Be an Organized Student with Remember the Milk

Everyone is always falling on and off the GTD wagon, but I've been hooked on a great to-do organizer called Remember the Milk (RTM). If you are looking for a way to keep yourself organized going into the new school year, this post is for you. This post will talk about the pros and cons of the service, its application for students and a demo of how I personally use it.

Now is a great time to get yourself organized. It's just before school and you might be looking for something new.

To-Dos in the Cloud

One of the biggest selling points about RTM--to me--is its free-ness and the fact that it's in the clouds. The online interface is straightforward and clean. It has Google Gears, so you can access your tasks even when you're not online. Get the benefits of having info online and also avoid getting screwed if the campus WiFi goes down.

RTM also boasts just about every possible method of ingestion. Currently you can add tasks from a GMail sidebar, an iPhone, a BlackBerry, any Windows Mobile phone, Twitter, Google Calendar and... you get the point.

Student Application

Well this is all fine and dandy but how can us students use RTM? Since laptops are the primary computer choice of most students and campus-wide WiFi is now a selling point for schools, a cloud-based to-do manager makes sense.

And whether an iPhone is outside of your price range or not, the barrier for entry is low for Remember the Milk, which makes it perfect for students. As with most web applications, this sucker is on the freemium pricing model: you get most of the functionality for free.

Do It Like This

How do I use it? Let's take a look.

Whenever I'm sitting down to work, I always make sure I've got an RTM window open. I keep this window on the "Overview" view of tasks. Another important note: this gets its own separate window. It keeps me on task and focused.

To enter in tasks when I'm at my computer, I use the RTM Quicksilver plugin. A few keystrokes and the task is in my system.

If I'm on the road, RTM has a personalized email addresses for each user. I just send a task to the address from my new iPhone 3G and it's off my mind. (It would also work with my previous phone, the LG VX6200.)

Remember the Milk offers a great, free service that can be checked and maintained from just about any device, save maybe pen and paper.

Do you use or have you tried Remember the Milk? What do you think? OR What do you use as your personal organization system? Let us know in some comments!

Forbes Releases Its Own College Rankings

Before applying to college, many students will look through U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Colleges. The higher the ranking, the higher the prestige. And hopefully, higher the starting salary.

And who wouldn't want to attend a high-ranked college or university? From graduation on, that school's name will stick to your resume. And if there is anything you can do to improve your school's ranking, you should. It would essentially improve your credentials as well.

So today is a good day.

Forbes has released its take on the college ranking system, basing 25% of the rankings on 7 million student evaluations of courses and instructors, as recorded on the Web site RateMyProfessors.com.

Let me repeat. Based on what you and your peers wrote on the infamous RateMyProfessors.

So maybe instead of bashing that professor for a low B, you should commend them for the greatest semester of your life. That is, if anyone actually reads Forbes.

[Forbes' Top 50 U.S. Colleges, via AboveTheLaw & Althouse]

A quick "top 10" comparison between the two rankings after the jump.

Forbes' Top 10:
1. Princeton
2. California Institute of Technology
3. Harvard
4. Swarthmore
5. Williams
6. U.S. Military Academy
7. Amherst
8. Wellesley
9. Yale
10. Columbia

U.S. News & World Report's Top 10:
1. Princeton University (NJ)
2. Harvard University (MA)
3. Yale University(CT)
4. Stanford University(CA)
5. University of Pennsylvania
5. California Institute of Technology
7. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
8. Duke University(NC)
9. Columbia University(NY)
9. University of Chicago

6 Worthwhile Last-Minute Electives

It's about time to make those last-minute changes to your schedule. If a class has been canceled over the summer, or you're feeling more ambitious than you did a few months ago, here are some classes that I -- a wise college senior -- recommend. I'm trying to take the lifehacking angle on this. Each of these classes has real-world, practical applications, the benefits of which you'll reap once you graduate. I have nothing against the humanities, but these classes won't have you writing journals and thinking you're on a religious retreat.

Where to study

Many of these classes might be more enriching at a community college. The 101 classes at most universities or liberal arts schools are designed to set up students for an MBA or on the path toward upper division courses. A community college is more likely to equip you with a basic, self-contained knowledge of the subject. Your school might also have an extension program, which is designed for people who aren't students. Hence, it will treat classes the same way as a community college.

And if you're close to the end of college days, don't be afraid to save these classes for post-grad continuing education. Like I always say: "At some point, you're too old for kegerators, but you're never too old to learn."

Introduction signposts

To ensure that you're getting that free-standing level of knowledge, look for courses with "elementary," "intro to," "survey of," or "principles of" in the title. Most schools also use "100" for introductory courses that can be left unaccompanied by more classes (the free-standing ones we're looking for), and "101" to denote ones that start the progression of classes toward a major.

And now, for the list:

1. Business Law You might not be any better at getting out of parking tickets, but business law will have you on the way to interpreting employment contracts, rental agreements and copyright law -- but we don't expect it to keep you from pirating music.

2. Personal Finance or Financial Planning Let's just call this "budgeting class." You'll learn about taxes, estate planning, retirement, and probably a little about investments and portfolio/risk management.

3. Quantitative or Analytic Math (AKA Real-world math) In a low-level math course, you might rehash the basics you learned in high school, but practical applications will be throughout. You'll learn about problem-solving with equations, spreadsheets, probability, statistics and financial math like how much money that interest rate means for your student loan payments. Plus, you forgot how to do long division -- better fix that.

4. Business Communications There's a relatively well-known list of things people wished they'd learned in college. Almost all of them would be covered in a Business Communications class. You'll learn how to: interview, write a resume, write cover letter, give a presentation, collaborate efficiently and network.

5. Public Speaking or Oral Presentations Business communications will only give you a cursory overview of giving presentations. A concentrated class will give you a chance to learn the nuances of public speaking, meetings (and videoconferencing), debate, presentations -- and most of all, it'll help you get over the nerves.

6. Computer Science Today, a basic knowledge in CS is literally like knowing a second language. Imagine being able to write programs to automate otherwise tedious tasks. Most jobs involve sitting in front of a computer all day anyway. And we're HackCollege -- what did you expect?

What are some electives that you think are most worthwhile?

MIT Students Hack Boston Public Transportation

In yet another show of MIT proving that they are smarter than everyone else, 3 students have hacked the Boston T system. The students were set to present today at DEFCON, a hacker conference going on this weekend.

But a federal judge granted Boston's request to not allow these students to present. The slides of the presentation were leaked and published, so you can read their presentation. Very cool stuff.

CNET covers the the story: "Judge orders halt to Defcon speech on subway card hacking"

And MIT's newspaper has released the slides of the presentation that never came to fruition: Anatomy of a Subway Hack [PDF File]

Vote for Our SXSW 2009 Panel!

I've put together a panel for SXSW 2009. Panels are selected, in part, by the crowd on the Web. We need your help! Visit the link below to vote for our panel.

SXSW Panel Picker: The Student 2.0 Revolution

You will have to register for an account. Thanks in advance to those that vote for us, and curse those for eternity that don't!

And everyone that's remotely interested in new media or the Web needs to be there. Use your frequent flier miles to book your flight now. You don't need a conference pass. Just read our SXSW post for some tips. We hope to see everyone there!

How To Create One Link For All Your Google Calendars

This article assumes you're already using Google Calendar to the fullest.

So now you have more than one Google Calendar, e.g., your schedule for school, your schedule for work, and your schedule for private occasions with your significant other. Everything is color-coded, and you can access them all easily via google.com/calendar.

But what about sharing it with an employer, letting them know exactly when you're available/busy? Or with your significant other, letting them know beforehand why you're not answering the phone?

Sure, Google gives you the ability to share each of your calendars separately with whomever via their email address, but, again, that's confusing and redundant if you have several calendars. So, let's consolidate.

A sneak peak at the final product: http://tinyurl.com/5rgs4m.

Step One: Login to google.com/calendar and publicize.

Click Settings in the upper righthand corner and then Calendars. Underneath Sharing, click the first link to Share this calendar. Check to Make this calendar public and then decide whether to show the details or not. And Save.

You will have to make each calendar public (detailed or not).

Step Two: Create the HTML code for an iframe.

Access the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper through Settings, Calendars, a calendar, and then clicking the customize link next to Embed This Calendar).

Mess with all the options on the left and click Update HTML when you're satisfied.

Step Three: Get the URL and strip it of amp;.

Now you've got an HTML code similar to:

<iframe src="allyourcalendarsandsettings" border-width:0 " width="800" height="600" frameborder="0" scrolling="no">

Take away everything but allyourcalendarsandsettings. This is the url we need. And within this url, strip it of every instance of amp; (but keeping each &).

My finished product came out like this:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?showTitle=0&showTab
s=0&showCalendars=0&mode=WEEK&wkst=2&src=dor
iott.rosario%40gmail.com&color=%232952A3&src=ni1mqvb
3gs02a783nje76u7o8g%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%2
3B1365F&src=r9r9421virn2og5uvpafqqes7g%40group.calendar.
google.com&color=%23A32929&ctz=America%2FNew_York

Step Four: Go to tinyurl.com to shorten.

And there you have it. Ready to post as your website in your Facebook profile.

Take Our Survey, Win a T-Shirt!

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Oh, and we love you.

Blogging - The New Shit Job for Interns?

While Chris and I were at a party this weekend in San Diego running around getting some shotgun footage for episode 35, pitching HackCollege to normal party-goers got them talking about two things: online identity and blogging for their summer jobs. It was interesting to hear what fellow interns are doing for the warm months of the year.

A few gals started talking about their summer jobs. Many of them had jobs for low-profile magazines, such as 944. It seemed that they were set loose and just told "go blog about stuff." Summer internships have their lulls--which are often filled with 3-hour YouTube binges--so why not blog about them?

Hate to say it, but even hip magazines are gutting it when it comes to blogging. Just because you publish it doesn't mean that it will get read. None of the girls mentioned anything about the technical requirements of blogging (SEO and such) or creating a two-lane highway of dialogue. Instead, they are told to blog about whatever and forget about the content afterwords.

Have You Heard of This Thing Called Blogging?

Blogging is regarded as an experimental, mysterious form of technology. But those who know how it works are going to get ahead in their summer job. If your employer has you endlessly crapping blog posts into outer space, try suggesting that they change their ways. Mention search engine optimization (SEO). Tell them about the importance of leaving comments on other blogs. Tell them that it's important for each author to have their own page and RSS feed. Then ask for a bonus.

So what do you think? Does your summer employer have you regurgitating their print information online in blog form? Or do they have you doing something else? And is blogging important enough to pay someone nothing minimum wage for?