The Tablet Takeover

Mmm, happy birthday indeed. Photo courtesy of Extra Ketchup. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.

Here at HackCollege, I'd say that we're pretty partial to the iPad and how it can help students in many of their classes. We've discussed the iPad and textbooks. And iPads in lectures. And iPads and homework. And just iPads and college in general. I think we can safely say that HackCollege is pretty much obsessed with iPads.

But what about other tablets? Do they stand up to the success of iPads in the college atmosphere?

Jumping on the coattails of the iPad, several different companies are now producing tablets catered to students, hoping to entice them with their promises of easier studying, saving money, and of course something shiny and new to play with. Two of the talked about up-and-coming tablets aimed at students are the Kno and Dell's Inspiron Duo.

Now, I do not own an iPad. I'm not even a MacHead. The only Apple product I own is my iPod, and it's not even an iPod touch. So I consider myself fairly unbiased to the whole tablet debate. Other HackCollege writers have already done their job reviewing the iPad for the college atmosphere, and so I'll do the same for these two products as well.

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Feel "Lighter" with Less Stuff

Our founder, Kelly Sutton, continued his slow domination of the world yesterday with a brief feature on NBC Nightly News. His on-air segment wasn't too long, but you can see his entire extended feature here.

Is it tough as a college student to get rid of things? Have you undertaken a similar endeavor? Let us know in the comments

Home for the Holidays: Explaining Your Major to Friends and Family

"If he tells me to go to law school one more time, I'm gonna swing this bottle." Image courtesy of Flickr user Dennis Crowley. Licensed under CC 2.0

Students are gearing up to head home for Thanksgiving and winter breaks, and that means getting back into the swing of life with family--including explaining what you're doing at school to your parents' friends and your extended family. For some people (engineering majors and pre-med people), this is not so bad! For others, it can be a little stressful. Here's how to handle some of the most common less-than-positive results.

"So you're planning to go to law school?" or "A future teacher, I see!" - This one tends to be tossed at Political Science majors (and liberal arts majors in general) by people who see law school/teaching as a backup plan. This can be frustrating for people who actually do want to be lawyers or teachers, since it implies they're following a predictable path, and for people who are interested in other things (for instance, being the next Nate Silver) it's equally irritating. It's best to pick your battles--if it's someone you're only going to see once, laugh and say, "Anything's possible!" before finding some more eggnog. For family members and people who will be interacting with you when you finish school, a little more explanation can be good. If you are, say yes and give a short summary of what kind of law you want to do or why you want to become a teacher. If not, something like, "Actually, no. But I am planning to try for the Peace Corps!" will usually do the trick. You want to make the point that there are other career paths than law school or teaching that you can follow. Don't stress about one-off encounters too much, though--over the holidays it's best to save your energies for people who you'll be seeing again.

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Streamline Your Cell Phone Contacts

And I thought phones were supposed to be getting smaller. Photo courtesy of Flickr user daryl_mitchell. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.I guess I'm getting a reputation around HackCollege as the "phone guy". Ironically, my cell phone is probably the least important piece of my technical repertoire. I was a bit amazed as I was nearing my cell phone's limit of 600 contacts halfway through my first semester of freshman year - yes, dumbphones still have low contact limits and yes, I'm just that good at meeting people (not really). After all, it was my second phone (remember how to survive without a lost phone?) so I liked to pat myself on the back for doing well at being social.

And then I went to the Florida vs. Georgia Football Classic (formerly known as The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party), had a weekend to never forget that I couldn't fully remember, and celebrated my Gators' thrilling overtime victory. I made it back home alive, went to the bathroom, and in the process of calling a friend dropped my phone in a urinal. Plop, plop, fizz. Alka-Seltzer would have been proud.

I decided to try the traditional methods to save it, but all for naught. Ends up this _third_ insurance claim in a year inspired me to make my phone a bit more valuable to me and make it more of a useful tool than the catch-all I'd made it. I decided to streamline my contacts, and here's how I did it.

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Habits

Image courtesy of Flickr user pastaboy sleeps. Licensed under CC 2.0He’s got great study habits. She’s got a drug habit. Zen Habits. Habits are behavior actions and routines we carry out on a daily basis. These actions can be both positive and negative, effective and ineffective, productive and an utter waste of time. Successful individuals consistently execute positive, effective and productive habits. Habits can be modified. You can control your habits. Are you aware of your habits? Do you check Facebook when you get bored? Do you arrive early to class? Do you review your notes after each class? Are you satisfied with your habits? Guru’s in productivity like Tim Ferriss and Leo Babuta are masters of habits. They evaluate their habits regularly, what works, what doesn’t, why? Habit evaluation isn’t difficult, being disciplined enough to replace bad habits with good ones is. Are you disciplined enough to practice positive, effective habits each day? The difference between you and Sally, that Queen of the 4.0 who’s never stressed? Habits. 

Become a Walking Scanner with JotNot

JotNot is a full-featured scanner that fits in your pocket. Excited?Love it or hate it, college students still have to deal with a ton of paper.  Many savvy students are committed to a paperless lifestyle, but using a scanner to get notes, handouts, and readings onto a computer can be just barely time-consuming enough to discourage us from being comprehensive about it.  That's where JotNot comes in.

The iOS and Android application is basically a full-featured scanner in your pocket, and is ideal for instantly digitizing the paper in your life.  Before you purchase though, be sure your phone has an auto-focus camera; the iPhone 3G returns pretty poor results.  

One you launch the app, start out with a new document, aim at your paper, and snap a picture.  You can then specify the corners of your page to compensate for background distractions and the angle of your photo.  You can also spend a few extra moments specifying options like output format, contrast, and file size, or even specify if the photo was of a whiteboard, blackboard, or piece of paper.  One more tap processes the photo to your parameters.  

The whole process takes something like 15 seconds, and doesn't require a giant scanner.  Hell, I've done it in the middle of class with assignment descriptions and the like, just in case I misplace them.  Obviously you won't be using this to scan your cherished family photos, but scans of your books and papers are absolutely legible enough to study from.  My favorite option is the automatic Evernote exporting feature (mostly because of Evernote's text-recognition abilities), but you can also send your scans in an email, to iDisk, Google Docs, Box.net, Dropbox, or even as a fax, if that's part of your workflow.

For the smartphone-packing student who hates managing actual pieces of paper, JotNot is a fantastic time saver and insurance policy against misplaced papers.

UPDATE: It's been pointed out in the comments that JotNot only exists on Android as an expired beta.  I'm not an Android guy, but some googling came up with Scan2PDF as a suitable alternative for you Android users.

Plan Ahead to Avoid the Post-Thanksgiving Crunch

Pretty leaves of November attempt to distract you from the massive amounts of work you could/should be doing during this month. Photo courtesy of powi. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.When the hell did November get here? That is what I want to know. Seriously, just yesterday I was telling y'all how to prepare your brains for August and get back into the school mode. And now it's November. How did that happen and how can I make it stop?

Well, okay, so I can't stop the furious, oncoming train that is November. I also can't stop December, with all of its final papers and exams and projects, from hurtling right after it. You might be thinking, "Don't be silly. December is an entire month away! I have a whole other month before I have to start worrying about things like that. I'm not gonna worry about that 'til after Thanksgiving."

That is where you are wrong. Let me break this down for you. Including this week, there are three more weeks until Thanksgiving. Exams start a week and a half after Thanksgiving break. Can you study for all of your exams, write multiple 15 page papers, and put together various end-of-the-semester projects in a week in a half? Answer: no.

The solution to this post-Thanksgiving crunch is to use these three weeks that we are given to start planning ahead for finals season. I know, it may seem excessive. But if you put off preparation for your end of the year work until right before or even after Thanksgiving break, you will have wished you used that three week grace period to do some of that work. Trying to organize the next month of your academic life is daunting to say the least. But with a few tips, you should at least create yourself a nice cushion of accomplished work to allow you to not completely lose your mind in the post-Thanksgiving crunch.

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HackCollege Contest: Show Your OS Some Love

And by "kittens" we mean "software." Image courtesy of Flickr user Simon Lieschke. Licensed under CC 2.0 BY-NC.First off, election day is tomorrow. If you haven't voted yet, do so! (You can even check in on Foursquare.)

In addition, we're having a contest. A few weeks ago when Emily went to the Microsoft Open House, they kindly gave HackCollege a copy of Office Professional Academic 2010 for Windows 7. And Cinch, the Mac-only window locking program we covered a little while ago, has given us two free licenses to give to readers. So, if you want to compete for some swag, here's what to do:

For Cinch: Tell us your favorite Mac OSX feature. You can get as creative as you want in showing it to us--make a video, take a photo, do an interpretive dance, or just leave us a comment. Either comment on this post or send us a tweet tagged with #GimmeCinch.

For Office 2010: Tell us what cool projects you're planning on coming up with using Office. Do you publish a newsletter with Publisher about your college club? Are you writing a paper on why college costs so much? Making a budget spreadsheet to show your eventual world domination? Tell us what you're working on. Just like with the Cinch contest, you can be as creative as you want with how you present it. Either comment on this post or send us a tweet tagged with #HackOffice.

Bonus New York Contest: As part of the Microsoft Open House, we were given a tour ticket to one of those sightseeing buses. If you live in NYC or will be visiting sometime soon and want the tickets, send a note to emily@hackcollege.com. The first person who asks can have it. (EDIT: The tickets have been won! Thank you to everyone who emailed about them.)

The first two contests will be open until next Monday, when the judging will take place. Good luck!