Seth Dillingham is encouraging Twitterific users to join him in Paying for Twitterific:

People who use this hack are stealing money from the Icon Factory: they didn't pay for the software, and they're not showing the ads.

I only remembered that I'd already registered my copy of Twitterific on the release of v3.0.1 back in November after I'd paid again just now ;-) But I'm happy to have stumped up again to show my support for the Icon Factory. I can't understand the mentality of those that try and undermine the efforts of others. If people like "Captain Marc" don't want to pay to remove ads then surely they can just stop using the app!

Now that (a) the new academic year is under way, and (b) the admissions process for entrants this year is well and truly over, and (c) the next round of undergraduate applications is not due to start for a couple of weeks, it's about time I started blogging again since I will have some time to draw breath.

So, for no particular reason other than I'm always on the lookout for things to help improve my lectures, here's my first link after the summer hiatus: Tomorrow's Professor Blog: 818 Quick-thinks: The Interactive Lecture

A study by Ruhl, Hughes and Schloss (1987) compared lectures presented without pauses with lectures where, every 12-18 minutes students paused for two minutes and discussed and reworked their notes (without interaction with the teacher). Students in the latter group performed better on free-recall quizzes and on a comprehension test. In fact, the differences were so large that they would have raised the performance of the experimental students' one-two letter grades (depending on grading scales used).

Sounds like a good complement to the One-Minute Paper scheme I use at the end of every one of my lectures.

I'm listening and watching to the Video for Merlin's "Inbox Zero" talk | 43 Folders. Good stuff.

Update: 51 minutes into the talk Merlin mentions inboxzero.com which redirects to his 43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero.