Software

This is software I've found useful and has improved my ability to do research. Let me know by email if you have any suggestions, improvements or criticism. You can find these by searching on google.

Evernote: Any word document, project notes, stimulus materials, directions, files – any text whatsoever that you'll ever have to retrieve – can be stored in Evernote. Since it's searchable you don't need to organize note documents as much into files and folders as they can be easily found again.

Dropbox: This is a folder on your computer that's backed up online and accessible through a web interface or on any other computer linked to the dropbox account. It's extremely useful for sharing lab files across multiple computers, and doing backup. 2 GB for free, we paid for the 50 GB account.

Boomerang: This is a plug-in for Firefox and Chrome that lets you schedule emails to be sent at a later time, or reminds you if someone hasn't responded to you. It's great for email reminders (to yourself or multiple people) but now only a certain number are free every month.

Google Sites: I use the templates, easy customizability, and instantaneous updating to make my website and create wiki-style pages. There may be something better.

Qualtrics. Most survey software is easy to use but not very powerful. I've found qualtrics to be a complete game changer. There isn't a single experiment I've tried to run that I wasn't able to program in qualtrics. I use it instead of professional software suites like E-prime and Matlab's psych toolbox. You can customize the underlying html code and their customer service has given me many add-ons and even novel code.

Jing, Screen-o-matic. It's hard to find good software for screencasting on Mac, but these options get the job done. Jing runs in the background all the time, so you can record videos of your screen along with audio (in 5 minute intervals) of any data extraction, programming features, or even explanation of experimental design. It's extremely useful for teaching people new skills or explaining concepts as they can then revisit the video at their own pace, while trying to reproduce what you did – which they can see *exactly* from the video. Also, it saves a lot of time in teaching the skills to new people.

Time Management:

Pomodairo gives a timer program, in which you can write what you plan to accomplish in a specific time interval, then start off the timer. Helps with improving time management and setting objectives.

Klok2 allows you to make a log of what you've spent your time doing, assigning it to different "projects". It does the job reasonably, but I'd like to find something easier to use. (any better suggestions?)

imOnTime is a reminder program that pops up one-time or repeating reminders at specific times. It's not free though and there may be better options out there, so I'd like to find something easier to use.