Georgia Institute of Technology and North Carolina State University have teamed up via a $1.2 million grant to research the benefits of video game playing. The initiative aims to determine whether playing video games can boost the person’s thinking skills and memory. Their first task is to identify the qualities that make a good game for the brains and build a game from scratch.

According to Dr. Anne McLaughlin, assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State,  the fundamental brain strengthening qualities are attentional demand, novelty, and social interaction. With these things in mind, the best game suited for the job is EA’s Boom Blox games.

The Boom Blox game is a Steven Spielberg and EA game, with Steven on board, a product that exercises the brain is no surprise.

Image from Boom Blox games.

News from Yahoo video.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Best Game for the Brain

Spending time in the recruiting business and as a manage for other offices, reviewing applications and doing a quick name search for applicants online was just something I did. I was amazed at what I found sometimes, and more amazed at the stories I’ve read.

I know someone who was looking for a job and shortly after the interview wrote on his blog and called the person that interviewed him an “idiot” and doesn’t know if he could ever work for that company. They were so “screwed” up he wasn’t sure if he could really turn them around and fix anything.

I can tell you right now. If he’d interviewed with me, there’s not a chance he would have gotten the job and you can believe I would have let my own network know about my experience as well.

There’s a balance between being “transparent”, the buzz word of choice for social media, and maintaining a healthy inner dialogue as the article stated.

Image: sxc.hu

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The Challenge of Social Networks in Business

The AppSnap is an application which simplifies the installation of software. It automatically determine whether the latest version is available, downloads the installer and install the software seamlessly.

The application is for Windows and was written in Python and uses wxPython, PyCurl, and PyYAML.

Go ahead and install the application here — AppSnap.

Image from here — AppSnap.

Post from: EveryJoe

Do you Want to Get Your Apps in a Snap?

Taking a break for a few days from being plugged in. It’s a battle for me. Most of the time when I’m “attached” to the network I’m in the process of making money for my family. I think I do a good job of balancing work and play/family, but I do work a lot. For me I usually try to get it done after hours when the kids are in bed. In the summer that’s a little more difficult since the kids are up later and there seems to be more activity going on.

The best way for me to unplug is to get away and go somewhere where being connected to the machine is challenging. For me, that’s camping. Electricity and wi-fi are hard to come by when you’re out in the woods. Cell phones are frequently in roam which doesn’t allow me to connect for data transfer.

What do you do? Do you call “technology free” days or nights? How do you get away? Do you get away? Do you think it’s important? Let me know your thoughts.

Image: Modified flickr photo by Pulpolux

Post from: EveryJoe

Going Offline - Unplug from Your Tech Addictions

The Macrium reflect is a free disk imaging software which has the following key features:

1. You would be able to create a disk image while Windows is running using Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS)

2. The image can be put to network, USB, Firewire drives and DVDs

3. There is a built in scheduler

4. There are 32 bit and native 64 bit versions

5. It has industry leading compression levels and speeds

6. It has HTML log files

7. There is a built in CD/DVD packet writing engine

8. It supports packer writing to DVD DL media on Windows Vista

9. Linux based rescue CD with network access and full GUID. The size is 6.5MB

Download the application here — Macrium.

The image from here – Macrium.

Post from: EveryJoe

The Fastest Disk Imaging Software, Anyone?

Are you being as efficient at using Microsoft Word as you can be? Do you know many of the keyboard shortcuts you can take advantage of so you don’t have to move your hands off the keyboard and onto the mouse? It surprises me how many times I work with individuals and when I do even the simplest keyboard shortcuts I hear "How’d you do that?!"

The Internet4Classrooms.com website has some common Microsoft Word shortcuts that are the standards for use that you’ll probably find yourself using at least once almost every document you create.

There are shortcuts for quickly formatting your text, moving around your document, editing text and finding areas of text to reuse in other sections of your Word document.

It’s not just about keyboard shortcuts either. Do you find yourself always changing the default spacing, font, margins or other settings in your document before you really get started? Do you always insert a header/footer design or perhaps a company logo?

All of these things can be saved as preferences or automated to some degree. What would you like to know how to do? Let me know in the comments and I can work on putting together some tutorial posts to help you and share with the rest of our readers.

Image: Custom graphic by Jason Bean

Post from: EveryJoe

How To Get Use Microsoft Word Faster and More Efficiently

The Zalman CNPS10X Extreme is a powerful and able CPU cooling gadget for your processor. The highlight feature is it’s low noise 120mm blue LED CPU cooler. The cooler supports older CPUs like the Pentium 4, Celeron D, Pentium D, Core 2 Duo, Sempron, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Opteron. The cooler also supports the high end CPUs like the Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Extreme, and the Phenom II.

Get more product information here — CNPS10X Extreme.

Image source here — CNPS10X Extreme.

Post from: EveryJoe

CPU Coolers: CNPS10X Extreme

You can see the little handles on each message line on the far left side of the message. You can then drag the message on top of the label you want to apply to the message. Not the major improvement from their perspective, but I really like the fact they moved the labels up to be positioned right under the standard groupings of messages.

The one thing I’m not sure how I like yet, is that when I drag a message onto one of the labels it immediately archives the message out of my Inbox. I frequently will add labels to messages but leave them in the Inbox. That may take some getting adjusted to.

Post from: EveryJoe

Google’s Gmail Changes and Adds Functionality

Anyways, the Zalman ZM-NC1500W looks promising, and below are the key features:

Premium high quality 2mm thick aluminum treated with S.A. Surface Processing.
* S.A. (Sand Blasting, Anodizing)

Sleek design incorporating a high quality 2mm thick aluminum panel with a fine curvature and great cooling performance.

Silicon “shoes” on feet to prevent slippage and provide cooler stability.The Rubber Grip Strip prevents the notebook from sliding.

For a full product information go here — ZM-NC1500W.

Image from here — ZM-NC1500W

Post from: EveryJoe

Notebook Cooler: ZM-NC1500W

I don’t know how many times I’ve gone into my email and noticed messages with a weird date and time. In my opinion if an email is sent to me with a "Sent On" date prior to the Pony Express being in service, it’s more than likely a spam email. Even if it’s a legitimate email from a reliable source, I probably don’t want to see it. When they realize I’m not getting their emails or responding, then we can talk about fixing their time server on their computers.

The same would be true for any date where "Sent On" is in the future of the current date. To me those are obvious issues and could be deleted at the server level. Anyone else agree with me here?

I know you can’t clump emails sent in the wee hours of the morning as always spam, I believe they are frequently from senders you may not want to see. Perhaps these could immediately be tagged as junk and kept for review. In fact, I think some email servers already do this as a first level trigger of potential spam sources.

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Why Can’t Easy Filters Catch Spam