be in tune with and actually experiencing the moment. Our lives are made up of a succession of moments that occur all the time. It’s up to us to enjoy them.

For example, let’s say you’re walking up a mountain that overlooks the ocean. You stop for moment and look out at the beautiful vista, feeling the fresh air, and for a second you feel at one with everything, you have this kind of high feeling. That’s a real moment of happiness in your life.

You deserve to have all the happiness that life has to offer. Make the most out of each moment in your life and enjoy it. Don’t wait for happiness to come to you. Create it yourself with each moment. You can become the magician by creating happy experiences whenever and wherever you want.

I’ve always read about how politicians and people who need to get by on little sleep take micro-naps. Well, if I need to sleep, I need to sleep, so a micro sleep is perhaps an option for me for one, maybe two nights.

If you need to use the extra wake time, but need a hour or two of shut-eye, I read about a great way to make sure you wake up. This will most probably only work for people with a minimal every-day caffeine intake, because what you should do is drink a can of coke, or a cup of coffee just before going to bed.

By the time the caffeine releases its waking up goodness you will have slept an hour or so and you will wake up more easily. I won’t guarantee this works every time, but it may make the difference between the “Oh my God, I can’t lift my eyes” type of waking up and the “I’m really tired” waking up.

As you all know caffeine is also a great productivity booster, but I would advise to only use it when you really do need it. For one thing, your body grows used to it after a while and in large doses it will do more harm than good anyway.

Like they say..

" A morning without coffee is like sleep."