Write or Die from Dr. Wicked is quite an interesting application. You must keep typing or you will receive reminders to get back to work. Sometimes those reminders are quite unpleasant.

You can choose nice, gentle reminders, in the form of pop up boxes, the normal reminders which make the screen turn red and play music, or kamikaze reminders which start undoing what you have been typing if you stop. There are also Electric Shock reminders but, you can't always check that box.

This would be a perfect tool for anyone who needed to get a lot of words on paper in a specific amount of time. You can set word goals or time goals - or both. I gave myself a goal of 10 minutes and/or 20 words for writing this post. It is quite handy little tool for writers, bloggers or students who really need to get stuff done.

Plus, it's a lot of fun and the reminders are a good way to keep yourself on track if you have a tendency to stop working, stare off into space or get easily distracted. Or, if you're like me, having a word count goal and a timer makes me work that much harder to get all the words in before the timer goes off!

[Via The Renegade Writer Blog]

A reader dropped us an email recently, requesting information on where to find educational software for elementary and middle-schoolers. That's a great question -- there are plenty of Web-based sites to choose from but, as our reader pointed out, it can be tough to find things to put on your computer to use later without an Internet connection.

If you dig around a little, though, you can find a few gems.

Kaboose has a long list of downloads in lots of different categories, including math, science, social studies, and music. Each list is also broken down by age group and operating system (Mac and PC). Several links point to Web sites that only contain printable PDFs and worksheets, but be sure to hunt around for downloadable software too.

The HomeSchool Mom, a popular Web site among home educators has a mile-long list of free educational materials in every conceiveable subject from typing tutors to Forensic Medical studies. Some of the links are for Web-based activities but many take you to sites where you can download free software or send away to receive goodies in the mail.

Adam Smith Academy offers free educational podcasts you can download and listen to on an MP3 player or your computer's media player. Younger children will enjoy stories from Kipling or Aesop, while older kids will love hearing stories by James Joyce or Nathaniel Hawthorne. The site even has a number of history lessons and college lectures available for download as well.

If you're looking for help with specific topics, be sure to check the Web sites of museums and science centers in major metropolitan cities. You could get lost for days roaming the Web site of the Exploratorium, San Francisco's famous science museum. Though much of the information is Web-based and interactive, there are plenty of links to other sites for additional printables and downloads. Budding astronauts of all ages can find virtually anything related to space, astronomy, and space travel at the educational portion of NASA's Web site.

One of the best places to find free and fabulous educational software is within the open source community. Although a few programs require the Linux operating system to run, most will also run on Windows or Mac. Have a look at this comprehensive list to see what's available and what's recommended for students of all ages and skill levels.

Now that school is officially underway throughout most of the country, help your kids flex their brain muscles with these three terrific educational sites:

NickNews - Yes, that Nick. The folks at Nickelodeon have done a great job putting together a news Web site just for kids. It covers everything from the presidential election to poverty in America in a way that teens and pre-teens can grasp. Have your kids use it as a way to keep up on what's happening in the world, as well as a place to do research on current events.

Funbrain - This is the ultimate "education-disguised-as-fun" Web site. It helps teach important academic basics in ways that are nearly irresistible to kids: math skill builders are hidden in arcade games, reading enhancers are stashed in Web comics. It's as clever as it gets. As an nice added touch, there are even blogs targeted at different age groups.

EdHelper - This one's more for parents and teachers than kids. Use EdHelper to design worksheets, games, and other printables to give kids the extra practice they need in spelling, math, or reading. Total access to the site is available at various pricing levels, but the free area will be more than adequate for most families.

There are activities for every age and grade level from pre-k to high school. In one area of the site, you can enter your child's spelling list for the week and up pops a crossword puzzle using all the words. Another section offers SAT vocabulary word lessons for 9 - 12 graders, and yet another section contains writing prompts and critical thinking exercises. What the site lacks in visual pizzaz, it more than makes up for in educational value.

Stay tuned later this week when we explore ways to find educational software that you can download right to your computer. For even more educational Web site ideas, see this post.

Here's a question for all our elderly readers: Do any of you remember the primitive era affectionately called 1995, and hearing your college professors speak hopefully (or possibly lament) that soon all the information and media ever created would be up on this web thing and easily accessible and available free of charge? Do you remember how many people went out and bought those state of the art 486s and bleeding edge Pentium I computers, and signed on with AOL or Compuserve or Mindspring to fire up Netscape, stumble on to Yahoo! only to discover the truth.

Even back then, there was a lot of stuff online that was technically information or visual/audible media. It was free, much of it, anyway, as well. I spent way too many hours watching an oddity called a webcam update at shockingly fast one minute intervals, as it delivered grainy black and white stlll images of some forgotten webmaster's painted turtle in California to my desktop in Northern Virginia.

As far as exotic, fine art work or rare, priceless tomes of great knowledge went -- it wasn't all accessible online, or necessarly free if it happened to be available. But for a good portion of the '90s, people who hadn't been online much, or were in denial, insisted it was out there.

There dawns the new century, and the myth of "it's all there, free" started to fade away with the old beige Pentium I and II computers. Things went the other way, though. Every day there was more information on the internet from all sorts of sources, and some of it (shock, awe) was free, or at least accessible to some degree. Is it irony or karma? Who knows? Many people are floored, now, to discover how much useful, cool, credible information is available online free of charge.

So just in time to go back to school (or to impress your friends with your innate intelligence), I've found a few sites and tricks for getting really great information online without additional tuition fees.

This week saw an odd migration of geeks in and out of Austin. Early this week the tech geeks all left the capital of Texas en mass, while music geeks all boarded trains, plains and autos headed for Austin. And if you're still suffering from jetlag and whiplash, here are a few stories you may have missed.

Download Squad SXSW2008 coverage continues

Southy by Southwest Interactive may be over, but we scored some amazing interviews with movers, shakers, and up and comers. Check out our interview with Guy Kawasaki where he discusses his new startup on a budget, Alltop. And keep checking back for more interviews and special coverage from SXSW.

Who needs IE8? Get WebSlices and Activities in Firefox

Last week Microsoft released the first public beta of Internet Explorer 8. And while it's still a pretty early release with serious compatibility issues with many web sites, IE8 does have a few pretty nifty features. And it only took a couple of days for Firefox extensions emulating those features to pop up.

I was fortunate enough to see David Pogue's keynote on the opening day of the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference this Monday in Hershey, PA. PETE&C is a state-wide conference aimed at bringing together school technology directors, teachers, principals, IT professionals, and vendors to advance the state of technology in education.

While listening to Pogue briefly touch on many emerging trends and technologies like VoIP, improved text-to-speech, "Web 2.0" sites, and ubiquitous wireless, it became clear from the audience gasps and collective jaw-dropping that educators are not keeping up with technology changes. Demonstrations of technologies that have been around for more than two years were causing the educators to feverishly put pen to paper so they can take things like Skype back to their schools to use in the curriculum.

An increasing number of educational institutions are putting courseware online for public consumption. We've known for a while that MIT had OpenCourseWare, but now Yale, Utah State University, Virginia Tech,and other schools are putting more educational content online. Some institutions are using YouTube while are others are using iTunes to allow web users entrance into their courses and lectures.

What do the educational institutions get out of putting their content online? Many things, including luring potential applicants, cheap marketing, money from donors, and keeping alumni connected to their alma mater. On the flipside, online courses offer users the ability to gain knowledge and skill in areas they may not be able afford a college class in.

Some professors have been trying this on a smaller scale. Individuals put some of their written materials on their websites or post podcasts and video podcasts on to video sharing sites. However we applaud entire universities who are coming together to make a wholesale stab at spreading knowledge through the Internet.

[via Washington Post]

If the television landscape is a "vast wasteland," YouTube must be a vast waste universe. But the thing about YouTube is that for every Chris Crocker there's a UC Berkeley.

The University of California Berkeley has begun posting full length lectures on the video sharing site. There are already over 200 videos online covering topics from biology and physics to the "principles of nonviolence," and university officials plan to continue adding to the collection.

While watching videos won't earn you a degree, you can probably learn a thing or two by virtually auditing these courses. And lest you think the university's giving something valuable away for free, showcasing lectures from some of the most engaging professors is a great promotional tool for the school.

Now, if they could just make a good lecture half as engaging as a video from the "leave Britney alone" guy. So far most of the UC Berkeley videos have only been viewed a handful of times.

[via CNet]

Apparently it's foreign language week here at Download Squad, because a few days ago we told you about Mango, an excellent online resource for learning a new language. And today we've discovered LiveMocha, a site that not only lets you learn to speak a new language, but also lets you practice your language skills with other users.

Fortunately you don't have to choose between the services because they're both free. But since there's a social aspect to LiveMocha, we have to warn you that once you sign up, you should expect to receive a bunch of emailed friend requests. This is great if you're looking for folks to practice speaking with, but can be annoying if say, you registered with the site just to check it out for a few minutes.

Like Mango, LiveMocha features a number of easy to follow lessons in several languages. LiveMocha lessons are available in Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, and Spanish. The site features a clean interface with illustrative pictures and easy to understand voices. But what really makes LiveMocha stand out is its social angle.

You can do text chats or have voice and/or video conversations with users who want to practice a language you speak. In other words, if you're an English speaker trying to learn Hindi, you can find someone who speaks Hindi and start a conversation. Or if someone else wants to learn English, they might try you. This is miles ahead of the old fashioned, practice with the person sitting next to you in German 101 method.

Learning to speak a foreign language can be hard work, especially if you don't have someone around to practice speaking and listening with.

Mango is a new online website that makes learning foreign languages a whole lot easier. When you begin a lesson, you will hear a brief conversation, and then you can flip forward and backward through a series of slides at your own pace. Mango does an excellent job of combining audio clips and written text. Want to hear a phrase again? Just click the sound icon. Want to skip ahead, just click the slide advance button.

There are a variety of languages to choose from, including Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarine, Brazillian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. The lessons are almost all geared toward English speakers, but the infrastructure would easily lend itself to adding lessons for native speakers of any language.

You can choose from about 100 lessons for each language, so while Mango might not qualify as an advanced language course, it's a pretty good way to start learning a new language or to brush up on the Spanish you never really learned during high school.

Mango is free while in beta, although you'll need to register for an account. We're not sure whether the ultimate plan is for Mango to become a subscription-based or advertising-supported service, but we're assuming the developers wouldn't have put together this fine resource without a plan to make some money off it one day.

[via Lifehacker]

In keeping the school theme we have been running with, a newer educational tool to enter the market is Edu 2.0. This web based education website that holds features for teachers, student and parents that aid in learning wherever the user is connected.

There are four main sections to the site. A teaching section where teachers can host a class using a specially designed learning management system. The learning section where students can participate in classes at their own pace. A resource section where contributed resources complete with quizzes, experiments, projects and self paced course can be followed and taken. Then there is the community section. This allows for collaboration between members, sharing and collaborating on educational interests.

Edu 2.0 is free to sign up to, and provides a wide range of topics including art, computers, english, foreign languages, health, math, science, and physical education.

[via ehub]

Teachers are getting their very own space in the social network scene, thanks to Yahoo!

Yahoo! Teachers is the latest entry into the social network space. This social network collaborative space is a peer network put together by teachers and for teachers with the help of Yahoo!. When launched, it will allow teachers to create, modify and share standards based curriculum.

Yahoo! Teachers is free for all teachers, administrators and education specialists. It is not out in the market yet, but there is a beta sign-up form on the website. Teachers do however have access to locate peers across the US by entering their zip code and locating school to register themselves.

As kids the world around get ready for "that time of year" and the sense of dread excitement builds, we find ourselves looking for ways to make this school year a little easier than the one before it. Being nerds, we turn to software. This year, Download Squad has hand-picked some promising shareware/freeware tools for that should come just as handy as the mandatory two boxes of tissues required by the school of each student.

The first is a crossword-puzzle generator for Mac and Windows called Crossword Forge. Now, crossword makers have been around for a while, but this one gets an A+. It does crosswords and word searches (complete with accidental profanity filter--a must) and a spelling checker. It will even spit out a Flash-drive online puzzle so your students or kids can go the paperless route.

Check out the rest of our picks after the jump.

A List Apart wants some information from you for a new survey they have released online.

Statistics have never been compiled for the Web Design profession, including designers, developers, project managers, writers and editors. This survey is aiming at tracking such questions as who we are, where we live, job titles, skills, education, and background.

By filling out the 37 question survey online, A List Apart will not only increase the knowledge about the industry, but each participant will be entered into a random draw to win a ticket to An Event Apart, an Apple 30GB video iPod, a jump drive, or a t-shirt.

The contest and survey remains open until May 22nd 2007, and data will be presented on A List Apart.

Google has announced a partnership with the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure, and the Kenya Education Network that will result in the use of Google Apps in Rwanda's educational institutions and government ministries, as well as in Kenya's universities. Both of these African countries will now have access to free communication tools that include email, shared calendars, instant messaging and word processing under
their institutions current domain names.

There are two main packages of the Google Apps that are being provided free of charge. With 20,000 users in Rwanda, The National University of Rwanda, the Kigali Institute for Education and the Kigali Institute for Science and Technology will have Google Apps Education Edition. The countries government ministries using Google Apps Standard Edition. 50,000 students at the University of Nairobi will be the first ones offered the Google Apps for Education in Kenya, with 150,000 additional students signing on at a later date.

Google has just issued a press release stating that this initiative will be helping Google to further organize the world's information, and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google's philanthropic Freudian slip is showing, don'tcha think? Gates can run around throwing money at the worlds problems all he wants, but I bet this secures Google a permanent spot in the hearts of many a socially conscious geek.