10 Ways to Use Evernote as a Student

My guest post on Evernote.com's blog just went up, and you might like it.  It's a top-level overview of how you can use the service as a student. 

Also check out our 11th reason to use Evernote: stress free moving to and from the dorms.

Prezi Adds Pizzazz To Any Presentation

Prezi is really awesome. Super duper awesome.

I am on a roll with the "P" alliteration. Last week was "Positive Procrastination" and this week is all about the pizzazz this little website called Prezi can add to your presentations. Genius, right? Yes, I know. But onwards we must go.

So it's nearing the end of the semester and for some of your classes you might be required to give a presentation for a final project or a paper. I know this because I had to give a presentation for a project yesterday actually. As my group (which funnily enough is the same one on which I was collaborating with fellow staff writer, Shep) began to prepare our presentation for our final project, we realized that we didn't want to present the class with some boring old slide show. Oh, no. We wanted to dazzle. And thus, we decided to use Prezi. Intrigued? Of course you are.

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My Laptop Just Died During Finals Week...And I Feel Fine

Tonight, my MacBook Pro became unresponsive, and would not boot up after a hard reset.  It's happened once before, and the fix should be as easy as reinstalling the OS and restoring from a time machine backup.  I won't have a working computer until late tomorrow though, because I'm taking it to an Apple Store so they can reinstall Snow Leopard, since I don't technically own it.

Anyway, at the beginning of this semester I boldly proclaimed on Lifehacker that I would not do any assignments with Microsoft Office this semester, and tonight my choice was affirmed.  I'm pretty good about backing up my system, but it's been a few days.  If I had been writing my final term papers and only saving them to my hard drive, they would have been wiped out, and I would have probably stabbed myself in the neck.  

With all my assignments safely nestled away in the cloud under Google's watchful, motherly eye, I can honestly say that I saw my computer crash and burn, and didn't feel the slightest twinge of stress.  

Use Stereomood for Focused Study Music

The best part is imagining yourself in the pretty urban cityscape. Oh, and the instrumental Pixies covers. Those are cool, too.

If you're someone who has to have music to study to, preparing playlists can take up more time than the actual learning. Particularly if you want to have control over what kind of music you're listening to, most music services require a great deal of fine-tuning.

Pandora, though excellent if you don't need to focus, builds playlists on artist characteristics rather than moods. Because it's curated automatically, it can sometimes wildly miss the mark--tossing up "Boy Named Sue" when you want unintrusive music for other activities.* Grooveshark's great, and its selection can't be beat, but it requires time-consuming curation. It's a fabulous option if you want control over a party playlist, but it's too time-intensive for study background music--the same issue as iTunes playlists, which have the added downside of being confined to music you actually own. And, though Frat Music crosses over most of these issues, it isn't quite what you want to study to.

Enter Stereomood. This online streaming service provides user-generated playlists put together by mood or activity. The playlists run the gamut from vague (sweet) to the oddly specific (lost in Jamaica). There are even a few organized by time periods--particularly nice is this 60s playlist. Of course, for finals week, you're probably looking for study music--and the playlists are good.

Because the playlists are human-curated and meant for specific activities or moods, they're generally much closer to the mark than the playlists that an automatic service would create. Because they're created by other people, you run a high chance of stumbling across music you hadn't heard before. Finals studying: now educational in ways you actually care about! Finals studying may be a pain, but now you can at least suffer with an excellent soundtrack.

* This has actually happened to your author. Good times.

How to Make Money Reselling Your Textbooks

Thank God I'm a poli-sci major. Photo courtesy of Fickr user djfoobarmatt. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.Hey you. Yes, you there. The one pretending to study for your Marketing exam over there in the library. We
 know you're just listening to Kanye perform Runaway or watching the Miley bong-hit video. Why not make your study break productive? Those textbooks your head is buried in - they might be worth something someday.'

After you finish memorizing how many bones are in the human body or why bureaucratization is important, your textbooks can be sent elsewhere for cold, hard cash. There goes your excuse for not buying your roommate a gift.

Here's Lifehacker's take on the idea, and they're spot on. Make sure your textbook is in the best shape, and check out whether or not it makes more sense to use Chegg or other online resellers or a local alternative. Spoiler alert: Your school's bookstore will probably rip you off just as much to buy your books back as they did when they were selling them to you.

What do you do with your textbooks after the semester? Let us know in the comments or hit us up on Twitter: @HackCollege.

[Lifehacker]

Hack Your Holiday Shopping with Student Discounts

Students aren't exactly flush with cash, but you can live large with some savvy student discount shopping. Image courtesy of Flickr user StuartPilbrow and license under CC by SA 2.0.

We really have it lucky, us students.  Companies are willing to throw us huge discounts on the assumption that we are both poor and still forming our brand loyalties.  Whether this is true or not is irrelevant; you don't need to be broke and gullible to take advantage.  Hell, the deals can be so good that Lifehacker even ran a feature to help readers enjoy these benefits forever.  Here is a roundup of some of the best student discounts out there to help you save a little cash this holiday season.

Click through for the list!

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Google Unveils Ebookstore

Welcome the newest player to the eBook marketplace, Google. Touting a library of over 3 million books, our favorite search engine (internet dominator) is promising commitment free eBooks for all your devices. Limited to the U.S. for now, Google's eBookstore allows customers to purchase digital books and textbooks through their simple web store or through their iOS and Android apps. 

Could Google be the solution to the lackluster eTextbook market? Maybe. Google has signed nearly 4,000 publishers at launch, most of whom will be uploading digital versions of their textbooks in the coming months. As of today none of my required textbooks for the current semester were available in Google's marketplace. Strike one. Okay, maybe a little unfair, surely the selection will improve eventually. The question is, "will students buy textbooks from Google?" Digital eTextbooks from the big G are priced roughly the same as their paper counterparts, i.e. ridiculously expensive. Unfortunately, the majority of the textbooks currently offered limit your access to one of the mobile apps or the Google web reader. Yes, that means you need an internet connection to read textbooks on your computer. Strike two. Sony Reader and Nook owners are out of luck as well; these textbooks aren't available for download in the ePub format for reading on your devices. Strike three. 

Google's eBookstore is only days old and there's no doubt I'm judging this book by its cover. I encourage you to open a few book samples and reflect on your experiences in the comments below. 

Positive Procrastination

Oh, hello finals... I was hoping you'd forget to visit this year. Photo courtesy of DAEllis. Licensed under CC BY-2.0. So perhaps you are reading the title of this post and saying, "What is this business? Positive procrastination? Even though that is a witty alliteration, it is absolutely absurd. Procrastination could never be positive."

Or perhaps you're not thinking that at all and would like me to just get to the point of the article. And you all are just no fun at all.

Anyways, yes, positive procrastination. It does exist and I'm here to tell you how to do it the right way so that it can actually benefit the way that you study. I know, crazy, right? But so crazy... it just might work. We all know what procrastination is, but what is this "positive" procrastination? Well, believe it or not, there are some things you can do to procrastinate studying for finals that are actually going to benefit you in the long run, both in your studying and in your general finals wellbeing. What could these things possibly be?

Clean

Cleaning is the perfect thing to do while you're procrastinating studying for exams. First of all, it lets your mind go basically blank. There's not a whole lot of thought to cleaning. Dirty clothes on the floor. Pick them up and put them in the hamper. Unmade bed. Make it. Trash can is overflowing. Take it out. No more clean underwear. Do laundry. There's no complicated analyzing needed for pouring detergent into the washer or for dumping your trashcan out. Your brain gets a rest while you're still doing things that need to be done around your room. That's the other added bonus. You get a brand-spankin' new clean room.

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