Site Update: Bringing Back the Ads

Hey every one,

We're growing a little too fast and our bandwidth costs are going to dry out our empty well of funds soon. So we've decided to ad ads (hah) back to the site, but only for visitors coming from search engines. So to you regular readers, you'll never know anything was different. :)

30+ Uses for Your Camera Phone

How often do you use your camera phone to take pictures? Simple. Not enough!

Here's a quick list of several uses for your camera phone:

1. Try taking a picture of the take-out menu at your favorite restaurant. Save paper.


2. And snap a picture of the business hours.


3. Is it your birthday coming up? Walk around the mall and take pictures of what you want. Then send your list around.


4. Is your roommate stealing your stuff? Take a picture of your belongings each time you leave your room.


5. Do you lend DVDs, CDs, or books to your friends? Take a picture of it and label it your friend's name to remember who has what.


6. Forget saving business cards. Just snap a picture of them.


7. Take a picture of your suitcases. If they're lost, you can show exactly what they look like.


8. When in a foreign city, take pictures of the intersection next to your hotel. If you're drunk, show the cab driver the photo, and he'll know to go.


9. Hell, take a picture of your hotel room number if you really lack memory skills.


10. When traveling, take a picture of your hotel's name and even the important phone numbers. If you're in a foreign country, it's not 9-1-1. Take a picture of the number to remember it.


11. Forget blogging. Take a picture each day when on a trip and send the picture to your friends and family


12. Or just keep a photo journal in general!


13. See a psychology experiment? Or a job offering? Or a local show? Snap a picture to remember it.


14. See a poster for a good movie? Snap a picture, so the next time you're at Blockbuster, you won't have to spend time trying to remember what that movie was.


15. If you're a blogger, writer, or journalist, take a picture of something the next time you see something you want to write about.


16. Did you just now get the highest score? Take a picture and taunt your friends.


17. If you print a lot, you'll need new ink. Take a picture now of what kind of printer you have (the label). This will make it easier the next time you go for new ink. Just show the clerk the picture.


18. Be the paparazzi.


19. Need to remember something important on your todo list? Take a picture to remind yourself and set it as your wallpaper.


20. Need some motivation? Set whatever gets you going as your wallpaper. Endless possibilities for this one.


21. Use your camera phone to send a map to someone who’s lost.


22. Want to send your significant other on a hunt? Send them pictures along the way.


23. Take a picture of where you parked!!!


24. If you're in a car accident, take a picture of the scene and the other driver's license plate.


25. Take a picture of your license plate, your car, your driver's license, or your insurance information --in case it gets lost or stolen.


26. In the library, take a picture of reference numbers for the books you need. You don't need a pencil!


27. Use your camera phone as a mirror.


28. Use your camera phone in class when you're too lazy to write down what's on the board.


29. Before going to the grocery store, take a picture of what's on your spice rack. This way, you won't buy a third bottle of vanilla.


30. Lose something underneath a car or underneath something else equally dirty? Take a picture of what's underneath before you get all gross.

Any other uses?

Syncing Your Cell Phone's Calendar with Google Calendar

We've already discussed how to make Google Calendar the perfect secretary by texting and exporting new events to it. Now what about syncing your cell phone's calendar with your Google Calendar, allowing you to access your Google Calendar right from your cell phone? This is where GooSync comes in to play.

GooSync is an easy service that will send your primary calendar from Google to your cell phone (and vice versa), allowing you to flawlessly schedule new events by checking what else you've currently got going on this month.

Sign up for the free service, click the link in the confirmation email, configure your "device", save the settings they send you via sms, and select the "sync" option on your cell phone.

There you go. Now you have Google Calendar right on your cell phone.

[adult swim] Free Hip-Hop Tour and Contest

Want a bag full of [adult swim] schwag goodness? Enter the contest. We'll be accepting submissions until October 19th. Three winners will be chosen!

The contest is to celebrate [adult swim]'s first nationwide hip-hop tour, featuring Ghostface Killah and Witchdoctor.

The remaining schedule is as follows:
10/11/07: University of Central Florida, Orlando, Fla.
10/14/07: University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.
10/16/07: UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif.
10/17/07: University of Arizona, Tuscon, Ariz.
10/19/07: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.

GET YOUR FREE TICKETS NOW: http://adultswim.tickets.musictoday.com/AdultSwim/calendar.aspx

Don't Do What Johnny Don't Does

We'd like to introduce guest author Cal Newport --from Study Hacks. Author of   How to Become a Straight-A Student, Cal is a graduate of Dartmouth College and currently a Ph.D. candidate at MIT. Definitely on top of his game. Thanks, Cal!

I spend so much time thinking about how to squeeze every last drop of efficiency out of the college study process, I sometimes forget that many students are at a stage where they first need to be rescued from an abyss of mind-staggeringly terrible habits. What good are smart note-taking tips and rapid review techniques if you're showing up to exams coked up to your eyeballs or hiring an unusually skilled rhesus monkey to beef up your English essay?

Let's start at the beginning. For those who are new to college and are wondering the difference between idiosyncratic traits common to most students, and terrible, brain dead habits you should avoid like the plague, I've produced the following guide:

Don't Do What Johnny Don't Does: Three Things You Should Never Do While Studying

1. Don't Study Drunk
   
   Sounds obvious. But this comes up a lot. The scenario is simple. It's 10 PM. You're just getting started on a short paper. Word gets out about a pong tourney. This, of course, becomes impossibly appealing, so you convince yourself that you can finish the paper when you get back. Here's the thing: that paper will suck harder than a rhesus monkey with a frozen banana. It's hard to turn down this temptation, so what's the solution? Study earlier. Sound hard? It's not. Just don't return to your dorm room until after dinner. Before then, get your work done instead of collapsing on your coach watching re-runs.
2. Don't Snort Adderal
   
   Students at rural colleges are probably asking: "what does that mean?" Students at NYU are problem sneering at me while crushing some fresh pills. For the un-initiated, Adderal is a Ritalin-like drug for treating ADHD. Some students crush the pills and snort it to help stay up and write papers. There are two problems here. First, it has a tendency to do terrible, terrible things to your body. You're basically snorting speed. And it has a way, like with speed, of warping your brain, causing psychotic episodes, and screwing up your heart. Second, from a studying point of view, it produces terrible results. Adderal-derived papers seem brilliant at the time, but tend to come out looking like a drunken rhesus money had a seizure on your keyboard. Unless you're a comparative literature major, your professor won't appreciate this. Do yourself a favor, start working a day earlier to avoid being in a situation where chemicals seem like the only way out.
3. Don't Buy a Paper on the Internet
   
   It doesn't matter that web site claims that their papers are custom-crafted by Harvard professors for your specific assignment. They aren't. They were stolen from other websites by some weird, junior college drop-out, track suit wearing, rhesus monkey fighting (probably), pseudo-entrepreneurial slickster, trying to make a buck. Your professor will recognize that the work sucks. Then he will plug it into one of those anti-plagiarism programs that will immediately find the "original masterwork" you bought. Then you're screwed. Write the damn thing yourself.

Podcast Updates

Hello everybody. Due to some travel complications and lack of a reliable connection, we're pushing back the next episode of the podcast until next week. We'll film them this week, but we don't have the post-production power to get them done.

But we're not ones to slack off, so next week will have 2 episodes.

Access Your Computer from Your Cell Phone

Now I've never run into the problem of running to class late for a presentation and then forgetting my files, but maybe you have. Or maybe you've had lunch with a friend and then wanted to show them this video you have on your computer, but neither of you had the time to go up to your dorm room before next class.

Or even if you've ever craved to hear this one song you have on your computer but were away from your computer at the time, then I'd recommend installing Soonr. It's free.

Soonr is a desktop application that stores folders from your computer on the Internet, in mobile-ready form. In other words, after you install their application, you choose which folders you'd like to share with yourself. Then simply visit Soonr's website from your mobile phone (yes, Internet access is required, but this is $6/month for unlimited access if you're with T-mobile, for example).

And, completely free, you've got all your pictures, videos, music, files, documents, presentations all readily available to you (as long as your cell phone can support these things and as long as your computer is turned "on").

So next time you come to class and truthfully left the paper due that day in your dorm, you can show your professor from your cell phone that you indeed have it on your computer. At least they'll probably be pretty impressed.

Future of Web Apps Conference Update

Scott, Chris, and I are having too much fun in London. We've heard plenty of great talks and had a year's worth of serendipity.

The FoWA party last night was a tech-savvy person's dream. It was party, it was a sausage fest, it was nerdy. We talked to so many great people, both "web-lebrities" and not. We, along with about a thousand people last night, coerced Kevin Rose into taking a picture with us. We feel bad for stopping him in his tracks, we really do. To everyone we talked to last night, we had a blast hearing what the world is doing with the Web and shamelessly plugging ourselves.

Anyway, Chris and I will talk about everything we saw, heard, and used at the conference in the next episode of the podcast. The conference has also solidified some decisions that we're going to follow through with on the site. That's all you get for now, so stay tuned!