Stuff for Starving Students

Last week theYeahNo added a post to sfss about the amazing Ubuntu.  I thought I’d let you all know that if you don’t want to take the time to download Ubuntu on your computer, say you want to take this baby for a test drive, you can come down to the third floor of Dupont and pick yourself up a copy.  If you like it, keep it on your machine, but if not, that’s okay too!  So I have lots of copies, check it out.

Have you ever tried setting up a meeting with a lot of people via e-mail? If you have you probably know the confusion that can occur as people reply, reply-all, change their minds and never respond. Or maybe you already have a day picked out but your group can’t decide where to eat or what movie to see. Is there a web 2.0 solution for your problem? Why yes, yes there is.

Let me introduce you to a lovely site called Doodle.

So how does Doodle work? Let me quote directly from the site
1) Create a poll
2) Forward the link to the poll to the participants.
3) Follow online what the participants vote for.

I used Doodle to help set up a meeting for those students interested in writing for this site (and if you are let me know!) and with a few clicks I was able to give them many time and day options. A nice feature of Doodle is that it will show you how many votes there are for each day/time combo. It may seem simple but this can give you a visual view of what day/time may be better and if you have more than one option for your get together. Another idea is creating a list of things you need people to bring to a party and have people sign up for what you need.

Give it a try and you will find that is much easier than the back and forth of e-mails and allows for many more nuances than simple e-mailing can’t get at. So throw a party, have doodle help you set it all up and don’t forget to invite your favorite starving students.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Joe Shlabotnik

I’m one of those people who looks online continuously for computer programs that will help my computer become more lean.  Be it defragging, antispyware, firewall, or antivirus software, I’m always looking for the greener pasture, and although this robs me of work time every now and then, it does mean my computer doesn’t have any viruses.  When I think of computer programs that have improved my productivity, I sometimes actually think of an entire company–IOBit.

IOBit has three major products:  Advanced SystemCare, Smart Defrag, and Security 360, which just left beta testing recently.  These three programs will clean your registry, delete spyware, optimize settings, defrag, and protect your system from threats that one can easily pick up while downloading the latest Jessica Biel screensavers.  While there are paid versions offered, the free versions work pretty much the same except with a few gimped settings, including their periodic scans being locked.

As said earlier, Security 360 is the latest addition to their arsenal and acts much like other anti-malware products do (except better).  Being as the main selling point of these programs is how easy they are to use (and they really are), it only takes one click to scan your system for spyware, and another to protect your computer from malware actively, much like Spybot Search and Destroy uses the its “immunize” function.  It also includes a scan for security holes and a privacy sweeper.

There really isn’t anything like trying these programs out for yourself though, and if it makes you feel any better, they are clean and easy to uninstall, too.