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Posts Filed under: Back to School Guide 2008

University of Kentucky Ditching Land Lines for Cell Phones

http://www.uky.edu/uksb07/assets/background.jpgIt's hard to find similarities across any random selection of college students, with each having different backgrounds, goals, and preferred alcoholic beverages. There is, however, one commonality: cell phones. A study at the University of Kentucky recently found that 98.2-percent of UK students had cell phones that they relied on for their primary means of communication, findings that have spurred the school to ditch land-lines in dorms, a move that will save the school $840,000-per-year.

Land-lines are being deactivated at a savings of $25-per-student. This is money that will offset rising heating costs this year, meaning room and board fees will not increase as they otherwise would have. Students do have the option of having their lines enabled, but so far only seven out of 5,600 students living in on-campus housing have suffered the shame of doing so. In case of emergency, UK has a system that can contact students on their cell phones just as easily as land-lines, meaning everybody wins and everyone is safe -- except for old-school phone companies that haven't gotten with the times yet. [From: nky.com]

Teachers Integrating Cell Phones Into Classrooms

Lights

If you can't beat em'...let them use their cell phones in class.

Teachers, who have obviously realized that cell phones are as ubiquitous in schools as paper and pencils, are beginning to use the ubiquitous devices as educational tools. According to a Pew Research Center survey, approximately 71-percent of teens who responded to the survey own cell phones. Teachers are using the cell phones to send e-mails, virtual handouts and podcasts.

The logic here is simple, but it does raise questions. Will students unable to afford cell phones have a stigma attached to them and be ridiculed by their fellow classmates? Will students that can afford cell phones have an advantage over those students who cant?

If done correctly, this techno-integration of the classroom could be a teachers best friend. Conversely, if executed poorly, it could be the catalyst for yet another source of social segregation. [From: Textually]





Top 25 Downloads For Your Computer

The first thing you should do when you get your new laptop or computer is uninstall all that free trial crap that gets loaded on by the manufacturer. Six Months of Earthlink, two weeks of Adobe Photoshop Elements, McAfee Anti-Virus, one month of MusicMatch... who needs it? Not you! (Besides eventually charging you money, a lot of these programs you didn't ask for can slow down your computer.)

Now that you've cleared out some room on that hard drive, start installing some of these free and useful applications, many of which are open source (meaning anyone can view and alter the code of the program to improve or customize it if they have the skill or desire). Here are 25 applications -- almost all of them free -- that will let you do almost anything you could need to on your computer, without you having to spend a dime.



Ad-Aware
(Windows XP and Vista)

One of the biggest annoyances and dangers online is the dearth of spyware, adware, and other random software that gets silently installed on your PC by thieves, hackers, and disreputable sites -- at best, it slows down your system; at worst, it spies on your computing activity and lets online scammers steal passwords and other sensitive information. Cleaning the malicious code that gets loaded on your PC is a hassle and a half, especially if you don't have a tool like Ad-Aware to do most of the heavy lifting for you. Ad-Aware searches the files and registry entries on your computer and matches them against a list of known malicious software. After it reports back its findings, it will either delete or quarantine the offending code, saving you the trouble of searching through the daunting Windows registry yourself. We've found Ad-Aware to be the easiest and least resource-heavy of these anti-ad-and-spy-ware tools.

Search for T-Shirts Online With PleaseDressMe

PleaseDressMe, The T-Shirt Search Engine
The Web is filled with crappily organized sites that sell supposedly humorous T-shirts. So how do you find just the right shirt with a poor attempt at irony on the front? Check out PleaseDressMe, a search engine that digs through the inventory of sites such as Threadless and BustedTees.

PleaseDressMe lets you perform text searches of the descriptions, as well as browse by tag, size, and price. The text search turns up surprisingly few results, but browsing by price, size, and color is quite helpful.

Now if only some of the shirts were actually funny. [From: Download Squad]

Related Links:

Top 11 Geek T-Shirts

How to Be a Less Annoying Roommate (Video)


Back-to-school means back to living in confined spaces with roommates, which means you're likely to all get on each others' nerves. Loud music, flashy video game graphics coming off of LCD screens, and post-party room stench can lead to domestic conflicts with dorm mates. Luckily, a slew of gadgets can help you be a less annoying roommate -- and we've got a few of our favorites highlighted in the above video.

Incidentally, these gadgets will work nicely in small apartments, for the rest of us who have already graduated....

Invest In Your Favorite Rock Band With Bandstocks

guitarista

Everyone has a favorite band. What if you could actually support that band. We know, you support them by paying hard-earned money to buy their music and to see them when they're on tour. But what if you could literally help them make their next album. Intrigued?

We thought so.

A new Web site backed by the executives responsible for acts like Kaiser Chiefs and Primal Scream will allow fans to invest in their favorite acts. Bandstocks.com allows the public to purchase stakes in artists in increments of 10 British pounds (about $18). When money invested reaches a certain level, that money is released for the band to to record a new album.

Those who choose to invest in a band will receive the following:
  • Credit on the CD sleeve
  • Percentage of the profits from its sale and licensing
  • Priority ticket booking
  • Opportunity to buy limited edition releases
This could be the future of music. It could also be the graveyard of bank accounts for the musically obsessed. Either way, it rocks! [From: TheGuardian]

Online Bullying a Public Health Threat, Says CDC

Cyber-Bullying Seen as Public Health ThreatEverybody knows that cyber-bullying (when someone goes out of their way to be a jerk online, a.k.a. 'griefing') is terrifically irritating. It's behavior that many gamers, particularly those in the online virtual world 'Second Life,' have turned into something of a degenerate art form. But is it a threat to our health? Yes, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC has elevated the discussion of this issue from niche online nuisance to a decidedly mainstream issue.

According to a newly-released CDC report, cyber-bullying incidents rose 50-percent between 2000 and 2005. While there haven't been any studies since, there's little doubt that online bullying hasn't seen similar -- if not more dramatic -- growth since then.

Unfortunately, the report says, not much can be done about online bullying, since filtering non-profane but still hateful speech is all but impossible online. If you're a parent, we suggest you talk to your kids about online bullies and how pathetic they are -- not only so that they're not offended by them, but so that they don't turn into bullies themselves. And, if you're a victim yourself, just try to ignore it. Remember: Don't feed the trolls! [From: USA Today]

Microsoft Adds 'Porn Mode' to Internet Explorer 8



Worried about your girlfriend, wife, or mom seeing all the dirty stuff you check out online? Well, fear not, perv, as Microsoft's 8th edition of Internet Explorer (IE) will include a feature that lets you surf the Web without a trace of what you checked out.

The new tool, called InPrivate Browsing, will debut later this month in the second Beta version of IE 8. When you, um, turn this feature on, IE will not save your browsing or search history, cookies, form data, or passwords, and will clear its cache when you're, um, done. While Microsoft says it's designed for people using public or shared computers, do we really need to explain why this is being dubbed "porn mode?"

Other new features include InPrivate Blocking, which tells you when content is able to track your browsing history, and InPrivate Subscription, which gives you lists of sites to block. Another change is to the "Delete Browsing History" option, which now lets you keep cookies for certain sites. Mozilla, which was supposed to have similar features in Firefox 3.0, is hoping to have it in 3.1 sometime in the next few months. Stay tuned. [From: Computerworld]

How to Convert Vinyl Records to MP3s (USB Turntable)



If you were born anytime before 1980, chances are you've at least a few records in your lifetime. But unless you're some young hipster enjoying the retro-lust for vinyl, you probably don't listen to those LPs much anymore, which is why you need to get them onto your iPod as quickly as possible. Time was that digitizing your vinyl took some complicated computer configuration, but over the past few years, the process has become as easy as plugging a USB Turntable into your PC and putting the needle on the record. Watch our video for a quick hands-on demo....

12 Legal Sites That Could Save Your College Career



During those days of the week that college students aren't partying – somewhere between two and five, probably – they're expected to be somewhat responsible adults. Juggling assignments, schedules, finances, and the prospect of life out of school isn't easy, so we scoured the Internet for the best Web sites that make a student's life easier. The fall semester will be here before you know it, so read up now.

Switched Video

 



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