What Does the Death of Google Wave Mean for Students?

Time to *wave* goodbye. Photo courtesy of Flickr user liako. Licensed under Google is an obvious cultural force in our society. From its image search being immortalized in Chiddy Bang's hip-hop top 40 hit "The Opposite of Adults" ("google me, the images"), its mail service joining the most popular free options, and the controversy surrounding Google Books and Google Maps' Street View has propelled both of those services into the spotlight. Not to mention a little thing called YouTube.

Unlike YouTube, one of Google's latest services didn't get the red carpet treatment or many views. Google Wave, Google's web-based collaboration tool, heralded as Web 3.0, has bit the dust.

Google's decision to drop Wave isn't incredibly surprising, although their decision to open registration only two months ago came across as a vote of confidence. Unfortunately, Google Wave's closing at the end of the year is more of a loss to students - especially in higher education - than nearly anyone else.

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Apple Is Owning Higher Education

Don't get your MacBook mixed up with the one sitting next to it, or the one next to that, or the one next to that... Photo courtesy of Flickr user niyam bhushan and licensed under CC 2.0

Apple doesn't try to hide the fact that they want college students using their products.  For years now they've been giving away iPods and printers to new Mac purchasers during back to school season, and their strategy is pretty sound. I took the liberty of diagraming it below.  

Parent buys Mac for student -> Student loves Mac ->Student gets job ->Student buys Mac

Seems simple, but hell, it's going to work on me.

Anyway, if you've stepped foot on a college campus at any point over the last five years, you can probably tell that it's working.  A recent study confirms this, and though the numbers are a little spongy, it's clear that Apple is the most popular computer manufacturer among college students. Keep in mind this is comparing Apple to Dell, Asus et al., not Microsoft -- an important distinction.  

The most shocking statistic here is that of the students planning on purchasing a new computer soon, nearly half said they wanted a Mac.  This is a pretty jaw-dropping figure considering Apple's market share as a whole is something less than 10%.  If this study is even close to accurate, Steve Jobs will probably start buying up diamond-crusted dialysis machines (with multitouch) as these kids start earning paychecks.  

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Designate a Box for Miscellaneous Important Items

Put your important stuff in a box so you can find it when you need it. Image courtesy of Flickr user net_efekt. Licensed under CC 2.0 BY-SA.Last week, after several email promptings from Trinity University’s student accounts, I decided I should probably get around to paying my tuition for fall semester. Since, you know, that’s kind of necessary to go to classes and all. In order to pay my tuition, I have to write a check from my college fund to the university. And to write that check, I need my super special checkbook. Well, I haven’t seen this checkbook since I paid last semester’s tuition and as I looked into the vast vacuum of shit that is my room, I am thinking, “Dear God, how am I going to find that tiny checkbook in all of this?”

After about half an hour of searching (and finding the portal to Narnia along with other various things), I finally magically stumbled upon my super special checkbook. However, the whole episode (which has sadly occurred just about every time the beginning of a semester rolls around) got me thinking that I should probably figure out a different method of storing my random but rather important collection of stuff.

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Is Your Summer Internship Ethical?

Okay, so, Tory Johnson's show doesn't look like it's trying to appeal to college students... but her guest, Bruce Weinstein aka "The Ethics Guy" (wha?), has a few practical dos and don'ts that might help put your summer internship opportunity into perspective. Or maybe you can passive-aggressively post a link to this on your Twitter account and hope the boss notices... 

We've said it before -- and I still believe that even if an employer is following the quid pro quo guidelines -- there's something unethical about making someone work for free. Minimum wage is a smalle price to pay for rock-solid ethics. 

Tell us what you think: what does it take for you to work for free? 

Avoid Being Hurt by Hard Drive Failure

Avoid weeping at the sight of the sad folder with data backup. Image courtesy of Flickr user Mohamed Nazmi. Licensed under CC 2.0 BY-SA.It’s back-to-school season, and that means that it’s a good time to reconsider how you store your most useful data (for instance: term papers). Even though you may already be using the cloud and external storage systems to keep extra copies of your data, it is always useful to do a yearly review of where and how you store the things that keep your digital life going. If you’re not already, make sure you follow these steps to prevent yourself from being stung by data loss during the school year.

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HackCollege is Going to New York!

The city of New York is busy preparing for our arrival. Image courtesy of Flickr user Global Jet and licensed under CC 2.0 One thing that makes HackCollege special is that it's run by students from a variety of different colleges.  Unfortunately, the distance has meant that the staff has never actually convened in one place. This changes next weekend in New York at the first (hopefully annual) HackCollege Summit, presented by Intel. Old salts Kelly, Chris, and David will join Mike, Luke, Laura, and myself at the largest meet up of HackCollege writers ever!  We couldn't have done this without Intel's help, and we really can't thank them enough.

We've had a lot of exciting changes at the site in the past few months, and we'll be using our time together to map out HackCollege's fifth year. It definitely won't be all work and no play though, so hit us up in the comments or on Twitter if you're in town.   

Using Evernote for Stress-Free Move-In

Don't doubt the mighty Evernote elephant. Flickr image courtesy of smarthero. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.If there was the equivalent of the Best New Artist Grammy for webapps, Evernote would win it for 2009-10. We've shown it much love in the past year, and deservingly so. Evernote is more open-source than competitors OneNote and is available on nearly all platforms - Windows, Mac, web plugins for all the popular browsers, and nearly all mobile OSes - be it iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Palm.

This versatility makes it THAT much better as a packing tool as well. I've considered it essential in packing for my first move-in (12 days!), and have suggested it for my friends to use.

Here's how to use Evernote as a packing tool that helps both get your bags and boxes in the car for the haul to campus and how to unpack once you've arrived at campus. 

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Why You Should Avoid NOOKstudy

Maybe someday NOOKstudy will be useful for the average student, but it still has a lot of issues that need to be worked out.Barnes and Noble (which coincidentally just put itself on sale) recently released its free NOOKstudy application for Windows and OS X as part of an initiative to grab a share of the nascent e-textbook market.  I played around with it for the first time today, and while the software has some promise, it ultimately struck out for me.

Strike One: It Isn't Cloud-Friendly

The best way I can describe NOOKstudy is as a basic e-book reading software with a heavy dose of Evernote mixed in.  You can create different "courses;" essentially folders that organize your different e-textbooks.  You can also easily upload images and PDFs into your course folders, much like Evernote. The key difference is that you can't access any of this information on another computer.  If your laptop dies and you install the program on a new machine, B&N will restore a backup of your data, but there's no option to access your files and books on, say, a library computer through a web interface.

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