What’s Hot on Scribd – My 3 Painless Picks

It’s easy enough to find out what’s hot on Scribd, the online publishing company who Business Week once likened to the YouTube of the publishing world.  But most of the works I’ve found the most fascinating, I’ve come across randomly. 

Here are my top 3 favorites:

MakeUseOf.com’s “The Complete Guide to Twitter”.

Free download. 4 ˝ star rating, 18,898 reads. Uploaded September 2009.

What I like about this particular guide is that it’s both readable and incredibly basic, while managing to painlessly give out all the information you need to know, if you’re a Twitter newbie.

What I like even more is that I can instantly recommend it to members of my list who want to know how to use Twitter.  A painless solution, since it leaves me free to get on with my own work, and helps my list members at the same time.

It’s well organized, has complete set up information and lots of illustrations and screenshots.

“The Complete Guide to Twitter” remains my favorite, of all the many I’ve read.

Bottom line: Painless

My second favorite is another MakeUseOf.com product:  “An Idiot’s Guide to Photoshop”, by Azamat “Bohed” E.  

Free download.  5 star rating. 81 reads. Uploaded February 2010 (which explains the low number of reads)

Again, wonderfully basic, in just the way someone new to Photoshop needs. Great screen shots, and step-by-step handholding.

I’ve been using Photoshop for years, and certainly don’t need a guide: But I enjoyed reading it, and again, it made a handy recommendation (for which I was profusely thanked) when a couple of friends who know I have Photoshop skills wanted me to help them with a graphics project I simply didn’t have time to take on.

Bottom line: Painless

Last but not least, “How to Study”, by Gail Wood.  
Free download. 5 star rating (41 times!) 6,252 Reads. Uploaded January 2009

Focusing on personal learning styles, it contains such nuggets as:

-Keeping calm, getting in the mood to study, creating an environment that works
-Discovering How You Learn, an introductory look at what makes you unique as a learning
-Knowing When You Don’t Know, realize when and how to question what you studied
- Remembering What You’ve Learned: Make a memory chain; link what you’re learning to what you already know.

I gave this one to one of the extended family Teenagers, who was going through real problems at school.

Bottom line:  She read it, and her first test results show dramatic improvement.

Oh yes. And not only did I learn something too... but it was painless.