October 22nd 2007
Gearfire is publishing an article about his favorite academic programs for Windows and I’m posting a sister article for Mac users. Personally, I don’t use academic-based software that much. I do have these three applications on my computer and use them sometimes, but so far this semester, I haven’t had too many assignments or a difficult class. I use NeoOffice the most out of any program, for word processing and spreadsheets, but I also use Skim. There are other programs out there, but with my experience, these are great for students. Note taking is usually done in a text editor/word processing program anyway.
Genius is a flashcard-based application to help you memorize things. I use this, especially for political science in memorizing hoards of vocab words. It organizes info using the “Leitner “learning cardfile” system, and it quizzes you using a spaced repetition method.” Based on performance, it repeats certain words.
Schoolhouse is the homework manager for Mac. It sorts and organizes assignments, tests and projects. The smart notebook feature introduced in other Apple software is there, as well as classcasts so you can publish subscribable assignments on the web. My favorite thing about this software is the grade calculations. You can input all of your grades for each class and it keeps track of your average. It’s much better than trying to do it myself. Schoolhouse integrates a calendar/GTD program with keeping track of school work as well, which makes this an excellent tool for students.
Skim is a PDF reader (yes, I know, Preview is wonderful!) that lets you write on them so you don’t have to print out notes to take notes. I use this for my political science class (well, when I actually went to his class, I haven’t in over a month.) The professor gives us a copy of the powerpoint in pdf format and I use Skim to write all over it. It saves me from the cost of ink and paper.
Posted in Academic, Productivity, Software with 1 comment
September 28th 2007
Finding good, reliable software is hard sometimes, especially after being spoiled by programs like Photoshop or Coda. But spending precious money on software is not the smartest thing to do when you can find equally good (and sometimes better) programs for free. Almost all of the programs on my computer were free, with the exception of Illustrator, Photoshop and Coda.
Software for Starving Students is a great resource for both Mac and PC users. (Again, sorry Linux) Their collection of freeware is geared toward students, although anyone could find most of the programs useful. They have a version for both Mac and PC. There is a good number of programs (30+ in both packages) and I have most of them. Unfortunately, you have to download the file and burn it to a CD that will install everything. If you don’t want to do that, they have a list of all the included software and you can pick and choose which to install.
Two other great websites are Open Source Windows and its Mac equivalent, Open Source Mac. They list the essential types of software, including browsers, word processors, graphic programs, and instant messengers.
For Mac users, FreeMacWare is a great resource for free software. They have almost every free program that’s available. If you’re looking for programs not offered at the above websites or just want to clutter up your Applications folder, this website will help you.
Posted in Money, Software with no comments
September 12th 2007
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
September 7th 2007
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
