Traveling by MitfahrGelegenheit while in Germany

Watching the latest podcast episode, Kelly, Chris, and Scott were traveling by train --a cheap way to get around Europe. In Germany, they also have carpooling. If you can somewhat speak/understand German, check out MitfahrGelegenheit.de.

Choose your starting point (von), destination (nach), and date. Then click the Angebot links to read ads from people who are driving the route you've chosen and are looking for passengers. Within the ad, you'll generally find both an email address and a telephone number. Contact the driver (who will probably speak English, too), get the price, and schedule a meeting location.

Cheaper than by train, especially if it's just you and a friend.

HackCollege Podcast Episode 4: Oktoberfest

After a one-week Oktoberfest break, Chris and Kelly are back on a German InterCity Express train. Suprises aside, they cover:

My Veoh Show

• Oktoberfest


• LinkedIn


• NoonHat


• Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferazzi


• Beer drinking


• Google Presentation


• Future of Web Apps Conference


• Uncyclopedia


• University of Florida Tasings

Music this week:

• "Stadiums and Shrines II" by Sunset Rubdown
  
  

Study Break: $500

Want to win $500 for videotaping yourself wearing "carpet skates"? First comment to this post gets a free pair from us. Be sure to include your email address.

And then see the contest.

How To: Fit 10+ People into a Single Hotel Room

Studying abroad is all well and dandy, aside from the hotel costs especially with the suffering Euro-Dollar exchange rates (triple ouch!). One part cheap students, two parts thrifty customers, my friends and I have nearly mastered the art of cramming 4 up to even 11 people into a hotel room with a single queen bed. And everyone stays reasonably comfortable in the process, too.

While the legality of it is questionable, you'll definitely be saving cash in the long run. In some countries, we've heard that they will hit you with huge fines for breaking fire code if caught. So if danger isn't your middle name, allocate the correct number of bodies to your hotel room.

Here's how you do it:

Checking in

• When you check in, check in by yourself or with one friend. Be friendly and courteous. Don't stand out too much, you don't want them to remember your face for too long. Checking in with your entire group in tow will definitely draw attention.


• Have your friends filter in in twos. This step's importance diminishes as the size of the hotel increases. As always, better safe than sorry.


• Drop your stuff off and take off. You are, after all, in a different city. Shouldn't you be seeing the sights?

Sleeping

• Move the mattress onto the floor (if the bed has a box spring). A few members of your group will have to bite the bullet and sleep on the box spring. Bribe them with beers.


• Sleep perpendicular to the longest side. Confusing, yes. Some beds are longer than they are wide. Not everyone will have a place to rest their feet. They will, however, have a cushion under most of their body. Bonus: try using the bed stands and chairs as foot rests.


• Spoon.


• Ask for more covers. Getting more covers is not such a strange request. Just make sure you aren't too conspicuous.

Daily Routines

• Before your group leaves the room each day, clean up. If the room looks like a bomb test site, you'll get kicked out before your trip has even begun. Have everyone shove their stuff into the closet/dresser in the room. You want to make the maid's day as easy as possible.


• Put the bed back together.


• Put your used towels out by the pool (if possible). Why would two people need to 10 towels?

Checking Out

• Clean the room, reassemble everything. Leave without a trace.


• File out in twos, maybe even leaving through the back door.

Student 2.0 Toolkit: del.icio.us

I've gotten a few questions recently on my life "in the cloud," one of them being keeping track of bookmarks. This is especially a problem if you're lucky/foolish enough to have more than one computer (e.g. me). My answer is, and has been for more than a year, a nice service called del.icio.us.

Here's a disclaimer that should be implied with every post: This is not extra clutter for your life.

del.icio.us is a "social bookmarking site" that allows a user to save his or her bookmarks into del.icio.us easily. The smart folks behind the site have made some slick buttons that you can build into Firefox.

So let's say I'm browsing a site and want to remember it for later. Rather than bookmark it into my Firefox bookmarks, which just stay on that one computer, I "tag" it to my del.icio.us. All I have to do is press that "tag" button on my toolbar. The social aspect of del.icio.us then indexes my bookmarks with everyone else's. Checking out what other people have bookmarked makes for a great time-waster/brain-enhancer.

All in all, del.icio.us has a permanent place in our hearts and our workflows.

del.icio.us homepage
Sign up for del.icio.us
Get the del.icio.us Firefox toolbar
See my del.icio.us

Google Presentation, a Student's Review

Last week, Google added onto their expanding arsenal of Microsoft Office-replacement products. Much like HackCollege favorites Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets, Google Presentation offers a stripped-down, online version of Microsoft's ubiquitous PowerPoint.

As we mentioned in the third episode of the podcast, we are all about minimal functionality. If making a presentation for a class requires fancy slides and graphs, maybe you should read up on how to give a presentation. For our needs and wants, Google Presentation is all we need. And all that information is in the cloud, which is a huge plus.

Creating group presentations for a class is now a breeze, with the same collaboration features from Google Docs available. Soon, you will never even have to leave your room to meet your classmates. We will each live in pods controlled by machines...

For now, Google Presentation's functionality is expectedly limited. We would like to see a few more font choices. It doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of PowerPoint but hey, we don't miss 'em.

HackCollege: Best of the Year

We're 1! A few of us spent the weekend celebrating at Oktoberfest. Or maybe the party was thrown for us? We'd like to think that HackCollege inspired this year's Oktoberfest, never mind tradition.

Although we're technically late, here are the most popular posts for the first year.

• Windows Vista: Free for College Students


• Top 5 Facebook plugins


• Interhouse at Caltech


• How to Track Your Profile Views


• Search, Translate, and Generate with Schoolr


• The Burnt Toast Method


• The Be-All-End-All List of Facebook Applications Useful for College Students


• Packing a Dorm Room into a Car


• Caffeine Slingshot


• Thursday Night: Power Hour

We drank a mass to a good year, and you should too. And, like a fine wine, HackCollege only gets better with age.

Happy Birthday to Us!

Hooray! HackCollege turns one today.

So shotgun a beer!