10 great apps for college students

This article provides links to 10 great applications every college student could use. From Google Docs to help with bibliographies this blog highlights great tools to help you get things done. A favorite from the list is MyNoteIt.com.

There are definitely some good GTD tools and cloud computing tools that allow you to work from anywhere or any computer on the web.

Getting more financial aid

As someone who struggled financially during a long educational career, I know that times are tough and finding ways to pay for school are a top concern. That's why I'm posting the following link to a great site with fresh ideas on financial aid. Financial Aid Podcast (http://www.financialaidpodcast.com) is a great overall site for insights on paying for college; the following post addresses some of those concerns in particular: How to ask for more financial aid.

Let me know what you think....

Get out of Debt - Part 2

Though I've posted a number of finance tips in the past, recent research has turned up a host of how-to financial sites that I wish I had known about as a college student. If you are a financial wizard and understand amortization calculation, debt to income ratios and FICO scores, then the sites below are on a beginner level. However, if these terms are new to you, then the following sites are a godsend for learning about debt, money mangement, and methods of moving toward a debt-free existence.

Learning the ropes of finance 101: everything you wish someone had told you earlier...

About Debt:

1. Debt to loan Ratios the basics: http://ezinearticles.com/?Debt-To-Income-Ratio---A-Critical-Factor-In-Your-Credit-Score&id=806220
2. Debt to income ratios - part 2 from Buzzle.com
3. The Motley Fool provides a wonderful free guide and workbook for getting out of debt; this site alone is a great first step toward financial solvency.
4. Finally if you are in debt, Dave Ramsey presents an interesting take on the psychology of debt reduction with his debt snowball site.
   
5. Buzzle.com has a nice debt reduction resource list. It's a great place to survey the range of considerations necessary to make a serious go at debt.
6. The Federal Trade Commission has tons of information about credit repair, debt management, financial counseling,
   

Learn about loans and interest by playing with the amortization calculator.

Finally, the following blogs are written by people who've wrestled with debt and survived. They teach money management skills, provide goos links and provide a nice place to learn about budgeting, financial investing and resources for tracking your cash.

1. The Get Rich Slowly blog is a nice place to learn about day-to-day management issues that are critical for financial success. The tone is friendly and the posters are real folks, not account managers or sleazy "credit counselors" trolling for clients.
   
2. Ramit Sethi's I will teach you to be rich blog is valuable because it also covers business building techniques.
3. Mint Money Management free software might do the trick if you're looking for an all-in-one stop shop for organizing your finances. As always, verify that privacy concerns are respected and this could be a great tool.

So that's it, a fairly comprehensive get started set of finance tools.

Enjoy!
phree

Quick Web Designs for Mortals

If you need a web site that you can tweak and reverse engineer then the Open Source Design project is for you. Non-web designers often need to post projects sites quickly and the open source design project provides clean basic web sites that you can download, tweak and upload in a matter of hours. For graphic/web designers and photographers the sites may not fully meet your needs but for those who need quick design, the sites are ideal starting points.

If you download and use one of these sites, please provide feedback below.
take care,
phree

Logo Design - Top 50 Tutorials

For graphic designers working on projects that require logo design, the following tutorials may provide insights and inspiration: http://www.elogodesign.com/logo-design-tutorials/.

The site contains various pointers and tips for thinking about design concerns and is highly recommended for those having a creative block.

Use it to get a jump start on projects.

Keep up with the latest in design with Design Observer

If you are majoring in any type of design field, it's good to know what the people in the field are writing and thinking about. The Design Observer blog is a good place to start. It contains articles and links to literally thousands of resources posted by persons in the field. To see what's hot and what's not, go to Design Observer.

Best CSS of 2007

Check out Web Design Wall's Best CSS of 2007 page with lots of inspiring design ideas. One of my favorites is the typography blog because it conveys a strong interest in - well, typography.

If you are an up and coming web designer, you can't afford to ignore this list.

Quicktime Player Quickness

As a media artist (especially animators) you often find yourself scrubbing through sections of movies many, many times to review your work. Quicktime works very well for this purpose and is my current player of choice (I also dig the VLC player, since it can play DVDs and is free to the masses).

The shortcuts/features I find myself using most...

Drag the in and out points to the area of a movie to review and use these shortcuts to quickly replay the footage:
Enter or spacebar : Plays if paused; pauses if playing
Ctrl + Alt + right arrow key : Jumps to end of movie or end of selection
Ctrl + Alt + left arrow key : Jumps to beginning of movie or beginning of selection
Left or right arrow keys : Step back or advance one frame

More shortcuts...

http://images.apple.com/quicktime/pdf/QuickTime7_User_Guide.pdf

Learn everything with MIT's Opencourseware

Ever wish you'd taken a class that wasn't offered or convenient during your college career? Well MIT has the ultimate answer in that it publishes over 600 courses offered at its posh Boston campus. Want a course in programming or algorithms, check out the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department or the Science and Technology courses. For the record, MIT publishes the syllabus, assignments, exercises, etc., but you would still have to buy the books required to learn the material. Since it is all accessed free, you won't receive credit, but it's all about the knowledge anyway. So get out there and have fun!

Learn C++ & Java from the Master

My programming gurus led me to this source a few years back and I heartily recommend the following resource for anyone who wants to learn C++ or Java. Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in ..." series is by far the best resource I've found for someone who wants to learn to think like a programmer.

Check out his site @ http://mindview.net where he gives free PDFs of Thinking In C++ & Thinking in Java