Literature search

Google Scholar through Columbia Univ to access the IEEE lib

Forums where you can ask questions on designs and tools

Cadence forum
EDA board
Designer's guide

EDA tutorials in the Internet

Oregon States Wiki
UCLA tutorial
UV tutorial
U of Southern Carolina tutorial
NCSU wiki

Essential computing tools

VMWare Player
VI cheat sheet
linux command cheat sheet
perl documentations
perl official pages
sample .vimrc, .zshrc, .sh_functions
putty+xming tutorial
winscp
cygwin

Advice on PhD

3 qualities of successful Ph.D. Students
Writing tips by Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar
The Element of Style (Amazon) by W. Strunk and E.B. White
Advice for researchers and students compiled by Prof. Michael Ernst