Windows/Mac/Linux (all platforms): ANki, a free "spaced repetition system" (i.e. flashcard-style memorisation tool), offers a gentle learning curve, a pared-down software interface, and online access and synchronisation.

Once you install and launch Anki, you can easily spend hours discovering all its neat capabilities and tricks—like an HTML editor for manually designing your "cards," audio embedding, tagging, and many more—but setting up a basic "deck" and "cards" is hardly rocket science. Hit the big "plus," choose a basic deck style (or use a pre-templated style you created), and write the front (question), back (answer), and tags of your cards one after another.

Once you've created your decks, you can hit File, "Save and Sync" to make them available on other Anki installations, or access them through a free Anki account.

Check out a video introduction of Anki's features and possibilities below.

While it added a handful of shows to iTunes recently, the ABC has a much wider selection of programming available on its ABC Shop Download site, which launched today. $2.95 gets you a seven day rental on a whole bunch of titles (there's 250 hours of programming on offer), and there's a handful of free taster episodes available as well. For now, the service is Windows-only, though ABC executives have said Macs will be supported in a future release. 

As per several readers' requests, I just updated the Gmail Always Show CC: user script (and its BCC sibling.) Now the scripts can show the CC or BCC fields using a key combination; and they work when replying to messages, too. Go download the updated version of your choice.

YouTube recently started offering video playback in higher-resolution, better-sounding formats like MP4, and that bump in quality can now be downloaded for desktop use as well. The Google Operating System points out two easy methods for grabbing files: A bookmarklet that adds a "Download as MP4" link to video pages when clicked, and a Greasemonkey script that automatically creates the link. Both require that you right-click and assign the to-be-downloaded file the ".mp4" extension, and both may violate YouTube's terms of use, but, as blog author Ionut points out, the same files are available in your browser cache after watching. Hit the link to grab the bookmarklet and Greasemonkey script for Firefox (and Opera) users. Download YouTube Videos as MP4 Files

To help prioritise his projects and next actions, blogger Ian McKenzie put together a free Priority Planning Worksheet available as a PDF download. The worksheet uses a simple calculus for determining the best order of tackling your next actions by assigning importance and urgency factors to each item. Once you've ordered your actions, the worksheet asks you to list and describe each item and the steps required to complete them. If your personal productivity benefits from structured systems, McKenzie's worksheet might be just the ticket for you. Priority Planning Model and Worksheet

Windows only: Donationware application Point Motivator helps you reach and visualise your goals by utilizing a point system. Assign points to actions, such as giving yourself 10 points for reading one page of a book. After you've reached a threshold of desired points, you can then reward yourself by purchasing items with your accumulated points. However, be aware: over-rewarding yourself can put you in point debt. The application allows you to configure different actions and rewards beyond the pre-defined items, and the XML file it creates can later be edited in any text editor if you're not excited about the program's interface. Point Motivator also features a history timeline of all your actions and rewards, statistics for all actions, and a chart that shows all progress over time. Point Motivator is donationware, Windows only.
Point Motivator