Webware

It's almost time for college students to head back to class. It's an exciting time for both the students and those who want to see their loved ones succeed. But doing it alone with no help from the Web doesn't make much sense nowadays.

That's why I've compiled a list of resources for students to use when they head back to college. Whether it's finding textbooks or getting help with tough subjects, every student should use at least some of these sites.

College tools

BuddySchool BuddySchool helps you find tutors that can assist you with some of your difficult class subjects.

When you get to the site, you'll need to find the class topic you're having trouble with. Once you find what you're looking for, BuddySchool lists several tutors on each subject. Those listings include a brief synopsis of the tutor's expertise, how they can help, and how much they charge for their time. If you like what you see, you can set up a time to be tutored. All payments are sent through the site to ensure the tutor is getting paid before they help. The site also features a review listing, so you can determine if other users' experiences were positive or not.

BuddySchool lists several tutors for you to consider.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

CollegeClassifieds If you're looking to find some on-campus merchandise, CollegeClassifieds is for you.

As the name suggests, CollegeClassifieds provides classified listings from college students on your campus. Simply find your school, choose the listing topic you're looking for, and you're all set. You can even subscribe to each listing's RSS feed, so you don't miss when new products are added. It's a great idea, but unfortunately, not too many colleges are listing products. That said, larger schools tend to have more listings. Your mileage may vary.

CollegeClassifieds features several listings on its site.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

By now, many prospective college students have received responses from all the colleges to which they've applied. But now comes the hard part: deciding where to go.

Luckily, there are some sites that help them in that endeavor and provide them with valid insight before they make their final decisions. Even better, these sites can also help those who haven't applied yet and are starting their initial research.

For the high school junior who is considering applying to different colleges or the high school senior who needs to make a decision, these sites are outstanding resources.

BeRecruited: BeRecruited is designed specifically for the high school athlete. Instead of waiting for a team to find the student, BeRecruited gives them an opportunity to find colleges across the United States that have the kind of athletic program for which they're looking. They can then upload information about themselves and their high school athletic performance to attract the attention of team recruiters.

CampusExplorer has a lot of great information.

(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET)

CampusExplorer: CampusExplorer allows students to search more than 6,000 colleges in the United States to find which campus is right for them. They can search by area, curriculum, or type of school. The site provides information on the size of the school, what it offers to students, and the attendance cost. It even has advice on getting into the school from students who have asked questions about the college on Yahoo Answers.

Cappex: Cappex requires students to sign up and create a personal profile that includes grades, extracurricular activities, and SAT/ACT scores. Once that profile is completed, they can search for colleges, learn about the schools in which they're interested, and use a handy tool called "What are my chances?" to help them determine if they really have a chance at being admitted to a particular school.

CollegeAnswer: Owned by college financial-aid company SallieMae, CollegeAnswer provides students with information about all facets of college admittance. From basic research on schools to information on paying for a college education, the site has it all. It provides in-depth information about colleges, including their demographics and attendance costs. But where it really shines is in its information about college life in general. It's an outstanding resource for prospective and current students.

Teens in Tech, a blogging network that's written by young adults, announced Friday that it has acquired Youth Bloggers Network for an undisclosed sum. According to a post on the Youth Bloggers Network blog, both companies "decided that by joining forces, our projects could help each other vastly." Going forward, the combined company wants to create unique Wordpress themes, e-books, coupons, and a variety of community features "to slowly transform Youth Bloggers Network into a social network for young and teen bloggers."

Kardia Health Systems, a company that was formed to commercialize the Echocardiography Information Management System from the Mayo Clinic, will launch an online reporting system for vascular laboratories this weekend. The Web-based platform will allow doctors to communicate with patients and other practitioners over the Web detailing a patient's vascular information and past procedures. The company claims users will be able to focus more on patient services by deploying the platform.

GetJar, an independent mobile app store, announced Friday that it has topped 400 million mobile app downloads since its launch in 2004. Over the past month alone, it has witnessed a 200 percent increase in downloads over the same period in 2008. The company claims that based on its download figures, its app store's popularity is second only to the Apple App Store. GetJar's store provides apps for over 1,300 different handsets.

ConnectedVentures, owner of online comedy site CollegeHumor, has acquired sports satire site SportsPickle, the company announced Thursday. The terms of the deal were not disclosed and there is currently no word on whether SportsPickle will remain a separate entity or be rolled into CollegeHumor.

Now that the winter break is over, college students are inundated with work and need to worry again about classes, studying, and tests. So, of course, they'll spend time on Facebook instead. But there are other useful and entertaining sites worth the student's visit.

This is a brief list of four outstanding resources that can help students in college. No student should miss the opportunity to use these sites.

DormNoise
If Facebook isn't good enough for college students, they can try out DormNoise, which is another social network designed specifically for them.

DormNoise is centered on a calendar system, which provides students with a visual look at upcoming campus events, student group meetings, and personal engagements. That calendar is the central hub for the site and others can see what students are up to at any time. It's a unique way to connect with others and it actually works quite well to simplify that process and keep abreast of campus events.

That said, the site isn't open for anyone to join--users must be between the ages of 18 and 24 and sign up with a ".edu" e-mail address. If the school is not recognized by the system, you can't sign up for the service. In fact, my alma mater isn't supported by DormNoise. DormNoise should eventually support every school. We hope.

Once I finally signed up for DormNoise with a different address, I found it to be a unique service that will help college students manage their lives. But there's one catch that can't be overlooked: the community is small, which means few people find reason to use it instead of a site like Facebook.

A New York State court judge denied on Monday Amazon.com and Overstock.com's attempt to avoid lawmaker demands that the online retailers collect sales tax from New York state residents, even though the companies don't have a physical presence in the state. Neither company has commented on the decision, but there is a strong possibility that the case could move into the Court of Appeals as Amazon and Overstock continue their fight.

CollegeWikis, an online group for college students to send messages and create their own groups based on class year, dorm, or courses, has become Regroup.com. More importantly, the service also announced Tuesday that it's now integrated with Facebook Connect and that users can finally create private groups. The site's redesign and new features are live now.

KickApps, the online video player and social media platform, announced Tuesday the release of KickApps App Studio, which will provide drag-and-drop widget and video player services to users who wish to add third-party tools. According to the company, its users can create "highly customized" embeddable Flash applications using drag-and-drop functionality. And through KickApps' new partnership with Yahoo and Meebo, users can integrate Meebo Rooms and Yahoo Maps into their widget. KickApps says that more third-party partnerships are on the way. Plug-in APIs will be available in the second quarter.

iPhone developer Gorloch Interactive announced Tuesday that it has launched Boombox, a music streaming service for the iPhone and iPod Touch that uses Blip.fm's song library. Users are able to create playlists and purchase those songs from iTunes. The app is free and available now on iTunes.

The Washington Post announced Tuesday that it will provide live video coverage of President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural events on January 20. The show will start at 5 a.m. PST when the Obama family leaves the Blair House and conclude when the inauguration parade is complete. Post reporters using cell phone video cameras will talk with those on-hand and include the interviews in the live recording.

Media "discovery" site StumbleUpon announced Tuesday that its video service, Stumble Video, has a host of new content available: content sites College Humor, Funny or Die, and VBS.tv, as well as video-hosting sites Vimeo, DailyMotion, and Veoh.

Stumble Video, which uses past preferences to pick out videos that a member might like--in other words, a nifty procrastination tool--already amasses content from big sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV, and Metacafe.

StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay last year, about six months after it debuted the Stumble Video feature. There's also a specialized version of Stumble Video for Nintendo's Wii console.

Now go ruin your productivity level. As for me, Stumble Video just told me I might want to watch some Daft Punk videos.

Something just feels off about the new Facebook app from Embark.

Called College Planner, this widget lets prospective college students research schools and then apply to them without actually leaving their Facebook profiles. You can also see which people on your friends list are interested in the same schools.

Applying to college through Facebook. A little weird, isn't it?

(Credit: Embark)

I like to think that it wasn't all that long ago that I was applying to colleges.The world was "wired" enough so that most of my application forms were downloaded off the Internet, but I don't recall actually submitting any online.

Online applications, I suppose, have been thoroughly destigmatized (back in my day, there was still the concern that an electronic application wouldn't be taken as seriously as a paper one), but it's still a bit ironic to be applying to college through a site that's best known as an addictive procrastination hub.

What really stands out about "social college applications" is that many people I knew (not all, obviously) were fiercely private about where they were applying, especially if the school was a "reach." Then again, this was before high schoolers were eagerly exposing their souls on MySpace.com profiles, so perhaps privacy is no longer sacred.

No, actually, now I think I know what's unnerving about the Embark application. It's the fact that this is a Facebook application that actually could be useful. Zombies and FluffFriends, beware!

(Via AllFacebook.com.)

It's a well-documented phenomenon: the rise of Web video has fueled a trend of 'bite-size entertainment.' Wired magazine devoted an entire cover story (actually, a set of mini cover stories) to it in its March '07 issue. The attention-deficient Web's appetite for small clips and short blog entries has gotten to the point where MySpace.com has actually condensed classic TV episodes into "minisodes" for its members.

But the latest viral video craze makes those three- to five-minute minisodes seem like Titanic. This is the "Dramatic Chipmunk," a 5-second clip of a chubby rodent making a foreboding face at the camera accompanied by a Snidely Whiplash-worthy musical interlude. (Bonus points if you know who Snidely Whiplash is.) The video proliferated, thanks to YouTube, as well as frat boy hub CollegeHumor, which put a link to the clip on its front page and touted it as "the best 5-second video on the Internet."

You can already tell that, after only a few days (the video was originally uploaded earlier this week), it's reached the gold-medal level of viral videos--somebody made a dance remix.

Here at CNET, we had a little bit of a debate about whether the "Dramatic Chipmunk" footage was actually real. Was it doctored in one way or another to make the chipmunk look more Hitchcock-esque? If it proved real, we wanted to know who the heck managed to capture the moment on video.

An e-mail to CollegeHumor Managing Editor Jeff Rubin answered our question: yup, it's real. The clip comes from a Japanese TV show in which the rodent was put on display for some reason. The priceless 5 seconds appear to have been the result of a very, very lucky camera angle.

CollegeHumor has uploaded the original footage and named it "Undramatic Chipmunk." You can see it here. And the full video also reveals, as zoology buffs had suspected, that the "Dramatic Chipmunk" isn't actually a chipmunk but rather a prairie dog.

UPDATE @ 1 PM PST: Never one to miss a marketing opportunity, CollegeHumor's in-house T-shirt retailer, BustedTees, is now selling a Dramatic Chipmunk t-shirt.

After reviewing lots of personal finance applications, I still haven't found one that serves young adults well. Today's teenagers have already been raised on a diet of advertising, from soda vending machines in grammar school cafeterias to deceptive credit card offers at college ballgames. The newest grown-ups need better information, for instance, about the indentured servitude that could result from trusting the word of high-interest loan sharks.

You'd think that some software company would benefit by serving the hot 18-to-thirtysomething market, often referred to as Generation Debt. Yet Intuit, for one, has decided to start educating tots before teens with Quicken Kids & Money.

Web-based money-management tools are still only starting to spring up. Finally, I've found one built by and for college students. Finfo compares estimated costs of various colleges as well as earnings at various jobs, and it draws up a basic budget.

I wondered what, say, Northwestern University might cost today if I were to rewind my life and start over. Considering projected tuition increases, Finfo rang up $200,000 for four years. Ouch! Would a community college be better, at least for the first couple of years? Finfo showed that Community College of Philadelphia would cost just five percent of Northwestern's overhead. Unfortunately, while I could add many more schools to the list, Finfo was missing some city colleges and trade schools I looked up, and I couldn't tell if the Columbia College it displayed was the same one I sought.

If college is in the rearview mirror, Finfo can contrast salaries for three jobs, taking into account the costs of living and housing in different cities. Here in San Francisco, again: ouch! But Iowa City looks pretty kind if you want to sock away savings. However, Salary.com offers far more granular earnings-comparisons.

Finfo's budgeting tool asks basic questions about earnings and expenses, and then it draws a pie chart. You can double-click the wedges to make them pop out, but there's not much else interactive here. I'd like to see this aspect of Finfo expanded. However, because Finfo doesn't collect deep personal financial details, potential security risks are minimal for now. And unlike other online startups I've checked out, Finfo wisely doesn't e-mail your password in clear type. But if you use Finfo to look up student loan consolidations or home refinancing, prepare to divulge more details.

Finfo's college and earnings projections are helpful, speedy, and easy to digest for a multi-tasker with a short attention span. But it bugged me that Finfo didn't automatically save some reports I'd already created. Finfo remains in beta testing, so its personal finance and investment forums are nearly empty. Maybe more users will come to Finfo through its Facebook group.

The need still exists for solid, trustworthy software, whether Web-based or for the desktop or a hybrid of both, to help young people manage day-to-day expenses, pay for college, get a job, and plan to buy a home. I wonder how much of this support Finfo's folks plan to provide. I'll be on the lookout for evidence of Finfo's plans to add assistance with real estate, insurance, taxes and more.

Finfo compares college costs and more.

(Credit: CNET)