If you are like me, you sometimes wonder if the web browser of choice (especially when it is crashing on you!) is the still the best choice. PC Magazine comes to the rescue with their latest article: The Best Web Browsers of 2017. I’ve heard of Microsoft’s new Edge, but how many of you have heard of Vivaldi, and Brave, and Neon? They were all new to me!
Thinking about reevaluating my web browser had me asking the question, what about my web-based email service? I have a suspicion that Yahoo may be responsible for my browser crashes lately, but my long-term history of saved message has made me less eager to change services. The people at TechAdvisor offer us up-to-date insight with The Best Free Email Services for 2017. The people at LIfeWire also chimed in with their 2017 Best Of post. New to me were Yandex and ProtonMail.
Steven Riccio, a professor of International Business & Management at Dickinson College recently posted Habits of Highly Effective Higher-Ed Professionals, Part 2: Finding Your Purpose. If you missed his Part 1 article back in June, it is also worth visiting. In Part 2, Riccio thoughtfully extends the thesis of his previous article which focused on “sharpening our saws” for more effective work, and takes on the challenge of shifting our professional focus from “pursuing happiness to pursuing purpose.” He looks at how many strive to reach happiness via the completion of goals and challenges, that we end up exhausted, and still missing the ultimate goal of happiness. Riccio challenges us to look inward and discover what our true purpose is for our lives. Did you follow the directives he gave mid article and write down what you believed, at that moment that your purpose was? Did it develop and change by the time you finished the article?
ScienceFair is a new open source desktop science library hosted on Github. It “was developed by Code for Science and FathomLabs along with other contributors, with support from Mozilla Science Lab, eLife and the Dat project.” (per site). You can read about all the details of the new launch at the eLife Labs blog. While they are planning a reference manager feature for upcoming releases, ScienceFair is not another reference manager. Instead the developers have focused their efforts on providing a better application for searching open access science literature and providing a quality reader for the articles. They also have begun to offer some data and text mining features which they intend to be a focus for future enhancements. While still in their very early days, ScienceFair is an application worth keeping our eyes on.
And Finally, from our friends at the mindmapping software blog, we have their newest mindmapping comparison for 2017. More comprehensive than ever, this is a great resource for anyone interested in mindmapping software options.
The post Links Roundup #36: Browsers, Email , Life’s Purpose, Mindmapping and a New Science Desktop Library appeared first on Personal Knowledge Management for Academia & Librarians.
