Category: Back to School 2008

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 ...

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 ...

Drinking We're not condoning any sort of illegal or binge drinking here, but we're rational people so we know it happens on college campuses. In the interest of safety, you should know how much you're ingesting and how impaired it's making you, so check yourself with the Blood Alcohol Calculator. Just put in what you're drinking, how many you've had, your weight, and the time spent imbibing ...

Life Hacking As an undergrad, you can spend your time working extra hard or you can adapt to get by with minimal effort. HackCollege offers guidance on making student life easier and better with tips on text messaging for free and buying Girl Scout cookies. For hitting the books, check out Student Hacks, a site dedicated to productivity tricks and suggestions. Rather than visit a tutor, you ...

Decorating Having your own dorm room gives you the freedom to put up as many Bob Marley posters as you want, if you want to be generic. Or, you can develop your own style with tips from DormDelicious. This Web site offers suggestions for what colors to paint your walls, things you shouldn't bring from home, and so on. We're not saying you should follow every tip, because that wouldn't be ...

Making Money Making money while in college doesn't have to be restricted to lame campus jobs or dealing drugs. If you have what you think is a great business idea, go for it with advice from Dorm Room Biz, a site dedicated to student entrepreneurs. If you're uninspired, check out Broke Grad Student, a blog that offers out of the ordinary financial tips for college and grad students. Our ...

Bibliographies Can you easily remember easily remember the differences between MLA, APA, and Chicago styles for any type of book? If not, do you want to learn how for your next research paper? No? Then head to OttoBib or Son of Citation Machine, both of which give you the proper entries for your works cited page. OttoBib has you put in the ISBN number of the book or books and gives you the ...

Note Taking In the history of academia, it's a known fact that dogs eat notebooks all the time. To avoid this tragedy, you can store your notes online at sites like Notecentric and mynoteIT. From there, you can search through them, make changes, and share them with whoever you want. Better yet, you can let somebody else in your class do it and then beg or bribe them into sharing them with ...

Group Assignments Between slackers, control freaks, and scheduling problems, working in groups can be a hassle. Thankfully, Google Docs lets you collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations without ever being in the same room as your classmates. Upload whatever you're working on and people can edit whenever they please, and with a supported phone, you can view the files from ...

Life After Graduation Provided that you're not planning to live with your parents permanently after college, the transition to the real world can be difficult. If you need help – it's okay to admit it, we won't tell – check out Gradspot, a site devoted to helping you make that leap. There's career advice, recipes, apartment tips, survival guides, and message boards to aid you in ...

Reference Researching for a literature paper or test? Well, you can't use Wikipedia but you don't have to go to the library for reference materials either, thanks to timesavers like Bartelby.com and Bibliomania. Both sites offer classic texts and reference material, with Bibliomania catering more towards the slacker crowd with its book summaries, notes, and study guides. The only downside ...

Tuition Help While some students' financial woes are limited to scouring couch cushions before 25 cent beer night, millions have to worry about paying for tuition. Luckily, there are lots of sites that offer financial information and recommendations, some for free, others for a fee. TuitionCoach offers free cost quotes and financial aid form help, while for $59 a year, you get analysis on ...

Textbooks College bookstores might as well be run by loan sharks for the quality of service they give you. If you're college doesn't have its own book exchange set up, head to BookFinder.com and Textbook411, which look for the best deals on the texts you need. If you're environmentally conscious or don't mind reading off your computer, CafeScribe lets you purchase e-textbooks for about half ...

Professor Evaluations Whether you're choosing courses for your major or trying to find an easy A – jump rope 101? Check – you absolutely need to find out about your professor before committing to anything. Rather than asking everyone you know, just check out sites like RateMyProfessors.com and Pick-A-Prof, where students post evaluations of their old teachers. It's like taking a ...

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 ...