October 3rd 2008
I discovered another new website with great study features – Quizlet. With a free membership you can create sets of vocabulary words and study them. It allows you to set the privacy of the set, whether it’s for you only, your friends or public. After, you can familiarize yourself with them and also go through online flashcards. Quizlet also will let you create a test, with multiple choice, matching and fill in the blank questions. You can also alphabetize and export your vocabulary sets.
I’ve been using Quizlet for about two weeks now and it’s my favorite online study tool. I’ve created twelve different vocab sets for four different classes and it’s worked wonders. My favorite option is the exportation…I can pull the words into a Word document to print out or print flashcards. The website is very fast and works great. I haven’t had any problems. You can import words (copy and paste only right now, which makes it easier if you already have your words typed up. One trick I’ve learned is when typing words, you can tab to the next word if there aren’t enough boxes and it creates a new box for you instead of having to push the button…makes it much easier and quicker to add words.
Popularity: 50% [?]
Posted in Reviews with 7 comments
September 6th 2008
I recently came across a website that lets you rent your textbooks for a semester (or quarter or summer). It’s called Chegg and you actually rent the book and send it back after you’re done. They boast that you can save up to 80% and help the environment. For every textbook that you rent from Chegg, they will plant a tree.
I tried it out and got an art book for the fall semester for only $50. Used ones even from Amazon were quoted at over $90. Chegg sometimes orders the books from resellers (such as Amazon) and has them sent directly to you (in the case that they didn’t have any on hand). You can do some light highlighting, but no writing in the books. It’s a pretty good service and I’m happy with it so far. The book arrived about four business days after I placed the order.
Popularity: 55% [?]
Posted in Reviews with 13 comments
August 8th 2008
There is a new service called TeleFlip that sends your emails to your cell phone via text messages. It’s a free service that enables you to be connected without having to shell out extra money on internet browsing on your cell phone.
What I did to have my personal email sent to my phone was have that forwarded to a gmail account I set up (so I don’t give my personal email password away and so I can retain a copy in my regular email program for when I’m online). You set up gmail’s pop access and allow for emails from certain people to be forwarded to your cell phone. The only charges you incur are regular text messaging charges, which varies by provider (or free like me if you have an unlimited plan because you can’t keep your fingers to yourself).
So far I’ve been using this service for a few days and have emails sent from my closest friends forwarded as well as anything important for work. Everything has been smooth and no spam has gotten through. I’m very impressed with the quickness of the forwarding (almost immediately). I do, wish, however, that there was an option to forward all emails, not just from certain people because for certain accounts, I want everything, not just from certain addresses. It is still in beta, however, so maybe this will be an upcoming feature.
Popularity: 58% [?]
Posted in Reviews with 5 comments
December 4th 2007
A lot of college students work in the food industry I’ve just discovered a service called ScheduleFly that uses employee scheduling. It allows for the restaurant manager to do online scheduling so employees actually know what shifts they’re going to work in a decent amount of time. The manager posts employee schedules online and an email is sent letting you know when you work. Theoretically, this sounds like a good service.
An automated employee scheduling website that would make your life easier…unfortunately, I don’t know how well this would be implemented. Your restaurant would have to actually sign up for the service, which isn’t free. There is a 30 day free trial for restaurants, so you could try talking your manage into it. I like the idea, but unless it’s a widely-used service, it’s not a very helpful.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted in Reviews with 3 comments
November 17th 2007
Grand Central is a service now owned by Google that brings all of your phone numbers together. Basically, you get one phone number that rings all of your numbers and you can decide which phone you want to answer on. There’s settings to decide which call gets directed to which line so only your friends call your cell phone.
According to the website, Grand Central allows you to:
- Check your messages by phone, email, or online
- Keep all your messages online for eternity
- Record and store your phone calls (just like voicemail)
- Quickly (and secretly) block an annoying caller
- Click-to-dial from your address book
- Surprise your callers with a custom voicemail greeting
- Forward, download, and add notes to your messages
It’s actually a very great service and I enjoy using it. I don’t have caller ID on my home phone because I’m cheap and never use it (cable is bundled and it’s actually cheaper to have a phone and not use it than to not have a phone…interesting) so when someone calls my home phone, I know it’s not someone I want to talk to since I don’t ever give out that number and I have my GC number set to ring my cell phone and my boyfriend’s phone.
Grand Central is in beta (and FREE) so it requires an invitation to sign up. You can either sign up for one here like I did, or get one from a user. If you’d like one from me, I have ten invites left so let me know.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Posted in Reviews with 8 comments
November 16th 2007
Mint.com is a new online budgeting tool. You input your bank and credit card logins for their websites and it gathers the data and pulls all of your financial information together. It simplifies everything because it’s all in one place. You don’t have to login to six different websites to pull up your balances. They also have an alert system to notify you when your balances become low so you don’t overdraft.
I tried it out and was actually very impressed. If you’re not sure how to budget or don’t want to bother, Mint is a great way to keep track of your money. I personally found it a little too simple for me. I have an exact image of the way I want my budget to be and I’ve just had to keep using a spreadsheet do so.
I really like how it breaks down spending and shows trends. It doesn’t always recognize certain charges, but for the most part, it puts them in the right categories. It compares cash and debt, which is nice since apparently it thinks I have more cash than debt (it doesn’t know my poor “cash” is really all debt in student loans.) It does know, however, that my most frequent stop is at HEB (grocery store).
The feature that shows ways you can save money by switching accounts is nice, but doesn’t really apply to a college student with little credit. Mint thinks I could save $424 by switching checking accounts and credit cards, but what it doesn’t know is that I can’t just get another credit card because mine has too high of an interest rate.
Of course, there are some drawbacks to a website like this, the most important being that they have your bank information. As a paranoid person, I just don’t like giving other people my passwords to anything, much less my bank accounts. What with all the security leaks recently, I’m even more paranoid. It doesn’t take much to hack a website and steal all of this information. Other than that, sometimes it seems too simple for me. I have a pretty complicated plan for my budget and have yet to find a program that does what I want.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted in Money, Reviews with no comments
September 18th 2007
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.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted in Reviews with 2 comments
