Tips posts - The Web Services Report

August 6, 2008 9:50 AM PDT

Summer is, unfortunately, almost over and that means that students are starting to head back to school in the coming weeks. There are so many online tools that can help students today to stay more organized and productive that I thought I would outline a few here and hopefully ease the pain of the upcoming school year.

Remember The Milk

Remember The Milk is the best online to-do list out there right now. It plugs into a slew of other services, including their killer Gmail add-on, Netvibes, iGoogle, Jott, offline support with Google Gears, and a promised iPhone standalone app. Given its wide array of features, it should instantly help any student to prioritize their tasks and become more efficient.

Google Docs/Calendar/Gmail/Scholar

I decided to lump all of Google's services that are good for students together. I think that they provide a tremendous amount of value to users and can be put to great use in an academic setting. Google Docs provides a web interface for a suite of tools to make, view, edit, and share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. As I've said before, the features of Google Docs might not be on par with its Office counterparts, but it really shines when it comes to sharing and collaboration. This makes it perfect for working on group projects or spreading notes around.

Google Calendar can help keep a student's hectic schedule in line. Managing time is one of the hardest parts of being a student and Google Calendar can help . Did I mention that Remember The Milk integrates with it also?

Gmail includes a lot of great features to keep your incoming stream of email organized and prioritized. Gmail's labels help to keep your email organized and bring attention to those requiring your attention. It's helpful, even if you don't receive a large volume of email.

Google Scholar provides an excellent resource for students, looking for sources for research papers. While most schools already provide resources for students in this department, Google Scholar's excellent search provides a good point of discovery.

Evernote

Evernote is a great new web service to handle all of your notes, photos, and clippings from around the web. It has clients for Mac, PC, and various mobile phones, including the iPhone. Robert Scoble did a nice interview and demo with the company's CEO if you want to get a thorough overview. While it might be hard, at first, to integrate Evernote into your workflow, your productivity and organization will see the benefits.

Easybib

This one is a little bit of an old school pick, but it's an indispensable resource for every student. Easybib lets you pick from a variety of types of sources, then you just fill in all of the information that you can, and Easybib will automatically generate a MLA or APA formatted works cited page.

Facebook

Apart from being the premiere social network for students, Facebook also offers some applications, such as Courses 2.0 and Study Groups that have academic value. These applications leverage Facebook's social networking features in order to connect students for the purpose of studying or collaborating on coursework. Facebook is also a necessity for any college student, if for no other purpose than meeting new people and staying in the loop on parties around campus.

Socialbib

Socialbib is a really interesting service, where students offer up old textbooks that they no longer have a need for and trade them for ones that they do need. This could potentially cut down on otherwise absurdly expensive textbooks for students.

Those are my recommendations for making school life a little easier. Services like these are easing the load put on students and making everything slightly more enjoyable. For the students out there, what web apps do you find yourself using?

Topics:: Tips

Tags:: Productivity

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June 19, 2008 10:16 AM PDT

5 tips for a techie traveling abroad

by Harrison Hoffman

1 comment

This post is part of a multi-part series about tech abroad.

(Credit: Harrison Hoffman/The Web Services Report)

It's summertime and that means that people across the world are taking vacations to faraway places. Many people would be satisfied with checking in on their e-mail every couple of weeks, for five minutes, at an Internet cafe while on vacation. Techies like me, however, crave a higher level of contact with their information online. You may not be as much of a power user as Robert Scoble, however the world keeps moving even though you are abroad.

Everyone knows to bring power adapters to hook up their electronics, but here are some tips that you may not have considered, that I have gathered during my stay in Europe so far.

1. Free Wi-Fi is scarce, take advantage when you can. You may luck out and land at a hotel or hostel where they provide free Internet, but most of the time you are going to have to pay or go without access. Orange is a popular provider of paid W-iFi in Europe, for reasonable prices (15 euros for 10 hours). They have a lot of hotspots, but you are going to want to watch your time and not go overboard there. Some cafes will have free Wi-Fi and usually advertise it on a sticker in their window. For a more casual setting, the McDonald's, on the Champs Elysses in Paris, has free Wi-Fi to go with your Royale with Cheese. Some public places, such as the parks by Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, also provide access.

If and when you find free Wi-Fi access, jump over to Google Reader and download your RSS items with its offline Google Gears functionality. If you take the couple of seconds to do this, you can catch up on your news even when you're not basking in the glow of free Wi-Fi.

2. With that said, bring your Wi-Fi enabled phone. iPhone users take note, a quick download of your emails onto your phone saves you a lot of trouble of lugging a laptop around. This helps you to leverage the scarce free Wi-Fi to the best of your ability. While you will benefit greatly from having Wi-Fi on your phone, remember to turn off data roaming, or else you will rack up a massive bill during your trip.