If your curiosity was aroused when I wrote about the 2005 World Memory Championships, you can get a taste for how you would do at this memory training website, courtesy of former world memory champion Andi Bell. If you can do well enough against the current crop of competitors, you might even consider competing yourself!

On the odd chance that you're not going to be competing professionally, but still want to be able to memorize important data for work, school or fun then I have some free choices that don't require you to be tether you to the internet.

For those running Mac OS X, version 10.3 or greater, there's Genius from jrc Software.

For Windows users, there's SuperMemo. Speaking of not being tethered, SuperMemo is even available in PocketPC and Palm versions!

The strong point of both of these training programs is that they quiz you based on a technique called "spaced repetition". This is a fancy term that simply means you're quizzed with a frequency that studies show is most effective for retaining memories, with the items you miss being brought up more frequently.

Both Genius and SuperMemo allow you to enter and save massive databases of whatever information you deem frivolous and fascinating (or important, if you must). For technical support, ideas, or downloading other's databases because you're too lazy to create your own, you can find Yahoo Groups for Genius and SuperMemo.

Naturally, I'm already working on a database for 400 digits of Pi.


Correction: SuperMemo 98 can be downloaded for free. The other versions are for sale for various amounts.