The Fussy Librarian Recommends Books in Daily Emails

Web: If you want to know which books should be on your reading list, then sign up for The Fussy Librarian. Set up your preferences and you will get daily emails with recommendations for books, along with options to buy the ebooks on different stores. The setup process is a one-time affair. Enter your email address and choose from the different genres in fiction and non-fiction. Set your language preferences and choose the kind of content you want in terms of language, violence and sexual content. You can update your preferences through a link in the emails. The Fussy Librarian will then send you daily emails with ebooks, their description and details, and prices across various stores. It currently supports Kindle, Nook, Apple, Android and Smashwords. Given the number of novels you will have to read after this, here's Dan Shipper's secret to reading a lot of books.

Get a Free Skype Premium Account [UPDATE: It's Over]

Through a new initiative from Skype called the Skype Collaboration Project, you can now get a 12-month premium membership worth about 72 euros for free. The account gives you free group video calls, free group screen sharing, live chat customer support and removes ads. UPDATE: Sorry folks, looks like Skype has stopped this promotion. We will update the post if we find any alternate link for this. Tech Packets, which discovered the original hack, has a step-by-step guide for the process, but it's really quite simple. Head to the Skype Collaboration Project Promotions page, key in your email address and hit send. You'll soon get an email with a voucher code, and a link where you have to apply that code after signing into Skype. That's it! Your account's payments section should reflect the changes within 15 minutes. There are no strings attached as far as we can tell. The voucher must be redeemed on or before April 30, 2014. Your 12 months of free Skype Premium start from the day you redeem it. That's a great deal, especially considering Skype is the best video chat app for iPhone in our books.

Build a Hidden Compartment Inside a Coin

Hidden compartments for super-secret or important documents are always fun to build, and Instructables user assemblyrequired managed to build this one inside of a quarter, modeled after the old secret coin compartments used by cold war spies. You'll need to put in a little elbow grease to make this one work, but you'll need three quarters, a drill, a dremel, some hot glue, and some time. The goal is to make the coin hollow, so you're going to file down the top and bottom of one coin, and then hollow out the third so you essentially build a new coin from the top, ribbing, and bottom of three others. Assemble it all with a dab of hot glue so you can crack open one side when you need to, and you're done. If you're worried about legality, some of the commenters at Instructables debunk that pretty handily. We'll be the first to admit that this isn't super-practical, and you'll spend 75 cents to get one quarter-sized container out of it, but it's still large enough to hold a microSD card or a tiny scrap of paper, and that's large enough to keep a treasure trove of important files. If you want to put all of your personal data on a microSD card and keep it somewhere it won't get stolen, a tiny quarter safe like this would fit right into your wallet, a pocket, a bag, or even in something stronger like a household safe or fireproof box. It'd also make for a fantastic addition to a cache, if you're into Geocaching.

Stop Overtaxing Your Attention Span to Help Strengthen It

We've talked about ways to improve your attention span in the past, but before you change anything else, there's one thing you can do that will make the most difference: Stop pushing your attention span so much. By overtaxing yourself, you actually do more harm than good. This goes back to advice we've heard several times before—if you want to be more productive, take more breaks. Essentially, working at full capacity requires energy, and when that energy is depleted, your focus and attention span degrades pretty quickly. Without rest, or a break at least, our attention and willpower reserves dwindle, and we find our minds wandering, unable to focus on even simple tasks for too long—our attention span is shot. So what do you do about it? Taking a break is one good technique, and single-tasking is another. Here's how Daniel Goleman, author and Co-Director of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University, put it: Attention is a mental muscle, and can be strengthened with the right practice. The basic move to enhance concentration in the mental gym: put your focus on a chosen target, like your breath. When it wanders away (and it will), notice that your mind has wandered. This requires mindfulness, the ability to observe our thoughts without getting caught up in them. Then bring your attention back to your breath. That’s the mental equivalent of a weightlifting rep. Researchers at Emory University report that this simple exercise actually strengthens connectivity in the circuits for focus. Alternatively, he notes, you can always take a brain-boosting nap, but of course, not all of us have that as an option.

Treat Your Money as an Employee to Expect Growth

We all know we should be "saving" money, but many people forget to do something with it when they've saved it. To avoid this problem, finance blog Escaping Dodge suggests thinking of your money like it's an employee: expect it to be working for you, even when you're not looking. In the same way that a strict boss would inform employees that "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean," Escaping Dodge suggests that we should always be sure that our money is doing its job of making more money. This is the basic principle that allows us to eventually retire: If you view your dollars as tools to buy stuff, you'll likely have to work a job for an earned income the rest of your life... The sooner you build wealth, the sooner you have choice and choice makes it easier to handle whatever comes your way. Of course, you should always make sure you have some money available to you as an emergency fund. However, by simply changing the mindset with which you approach money, you can make better decisions about how to build your net worth, rather than reduce it.

Inspiring Graduation Cake

Dollar Tree baskets nailed to the wall.