When you learned to play an instrument online, you found out that teaching yourself to read tablature was a must for the aspiring guitarist. (If you've ever tried to learn a song on the internet, you've without a doubt seen tab before.) One major problem with reading tab and translating it to your guitar is that it can be difficult to find the rhythm in the notation. Web site Songsterr solves this problem by creating tabs you can play back and play along with in real time. As the song progresses, Songsterr indicates where you should be in the tab. You can slow down the playback to half speed while you're learning, then crank it up to normal once you've got the hang of it. Looks like a great site to add to your arsenal of free instrument-learning tools.

Programmer and blogger Jeff Atwood highlights the distinction between everyday work and actually practicing your craft to improve your skills, quoting Googler Steve Yegge:

Contrary to what you might believe, merely doing your job every day doesn't qualify as real practice. Going to meetings isn't practicing your people skills, and replying to mail isn't practicing your typing. You have to set aside some time once in a while and do focused practice in order to get better at something.

While Atwood's post focuses around computer programming skills, the overall gist is applicable to any profession: In order to improve, you need to practice your craft outside of your daily comfort zone. Looking at the difference between building your skills and simply doing your everyday work, we're curious: do you practice your craft, or do you simply work? Let's hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Weblog ScienCentral reports that when you can't come up with an answer that's sitting on the tip of your tongue, you're best off forgetting about it altogether. That's because, according to a study by experimental psychologists at Canada's McMaster University, the more you struggle to remember a word on the tip of your tongue, the more difficulty you'll have remembering it in the future. Their recommendation: Just look it up, and do so as soon as possible. Do their findings match up with your experience? Let's hear about it in the comments.

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The Atlantic Monthly's Nicholas Carr is worried that his increasing reliance on the internet for research and other information has made him stupid:

...what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

The author dives deep into many perceived effects of the internet on the way he thinks, bolstering his argument with anecdotes about other technologies, like the printing press, and their very real influence our thought processes.

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Apple has been pushing out podcasts from universities under the iTunes U brand for a while now, but the concept just got more interesting with the addition of half-a-dozen Australian universities:  Australian National University, Griffith University, Swinburne University, University of Melbourne, University of NSW, and the University of WA (for New Zealanders, Otago University has also signed up.) Content includes audio and video versions of guest and regular lectures, as well as research profiles. Shame we got stuck with the US-centric 'U' branding; frankly, if you want to go to university, you need to be able to pronounce words of more than one syllable. Though admittedly 'iTunes College' wouldn't be much better.

iTunes U

Chances are at one point or another, you've either purchased an instrument or considered doing so with the intention of learning to play it; most of us, however, never get around the the learning part. The internet is a glorious fount of freely available information, and it's slowly filling up with excellent tutorials for getting good at just about anything—including playing a new instrument. Hit the jump for a handful of great resources for getting started with a new instrument online for the low, low price of free.

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Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Phun, a free open-source, cross-platform 2D physics simulator, makes you want to pick up blocks, or maybe crayons, and learn more about the way things fall and move under pressure. Written by a Swedish graduate student, the program teaches concepts of restitution and friction, so it's great to load up with the kids, but you'll probably find yourself sneaking a few turns by yourself at creating, and knocking over, shapes and lines. Phun is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems; hit the link for instructions on using and having, well, fun in Phun.

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Most home movies are jammed-together affairs, but anyone can make their videos better with a little schooling in the basics of story-telling. The Wikiversity has a free multi-part "Film School" that focuses on the kinds of tips just as helpful to unofficial wedding videographers as aspiring auteurs. Learn the basics of framing, editing in "L cuts," and when and where to cut a scene. Some of it does get a bit technical for DIY directors, but you'll pick up enough to have real pride in the next set of home-burned DVDs you send out.

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Writing things down, on paper or on-screen, is the best way to make sure you remember important info and tasks, but sometimes you've got to rely on your plain old brain to keep essential data sorted and handy. Whether it's a client's name, a password or combination you want stored only in your head, or answers for an upcoming test, there are plenty of techniques and tools to help you lock in important stuff and pull it out when needed. After the jump, we round up some memorable memory-boosting hacks. Photo by furryscaly.

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Next time you need to quickly memorise a small piece of information, Wired suggests that you may actually have better luck retaining the information if you distract yourself.

In 2007, researchers asked UCLA students to try to memorize a set of 48 word pairs (country: Russia, fruit: lemon, flower: lily, etc.). After studying the list, some students then had to sit through a slide show and view closely related material (flower: rose). Guess what? The distracted students performed better on subsequent recall tests.

Photo by Gaetan Lee.

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