Category: Back to School 2008

If the Nintendo DS and a random laptop hooked up, the Sharp Mebius would be their love child. The unique-looking netbook features two different LCD screens, the main one being 10.1-inches, and the second being 4-inches and doubling as a visually-enabled trackpad-cum-touchscreen. The 'trackpad' screen is the world's first optical sensor LCD, which essentially means it stays bright and can handle ...

Kids have always loved to mix it up with a little school-time tomfoolery, whether it's streaking at a football game or leaving a flaming bag of poop on a teacher's doorstep. But in the digital age, the mischief has moved online. What may seem like harmless virtual-reality hijinks can have devastating real-world consequences. Switched consulted sociologist Carrie James of Harvard's GoodPlay ...

While you'd be hard pressed to find the latest styles of sneakers and hoodies adorning the pages of Vogue, that's not to say fashion designers don't think about the geeks out there. (We're being polite: this means you.) So to aid with your back-to-school sartorial choices, we came up with our own geek-centric fashion picks for the season. We think you'll find them fabulous. ...

Hype Check: 'The Beatles: Rock Band' (MTV Games/Harmonix) What it is: A little band called The Beatles has joined forces with a little game called 'Rock Band' to create what is arguably the most highly anticipated music game to date. It includes 45 songs by the seminal British band, and a full-on visual overhaul to depict the Beatles' members and style. The game comes either bundled with ...

Odds are your computer's monitor looks a lot like everyone else's. Well, we here at Switched like to break out of the status quo, and we've found 10 screens that do the same. ...

Question: I use my computer for most of my TV and movie watching and music listening, but my machine's built-in speakers sound bloody awful. I want a set of computer speakers that sounds good whether cranked up loud or turned down soft. And I don't want to spend a fortune. Advice: The underpowered speakers built into laptops and desktops can suck the life out of any video or song. They're too ...

Going back to school may not be fun, but it's a great excuse to buy new gear. Whether it's college or high school that calls you back, rest assured that the dozen gizmos the Switched.com crew has found will make your weekdays less painful. ...

Online college applications are one of the greatest gifts to lazy, procrastinating high school seniors around the country. Of course, now everyone can literally wait till the last moment to apply for schools, and this year that is exactly what happened. Common Application, a site that handles applications for 350 different colleges and universities, was inundated with more than 171,000 apps ...

It'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 ...

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 ...

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.) ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

Everybody 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 ...