Tuesday, April 29, 2014

For better note-taking, write longhand.

Pacafic Standard Magazine (a favorite subscription of mine) has a web article entitled:

Want to Remember Your Notes? Write Them, Don’t Type Them

Despite the speed of notetaking with a laptop or tablet, it turns out it may not be the best way to learn new information. "The problem, it seems, is that the lightening-quick speed of typing encourages listeners to transcribe what they’re hearing without actually paying attention to what’s being said—a note-taking approach that has been proven ineffective in the past."

Here's a quick link to Pacific Standard's article, which cites a study published in Psychological Science, a professional  journal with fee-based access to articles.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Internet Explorer users: Stop what you're doing...

News alert today: April 28, 2014

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security advised computer users to consider using alternatives to Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer browser until the company fixes a security flaw that hackers have used to launch attacks.

The bug is the first high-profile security flaw to emerge since Microsoft stopped providing security updates for Windows XP earlier this month. That means PCs running the 13-year old operating system could remain unprotected against hackers seeking to exploit the newly uncovered flaw, even after Microsoft figures out how to defend against it.

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a part of Homeland Security known as US-CERT, said in an advisory released on Monday morning that the vulnerability in versions 6 to 11 of Internet Explorer could lead to "the complete compromise" of an affected system."

Read more at Chicago Tribune or CNN or your favorite news source.