Say Thank You and Make Someone Smile

In januari we launched the Thank You Project. It comprises small businesscard-size booklets containing removable cards with a short sentence followed by ‘Thank You’. You can give those cards away to someone you like, or just a stranger. Put them in someone’s bag, mailbox, leave them at a restaurant or put them in a book for someone else to find.

This month we launched a new website! Here you can read what the project is about, order freshly printed booklets, postcards and a Thank You stamp. For the really thankful people there is also a complete Thank Pack available, with two booklets, to sets of postcards and a stamp.

There are two other new things on the new website: You can choose a postcard, fill in a message and the address of the person you want to send it to and we will write the message by hand on a real postcard and send it off. You can also write your own Thank You sentence, which will appear on the website, and maybe even in a future version of the booklet! Read more

Time for a Break

Summerholidays start, graduation parties take place and schools close. A good moment to take some time off and travel to a far and sunny country!

Streamlined Mind will not be updated for the next three weeks. From the end of july I will be back with more interesting subjects to prepare for a new, productive ands streamlined year!

Have a good summer!

10 Things To Do During Presentations

On April 26th I wrote 10 Things to Avoid During Presentations. Following up on that post I would like to look at presenting again, but from a more positive side.

This time the list is not particularly focusing on the content of the slides we’re using but on our appearance and the structure of our presentation. Every situation is different of course. Some presentations are more important than others. Some presenters tend to be very nervous, while others seem very confident. A few things that might help you during a presentation: Read more

Popular Posts: First 3 Months of Streamlined Mind

It’s been three months already since the first post here on Streamlined Mind. 28 posts have been written in 19 categories, and already more than 250 spam comments have been caught and deleted. A good moment to look back and see what were the favorite post of the visitors so far!

As the first few articles were written in the very beginning, not a lot of people knew of the existence of Streamlined Mind. But slowly readers started to find their way to the site and I’m very happy to say I received quite some feedback, and all of it was positive. Now here are a few posts that received the most attention: Read more

How to Present Your Work Online: 6 Tips

In my previous post “Should Students Have a Portfolio Website?” you can read why it can be a good idea to present yourself and your work online, and what tools you could use if you’re not a web designer yourself.

So someone heard about you and searches for you on the internet. Your own website will hopefully one of the first things to be found. Your name is on it, they read the ‘about’ page and browse trough your work. Now what do they actually find out and remember about you? There are a few things to take in account: Read more

Will the New iPhone 3G be a Good Planner?

Planning your day seems like such a simple thing. I’ve been looking for a good solution for a long time though, and haven’t found a satisfying one yet. There is always a drawback to every system I used. I am very happy with my Moleskine Weekly Planner at the moment, but it’s not perfect - it doesn’t sync with my computer…

On the 10th of June Apple introduced the new iPhone 3G, with GPS built in, a much faster network connection at a much lower price than the original iPhone. Next to that they introduced a better synchronization service called MobileMe, which will keep all our data on our iPhone, Mac and/or PC in sync. Could a combination of those two finally provide me with a perfect planning system? Read more

Should Students Have a Portfolio Website?

During your studies you will do a lot of work. You will get a lot of assignments, some leading to great results, others leading to less great results. What will you do with your work after it’s being presented, assessed and evaluated? Having your own portfolio website can be a good way of sharing your best work with the rest of the world.

Especially if you’re studying at an art school, a portfolio website is a good first step into the big outside world. Graphic designers, painters, writers, composers, theater makers, architects, all forms of creative students. On the other hand, sharing interesting research results, papers or case studies can be done in any kind of field, so there’s no need to stop reading if you’re not an artist. Read more

25 Worthwhile Student Productivity Websites

The internet is a great source of information for the productive student. We can read books, and I love to, but every day new great tricks are invented and shared with us via the internet!

That’s why I would like to share  this list of interesting student productivity resources with you. Not all of the websites and blogs mentioned are specifically targeting students, but on all of them you will find helpful information on various student productivity related subjects. I hope they will be beneficial to you!
In no particular order: Read more

Huge Online Resource for Education Tools

Today I read on academHacK about this, they call it a “Ridiculously Useful Resource”. It’s the Centre for Learning and Performance Technology’s Directory of Learning Tools. And it’s quite a list! From blogging tools to presentation tools and mind mapping and brainstorming tools. With a note if the described tool is free, a download or a hosted service and if it’s open source.

As a Mac user I have to say I don’t see all my favorite Mac applications in the list, although it contains over 2300 tools. But especially if you’re looking for a hosted service and have a good overview of it’s competitors, this is a great directory to check out. They also have a list with their Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 selected by 159 ‘learning professionals’. It’s worth taking a look at.

A New Logo, a New Theme

From now on Streamlined Mind will have a new theme. It’s the one you’re looking at right now and it’s made by Brian Gardner. Returning visitors might have noticed I was playing around with the design of this website. I tried a few different themes but I wasn’t totally happy with them. There were a lot of small things that I had to adjust or that didn’t work the way wanted. So the last one I used was nice and simple, but the lines were too long which made the articles unpleasant to read.

When I saw Brian Gardners work and especially this theme, I immediately fell in love with the clean look of it. So here it is. With a new logo too. I’m still making a few adjustments so if things aren’t working the way you expect them to, let me know, and I will have a look at it!

I might still change some things here and there, maybe the some colors or fonts, but this is the design I want to stick with for Streamlined Mind.

If you have any questions or remarks on the new theme, please leave a comment and let me know!