Gambling with Your Future

The newest trend in online gambling? GPA.  That’s right, grade point average.  But it’s not gambling, at least that’s the claim, because on this site you can control the outcome.

The idea with Ultrinsic is for students to bet on their grades.  Obviously you’ll earn more if you bet you’ll get all A’s and then succeed, but you’ll still pull some cash for B’s, as long as you bet that’s what you’ll get in a given semester.  It’s an interesting idea, especially if it motivates students.  Oh the wonders of the internet.

Chegg lets you rent textbooks

Chegg can be a lifeline to students with tight budgets. With Chegg you rent your textbook for the semester for a low price and then return it to the company for someone else to rent.

Just in time for back to school, Chegg now has a iPhone app so you can rent on the go (like when you have sticker shock from the college bookstore!)

Besides being a form of recycling, the site also plants trees each time a textbook is rented.  The site also offers purchase of new and used books.

Found via Geek Sugar

Cell Phone Building Blocks

I love my cell phone, I need it, but (despite the necessity I feel in my own life towards owning one) I don’t feel like little kids ever need them.  Seriously, ask the teacher if you need to call home, ask a friends mom, learn social skills, there’s no need for texting before you hit middle school.

Well, doesn’t matter what i think, Alcatel and Lego have teamed up to do just that, get kiddies connected.  A lego styled cell phone makes perfect sense when you market it towards kids, but I don’t know that it’s necessary.  I know quite a few adults who’d love to get their hands on a lego cell, but we’ll see what happens.  The phone is slated for a summer release.

I don’t know who will end up with the phone actually in their pocket, but I can only hope it’s a bunch of us immature college kids and not second graders.

Robots and Us

This is probably the best idea ever.  Not only does it exemplify disposable tech, it’s also incredibly amusing.

Tweenbots is a project by Tisch ITP students at NYU .  The idea behind the project is to examine people’s relationships to space and how they interact with what they find there.  Armed with a cardboard covered robot and a video camera the experiment is pretty excellent.

The web site has the cutest video of the little robot in Washington Square park and shows both the great people who help it along and the wary people who take a step away.  The trick is the robot can only move forwards and absolutely depends on the help of strangers to get to its destination, the other side of the park.

Due to the unanticipated success of the first project other tweenbot scenarios are under development, including other traveling bots and a few that are left about the city with “family” phone numbers to call if they are found.  I’d help out if I lived in New York City, I only wish I was capable enough to build my own robot in the first place.

5 Minutes Peace

We’ve passed the mid point in the college year so I know that we college students could use a little more downtime and relaxation in our lives (odds are most people could).  The problem is often time, but in the shared living space of a dorm space itself too becomes a problem.

Professors at the University of Hertfordshire however have worked out what they believe to be the most relaxing room in the world.  With soft matting, lavender scented pillows, glade inspired green light, a specially soothing soundtrack, and an artificial blue sky it doesn’t sound half bad.

Not all of us are lucky enough to be able to go test out such a space, but the concept is promising.  Imagine if all student centers had a relaxation room?  Perhaps campus stress would decrease, it wouldn’t hurt.  The only problem would be over crowding when it cam down to finals time.

Could Facebook dash your child’s college dream?

If you needed another reason to help your kids monitor what they write and do on Facebook, MySpace and other networking sites, consider this: 10 percent of college admissions counselors at prestigious universities say they check out potential students pages and 38 percent say they have rejected a student based on what they found.

You should know some colleges do consider the pages off-limits in decision making and personal, but others are looking. Regardless of whether your child’s college admissions office views them, odds are good that future employers might.

With more and more of our lives being available on-line, personal privacy and restraint is more necessary than ever. Teach your children the importance of using privacy options on MySpace and Facebook and check to make sure they are.  Remind them not to post anything they wouldn’t want their parents or their future teachers or employers looking at. It could save their education or their career.

Lets Face It

Facebook.  It’s not a gadget per se, but it deserves discussion .  There are so many assumptions and conflicts surrounding social networks now that sometimes the real reason and use of the things just disappear.

First, of all the social networks  (popular ones including: Myspace, Twitter, Friendster, and Friendfeed) I’m a Facebook user.  So, this post is going to focus on the Facebook specifics, though many of the main points apply to all social networks in general.

Lets be clear, Facebook started as a web site meant to link college students, and then moved to allow high school students, and finally to the world in general.  So, in the beginning, Facebook had everything right.  Not to be self centered, but who needs a simple way to stay connected more than college age students?  Who could learn to use Facebook faster than teenagers?  Far from home with friends spread across the world Facebook provided a simple way to say “hey” and post a picture or two.  It was of course main stream media and the elders who made things “unsafe” on the internet.

From focused advertisement, to identity theft, and job applications, all the warnings that are thrown out today about the dangers of having your information online have nothing to do with staying in contact with friends or sending online invites to study sessions.  Sure, kids have to be smart, adjust privacy settings (which is both possible and simple) so that the jerk giving you a hard time at school can’t stalk your pictures and post inappropriate comments, but that’s common sense (I’d hope).  The serious problem is really misunderstanding then coupled with misuse.

If social networks were just that, a digital connection for social interaction, perhaps controversy would be limited.  But, like email and the evolution of spam, problems will always surround internet communication.  All we can do now is take a step back, and maybe give kids a little slack in some areas.  Sometimes a red plastic cup in a profile picture is nothing more than a red plastic cup.

Biking Better

With the new fad that is “going green” college campuses are not the only place bicycles are a hot trend this year (though my campus does have more than its fair share of bikers) there was bound to be a great technological innovation eventual.

In this case I’m talking about the ibike console.  Lets be honest as beautiful as nature is a long ride like workout always goes better with some tunes, the ibike console hopes to provide a safer version of just that.

The console is basically designed as a shock proof weather resistant case for any ipod nano (and only nanos as of right now) on a pair of handle bars, but it gets better.  Stay safe with button controls that also attach to the handle bars and can be reached for with a single thumb.  The controls are wireless so no extra hassle.  No more balancing on a sidewalk while you toggle through a playlist in one not so free hand.

The console also provides exercise information, like distance ridden, and stores the info on a separate chip even with the ipod unplugged.  Add to that an optional pair of speakers and the worries of being deaf to traffic signals due to ear phones disappear too.

Boy do I feel old!

Each year Beloit College puts out a list about the mindset of college freshman listing things that have (or haven’t)influenced their lives. When I was a college freshman in 1994, email and the Internet was just beginning to make their presence known in the college world. Wired dorms were cutting edge and email accounts were just becoming vogue. Now it’s so commonplace, universities don’t even mention it.

Consider the class of 2012 which has grown up in a world of digital communication and rapid-fire access to information.  The digital family lifestyle is the way it is and always has been.

• Born around 1990, for these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.
• They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib.
• Students have always been “Rocking the Vote.”
• Pee-Wee has never been in his playhouse during the day.
• Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
• more

Or view a webcast of the authors of the list talking about the list and what it means about the students entering colleges this year.

A Taste of Variety

What’s the first complaint about college cafeterias?  The food? Maybe. The lines? Probably.  The soda options?  Whether or not soda is the first thing on your mind on campus Coca Cola is looking to rectify any disappointments you may have.

Coca Cola has proposed a new sort of soda fountain with more than a mere eight or ten flavors.  The new Coke machine could have up to a hundred different options.  Prototypes were supposedly tested at the beginning of this summer second generation tests will start in 2009.

It’s pretty exciting, something old becoming new again.  I only question what the new lines in the cafeteria might look like when a hundred flavors need sorting through instead just a handful.