MIT offers a very robust set of courses. From cognitive sciences to nuclear engineering, they have you covered. Some background in your chosen field of study will be needed to understand the material. They also offer courses in more than just English.

Annenberg Learner provides courses for teachers in the arts, foreign language, literature, science, and other traditional areas of study that are part of the average high school curriculum.

Harvard offers a small set of courses, but each course has a full set of MP3, video, and PDF resources. As you might expect, several of the courses are very intellectually oriented.

Open Culture links to a very extensive set of resources for you to explore. Icelandic language and automotive design are just the tip of the iceberg.

Have fun!

Not every website is ready for mobile devices. Many tablets will render websites OK, but not all phones do. Most smart phone browsers automatically detect that you’re visiting the site from a smartphone and will automatically adjust what you see. But not all websites have the capability to work with smart phones.

Here are two examples of websites that have not thought through their mobile strategy.

Squarespace, ironically, is a company that allows you to create your own website. The sites are nice, but the company’s site totally does not work on smart phones.

Aer Lingus is an airline that is based in Dublin, Ireland. Forcing the user to download an app or click through to a mobile site is not good.

Frontier Airlines does a much better job. It’s not pretty, but on the landing page, you can very easily get what you need.

This post is not intended for embarrassing Squarespace and Aer Lingus but rather to show that even big companies can make mistakes in this area.

So what do you do?

1. First, load up your business website on a smartphone. Play around and see how it performs. Borrow a friend’s iPhone or Android phone to see how it works on both platforms.

2. If you haven’t got a business site yet, there’s good news. Free sites you can create through WordPress and Google’s Blogger have built-in adaptability to smartphones. Their free sites have limited capabilities, but you may be able to do what you need with what they offer. If the free sites you can create there won’t do all you need, contact me. I can get you going with a good mobile-friendly site.

When you are writing as yourself (and not as a company) show that you do not know everything. Even if you are writing as a company, convey the attitude of being open to input. Be positive. Your readers will be much more open to hearing – and enjoying – what you have to say. Even when you are writing a negative review, say a few positive things.

If you are explaining something, be aware that not everyone knows all about your topic. Refer them to resources that will help beginners.

There’s one thing you can do to be more productive in the time you must spend on getting all your work, school and general responsibilities done: Take a break.

The best breaks are a full day long. Leave your normal environment. Do something totally different than what you normally do. Be physical – if you stretch your body, that will help your mind too.

If you can’t take a whole day, take two evenings off. But just get a rest.

I was on the phone with a potential client. We talked for a while and she asked me for my website’s login and password information, so that her coding expert people could assess my abilities. I gave them to her and then asked why she wanted to hire me, if she had coding expert people that she already used.

There was a long pause and the line. went. dead.

I immediately ran to a computer to change my password, and that’s when I woke up.

- -

So be careful who you give your passwords to!

By the way, if you’re thinking of hiring me, I can give you a list of actual human clients who have used me for jobs and who can vouch for my honesty. Contact me.

During the first week of January, I received a thank you note in the mail from my local hardware store. The owner and his wife actually took the time to sign the note by hand. The next time I visited the store, I took the time to thank the owner for thanking me. That little note was another reminder of why that store is so awesome. Real people make real connections with their customers. Staff members are not afraid to take 10 minutes to explain how to fix something, using a dollar plumbing part. But that attention pays off. Later, I’m not afraid to spend a lot more than one dollar there, as opposed to at one of the big box retailers.

Today, take the time to write a note by hand, and put it in the mail. Your customer will notice. A hand-written and addressed note will stand out amongst the flood of junk mail.

The former colleague’s sharp words resulted in my future unwillingness to help them. They basically burned their bridges.

As a follow-up, I sent a separate email the next day, apologizing for my quick response. I haven’t heard back. My initial comment may have been on a bad day for them, but their sharp words really put me off.

The main lesson from this little story is to be gentle in your responses to people. You don’t know when you will need their help in the future. Read your comment or email again before you hit the “send” button.

Image credit: Nick Perla on Flikr.

This is significant for power Twitter users. You can recycle tweets you spent a lot of time on, a few years ago. You can also see some that might be worth deleting.

This feature will gradually roll out, so it may not be available for you yet – but check back in a few weeks (or maybe a month or two), and then you can freely archive.

1. Go to the settings icon in the upper right corner of your Twitter page.

2. If you can do it now, you’ll see what’s highlighted below in the red rectangle.

I took my car in for an oil change. A “full inspection” was part of the deal. They reported that my cabin air filter was clogged and needed replacing. Also, they said my CV boot was cracked.

I took their report to my trusted mechanic. He said that my car does not have a cabin filter. He also said that the CV boot was fine and that a related oil leak the dealer turned up was from another source.

I could pursue legal action against the dealer or resort to similar drastic measures. I just don’t have the time nor the desire to cause them that much damage. However, I will be taking my complaint online via Google+ Places and Yelp reviews. Perhaps they will see those complaints and make changes in their honesty toward customers. But at least other customers will see their actions and not go there.

The moral of this story is that if you are honest in your dealings with your customers, you won’t regret it. Sometimes, people are smarter than you. They will find out any little scheme you might try to slip under the radar.

My main personal email account is Gmail. I have completely enjoyed using it for a long time. My overall experience with Gmail has been so good that I’d almost invest in Google stock.

The only emails I delete are those with large attachments. If I kept those, I would eventually reach the limit Google has given me. But at my current rate of heading toward full capacity, I’ll reach there a long long time from now.

Even though I back up my computer in several ways, this extra level of backup has proven useful. If I’m away from my backup hard drives, I can find a missing email just by connecting to Gmail through the internet.

I do not access my Gmail through their web interface. I use Apple’s Mail, which provides a much easier way for me to use all my email accounts. (I keep the number of emails in my inbox there much smaller.) For Windows users, I’d recommend Mozilla Thunderbird or Opera Mail.

If you’re at a place where you can switch to Gmail for your personal account, I’d highly recommend you make the move. Remember, it’s free!