What happens when a bunch of geniuses, industry leaders, and intellectuals get together? TED Talks. TED (short for Technology, Education, and Design) Talks are a series of lectures and presentations given by the world’s most innovative and intelligent people on a variety of topic. Topics include anything from computers, to literature, and anthropology. If you’re a person who enjoys learning something new, then TED Talks are for you. If you’ve ever taken a library instruction class, then you may have already watched parts of Eli Pariser’s TED Talk about the filter bubble.

Gary Kovacs (CEO of the Mozilla Coporation) recently gave a talk about the ways in which websites are tracking your data. You can view the talk by clicking here.

Our cool app for this week is the Amazon Kindle. Sure, you may already own a Kindle e-reader, but did you know that you can also download the Kindle app onto your smartphone, iPad, or even your computer? If you have an Amazon account set up, it will sync your e-books to any Kindle device. It will also retain your bookmarks and highlighted pages. You can also download e-textbooks and view PDF documents with the Kindle app.

The Kindle app is perfect if you want to store all of your books on one device or if you don’t want to carry around multiple mobile devices. The Kindle App is available for most mobile devices and computers. Visit kindle.amazon.com or the app store on your smartphone to download the Kindle app. Below are screenshots of the Kindle home screen and a sample page from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina .

Our app for this week is…

*drumroll*

Dropbox is a cloud storage site that allows users to store up to 2 GB of files on the web. Download Dropbox and sync your files with all of your devices. Access your files anytime by clicking on the Dropbox folder or icon and by logging into the website. Make your files public, private, or share them with specific people.

Below are screenshots of Dropbox on desktop and on the web. Click on the pictures to make them larger.

If you’ve ever saved a file to a USB drive only to lose the USB or be unable to read or open the file, then Dropbox is the tool for you. Dropbox is also useful when giving presentations since you can access your files through Dropbox’s website. If you need more space, you can upgrade your account to 50 GB or more starting at $9.99/month.

Give Dropbox a try today and comment to let us know how you like it!

This summer, we will spotlight useful smartphone, tablet, and web apps. These apps make it easier for users to generate ideas on the go, accomplish tasks, save time, or do everyday things such as create to-do lists and reminders.

Our first app of the week is…

Evernote is a FREE app that makes it easier for you to collect your ideas, take notes for class, track websites, take pictures, or create voice recordings. I use Evernote in my daily work to organize my thoughts and to take notes at staff meetings.

Evernote is arranged by notebooks, which is a series of notes.  These notebooks can be organized by topics (for example, a notebook that contains all of your notes for ENG 101). If you were to write a research paper, you might create a separate notebook for the assignment and include your notes on the topic, webpage clips, web links, and your citations.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg for Evernote. Evernote contains a useful feature called Evernote Trunk which suggests helpful in-app resources to make the best of your Evernote experience.

The best part about Evernote is that it automatically syncs to all of your devices. So if you use Evernote on your iPhone or iPad, you can download the app onto your computer, sign in with your account, and access your notes as usual.

Give Evernote a try for yourself. Evernote is available for just about every platform (PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7, and webOS) and it only takes a few minutes to download and get started.

If you’ve had an opportunity to use Evernote, leave a comment and let us know what you think about it!