Cool Free Websites and Apps

I usually post on this blog about different technologies, most of them web-based. It occurred to me however, that perhaps people would like to learn some cool functions they can use with Microsoft Excel. VLOOKUP is one of those Excel functions that can be sometimes overlooked but perhaps everyone should know about because it can save you a lot of time and can be very powerful when dealing with large data sets. What exactly is VLOOKUP? Basically, VLOOKUP lets you  search for specific information  in your spreadsheet. For example, if you have a list of players for a particular sports team and some basic information about them, you could search for the name of someone based on their number. To go along and work on the examples, please download the spreadsheet . In this first example, we are going to use VLOOKUP to find the name for number  88 . You can probably see that it is Jessica Chandler, but that's because this is a simple example. Once you learn how to use ...

Description:  Everyone knows the benefits of journaling, it relieves stress, makes you stick to your goals but what many don't know is that you can now also do it online from anywhere and never lose your thoughts again.  Penzu is an online diary that let's you write down your private thoughts securely. If you have been looking for a digital diary solution, look no more. I am confident you will love this free, private and secure way of capturing your thoughts and important events. It is of course entirely up to you what type of a journal you keep. Some people like to do a daily journal, while others want to capture their travels through Africa. And don't forget the bright minds looking for a solution to capture all of their ideas that are rushing through their creative minds, or the teenagers venting about their friends or perhaps their annoying parents. In addition to the free version, there is also Penzu Pro and Penzu Classroom with added functionality for those enth...

Symbaloo - Generic webmix Description: Symbaloo allows you to organize all of your websites in one place. It is free and its biggest advantage over some other solutions it that it is based on a visual organization. Your preferences are stored in a cloud so you can seamlessly switch between your devices. The following short video provides a quick overview of how this service works. Creating an account: It essentially works as a bookmarking service. You can share your bookmarks with anyone by making them public or share them with a select group of users. The first thing you will want to do is create a free account, which is very simple, you only need to fill out four fields.   Symbaloo - Creating an account Creating a webmix using quick start: Once you sign up, you can start creating your webmixes, you even have an option to select the quickstart option, where Symbaloo will let you create a webmix using some favorite websites in less than a minute. The...

Coursera - Welcome Screen Description: Over 4 million people from all around the world have already used Coursera to study anything from History of Rock, Songwriting, Financial Markets, Nanotechnology to Optimization of Antibiotics. There are currently 393 courses available to choose from offered by leading scholars from 83 different universities including, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia University, Princeton, Technical University of Denmark, University of Melbourne or The Hong Kong University of Technology. New courses are added frequently and are now also offered in various other languages including English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese and Italian, with the vast majority of  Coursera  courses offered in English today. There are various ways in which you can browse through the courses, you can view those that are upcoming or view them by their specific thematic grouping and choose one or more of the following categories: Coursera - List of Topical Categories of C...

Bookboon Overview Description: Bookboon is one of a few different websites that provide free eBooks and textbooks. I have previously used  Bookboon  for travel guides (though I did not see any on the website today) and textbooks. It is a very nice site if you are looking for a simple book on something. Many choices are available, especially for those who are interested in business. Whether you want to learn how to write better, learn how to work with Excel or Access, brush up on your Statistics skills or become more entrepreneurial,  Bookboon  has something for you. The free version of each book contains some limited advertisements, however you have the option to download a book without the advertisement, however this is no longer free. They currently have books published in English, German, Swedish and Danish. If you would like to become an author, they seem to be very open to this as well. Check out  Bookboon , I am confident you will find a book that wi...