I was given an invite to Pownce, a new social networking site partially developed by the creator of Digg, Kevin Rose. It’s a way to share notes and send files to friends. It has a nice interface on the website and even a desktop application. I just set up my profile today and it’s quite nice. The website is very user-friendly and very Web 2.0. I like the simplicity of the design and the features. Settings are easily customizable and everything looks great.
It’s easy to publish notes and send files, but it’s not entirely for me and I’ll tell you why. I’m not entirely sociable. I don’t have massive amounts of friends that I need to send things to. As of right now, I have one friend on Pownce (Geoff) and I added another designer. I plan on meeting more people and developing a network, but as for now, it’s not entirely important. I was very anxious to check out this website because I’m a big fan of [the concept of] Digg.
That said, thanks Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, Daniel Burka and Shawn Allen for creating this new social networking site. I’m sure many people, especially college students, will love it. I already do and it’s not entirely useful to me.
Thanks Geoff, owner of Gearfire, for the invite.
If anyone needs an invite, let me know. I have six left.
Posted in Reviews with 2 comments
This post is a little off the topic of college, but since most of our readers are bloggers as well, this is still helpful. The biggest trend of Web 2.0 is the whole SEO thing. Optimizing your website for search engines and getting enough clout to have daily visitors that aren’t your best friends is tough.
One trend that I’m seeing is contests, and that is a trend that readers love. It’s great to get paid back for being a visitor and making the blogger money. It’s a reminder that bloggers aren’t just doing it for the money.
While reading through my long list of blogs, I came across a new one, Average Joe Blogger. He’s on a quest to become a problogger (who isn’t?) and is offering a sponsorship giveaway. There are different ways of entering, such as posting a summary of the sponsorship and linking back to it or posting a review of the website.
Amy of The Blog World is also thinking of creating a contest and is currently looking for ideas of what to give away. (I suggest advertising space myself.) I’m sure in the future, I’ll have a contest for readers, but until I actually have something to offer, I’m going to hold off.
Contests can also be a great way to get new visitors. If you have people link to your site to get an entry, you’ll have many new visitors and some (or most) of them will become regular readers. They also make me like the blogger so much more because they haven’t forgotten about their readers who make them all their money.
Posted in Computers with 3 comments
Right before registration, I was sent a letter about a website called Pick a Prof. For $10 a year or $5 for 4 months, it allows you to look at reviews other students have written about professors at your university. They offer additional services, which I haven’t seen in any other websites.
They have grade histories, a schedule planner, student reviews, and textbook pricing and exchange. The website does have a lot of information about the services they offer, but unfortunately, you can’t try anything out until you buy a subscription. It was very helpful when scheduling my classes because I wanted to make sure I could find time to work and study without being overloaded. I didn’t use the professor reviews this time because as freshmen, we were limited because of our first-year seminars and our advisers helped register us during orientation.
It also has a Facebook application that helps to find classes with your friends. The professor reviews are collected online, but also from end of semester evaluations. Grade histories are straight from university records, so they’re not biased in any way. I also love the schedule planner. Sometimes it’s hard to make sure you get the best times for classes and make sure you’re not going to mess yourself up. They’re planner gives you a view of what you can take when, how long it will last and make sure you have room for work, sports, etc.
Some universities even pay for you to use this service. My mom’s school, for example, lets you have free access to Pick a Prof if you can validate your school’s email.
Posted in Reviews with 1 comment
Living on a tight budget means cutting back on a lot of things and food is high up on the list. It’s hard to be creative when trying to eat on a few dollars per meal. Ramen noodles get tiring. I’m by no means a great cook, but I do all right. For me and my boyfriend, we have a budget of $300 for food each month, which averages out to about $5 a day for each of us. And because we eat really cheap food (Ramen noodles, that cup of soup stuff, etc.) for lunch, it helps average out when we want nicer meals. Our local H-E-B Plus grocery store is very helpful with coupons. It seems as if there’s a coupon on half the items you see, including what they call meal deals, where if you buy the main thing, usually the meat, you get all the extras free (ketchup, buns, pickles, etc. if it was for hot dogs) and those are great.
One of my suggestions is to always use coupons. Also, make a list before you go to the store of necessary items for the week and stick to it. This is our biggest problem. I have a list, but we definitely don’t stick to it. I’m also starting to make a list of meals for the week. We really only plan a meal for dinner because lunch is usually Ramen or a PB&J.
Cheap Dinner Ideas
- hot dogs/chili dogs
- spaghetti
- baked fish (we live by the coast so seafood is way cheap)
- frozen pizza
- store brand TV dinners
- frozen stir-fry
- nachos
- hamburgers
- jambalaya or dirty rice (ground meat is cheap, we get sausage on sale)
- tacos (ground beef or chicken are cheaper than steak)
- grilled cheese
- quesadillas
- if you find porkchops on sale, add mushroom soup
- macaroni and hot dog wieners
- frito pie
- Spaghetti-o’s or other Chef Boy-R-D canned foods
- homemade stroganoff (I will post my recipe at some point, but you can find them online)
I’m trying to come up with more ideas, but being creative on a budget is tough. I’ve been searching for other websites that have helpful tips, but I haven’t come across very many good ones. I’m currently working on some inexpensive recipes to better food than frito pie and hot dogs.
Before getting life insurance, it is best to read the insurance quotes. An insurance quote helps one in understanding his predisposition as well as beware him of any kinds of loan deals, let alone becoming mortgage leads. Likewise before submitting a credit card application it is best to review the entire manual.
Posted in Money with 12 comments
I personally don’t use Microsoft Office for two reasons. One, I hate it. Two, there’s other options. My mom was able to get me an educational version for $15 last year from her university’s bookstore. The Office for Mac is the same formatting Nazi that it is for Windows. Because of that, I decided to try out NeoOffice, an open-source office suite for Mac (its Windows base is OpenOffice.) It doesn’t have the weird automatic formatting, but it’s able to do everything MS Office can do.
There are also no-download-required options to replace Microsoft Office.
I’ve only tried Google Docs and found it to be very nice. I still prefer to have actual software on my computer for some reason. But it is nice if you’re on a computer you can’t install software on (or don’t want to).
No Download Required: 30+ Apps That Are Killing Microsoft goes into detail about more web apps that aren’t only office suites, but simple replacements of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. Mashable has very nice articles, although I find they’re hard to locate.
P.S. When reading Study Hacks, I came across a link to an article, Living with Microsoft Word: Tips for Survival. So if you do like/want to/have to use MS Office, that article will give you some tips.
Posted in Academic, Software with 1 comment
I’m currently on a mission to find an organization program that I like. I’ve been looking through online apps and actual software. I want something that lets me organize my bills, schedule, tasks and school assignments. It needs to integrate well with the student part of me and the citizen part of me.
First, I tried mySchoolog. I like the way the schedule works. It’s pretty and uses Ajax so it’s nice. The one thing I don’t like about it is that sometimes it’s slow to save and load things. I think it’s overwhelmed. It has a way to integrate your grades and tasks. Another downside is it doesn’t really have a nice way to incorporate my bills.
Next I tried Vitalist. It’s just a GTD website. It’s very color-coded, which is really nice. But it doesn’t have a specific way to include my school work or schedule. It’s simply a task manager.
Does anyone have any programs or online web applications they use and recommend or know of but haven’t had a chance to try? I’m really looking to try anything, whether it’s software (Windows or Mac) or a website.
Posted in Productivity with 3 comments
I was just browsing through Digg and came across an article called Ungoogle Yourself. Because social networking sites are increasing in popularity, reputations and behavior on the internet is no longer anonymous. A lot of students get into the problem of posting pictures of themselves on their Facebook or Myspace that they wouldn’t want anyone but their friends to see. Such pictures would include them partying, holding a beer, smoking a pipe, sucking a dick, you get the picture. But with the power of Google, your new boss can find you, or worse, your mom can find you.
Teachers are getting to where they lecture their students, particularly college students, about what they post on their Myspace or Facebook accounts. Now, there’s not as much of a problem for people who are like me and have been designing websites for years. We know how to keep our online and offline lives separated because we’ve been dreading our “IRL” friends from finding our blogs and finding out about the real us.
Make an alias. It can be the Japanese word for spring or it can be an actual name you’ve always wanted to have.
If you decide you don’t want to use an alias, don’t use your last name.
If you really want to use your last name, don’t post embarrassing photos or stories because they will be found.
When posting photos, don’t post anything where you’re doing something illegal or something you wouldn’t want to show your boss, mother, daughter, etc.
Avoid drama. Can’t stress this enough. Don’t get in a flame war with some idiot and have nasty comments back and forth on each other’s websites. That’s just more search results linking to your stupidity.
Add a privacy feature. This isn’t full proof, especially for websites you don’t own, but it helps. If it is your blog, password protect any posts you might not want everyone to see. Safeguard the password and give it to people you trust.
Always safeguard any credit card information. Don’t submit anything on an insecure website that you don’t know.
Free programs to help
Mac OS X and Vista both have nice firewall software built into their operating systems. Vista’s is a little over the top, but once you disable the user account feature (where it asks permission to do anything), the firewall is quite nice. Apple’s firewall is just fine, no necessary changes.
Posted in Computers, Software with 6 comments
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