Have you ever “lost” an article?

You know what I’m talking about — you started reading something great, bookmarked it, and then when you went looking for it two months later the only thing you can find is 404 Page Not Found? Or maybe you found it, but now the website wants you to fork over some cash in order to see it?

I hate emailing myself a link, or bookmarking it, only to learn later that the material is off-limits. The biggest culprit was the New York Times. Until recently, they would charge you for access to articles that were more than 10 days old. That meant that if I read a great editorial and the topic came up during a discussion with someone two weeks later, I couldn’t send him the link (how many students pay to read archived news?).

But there were other sites too - for instance, a couple of years ago, Poynter.org ran an amazing article series called Fifty Writing Tools. It was the best writing advice I’d ever received, and I bookmarked the index page so that I could come back to read it again and again. A few months ago, I went back to Poynter to find that half of the links were broken. I wish I could have saved those articles somewhere, and shared them with some of my friends who are aspiring journalists. (Incidentally, in writing this article I went back to Poynter and was absolutely delighted to find that the writing tips are back in the form of podcasts. Check them out at http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=78&aid=103943).

Digg and del.icio.us are fantastic social bookmarking sites, but they don’t allow you to save your own copies of a web page.

Yahoo! introduced a very handy resource for bookmarking pages a couple of years ago. It’s part of Yahoo! MyWeb, which is still in Beta - I guess they were taking a page from the book of Google, no pun intended. (Alright, maybe a little.)

Head over to http://myweb.yahoo.com, and once you’ve signed up, click on My Bookmarks. Since you’re just starting out, you don’t have any bookmarks. So let’s add one. On the MyWeb banner with the search box, find the link for Add Page. When you click it, a pop-up window will open up asking you for the url of the page and some other details. I took a screenshot of my own MyWeb Bookmarks page, with the window open.

As you can see, it is possible to set both public and private access levels. However, the option we are most interested in appears all the way at the bottom, in the form of a checkbox next to “Store a copy of this page.” Fill out the form, making sure that this option is checked.

When you submit the page, you’ll see something like the display in the background of my screenshot, in the main browser window. As you can see, I have saved four articles (more, actually), and for three of those articles I have added the note “For use in blog”. I got tired of linking to articles only to have them moved to paid archives (see earlier rant about New York Times). Those dates say 2008 but they are actually 2005 (I edited something small so it updated the date). If you click the titles, you will be taken to www.nytimes.com. However, if you click the little link that says “My saved copy” that I’ve circled in red, you’ll be taken to this page. Isn’t that cool?

Some convenient toolbars for your browser are available here. And if you want to use Yahoo! MyWeb for your social bookmarking, you can share saved pages with friends and colleagues under the My Contacts tab. You’ll have to add a contact first, but after that you can share easily. Try it out — my user is sadp182.

I use MyWeb occasionally to bookmark my favorite articles, to save a link when I’m putting it up on my blog, and for saving internet-based references when I’m doing research and need to be able to come back later. I hope you’ll find it useful as well!

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School is hard. Between papers to write, tests to study for, projects to finish, and trying to actually have a social life, there’s a lot for students to do. There’s also a lot of software out there that promises to make things easier - unfortunately, a lot of it can break a student budget. Fear not, though, there is help!

Students have a lot of needs when it comes to technology, and thankfully, there are free solutions to most of them. From security to socializing, I’m going to walk you through the essential software for students to keep their schoolwork and schedules on track.

Security

AVG by Grisoft makes an excellent suite of anti-malware software. There are three programs in the suite: AVG Anti-Virus Free, AVG Anti-Spyware Free, and AVG Anti-Rootkit Free. They work well, update automatically, and you don’t have to worry about your subscription - and your protection - running out.

As for a firewall, ZoneAlarm is a great choice, free for personal and charitable use. When a program tries to access the internet, ZoneAlarm pops up a message requesting access – if you don’t know whether to allow it or not, ZoneAlarm will offer advice about what to do.

Web Browsing and Email

For web browsing, you should get Mozilla Firefox. It’s free, it has thousands of extensions to do anything you could possibly want to do with a web browser, and it has security features built in. If you don’t do anything else, get rid of Internet Explorer. It’s a magnet for viruses, spyware, and just about every other kind of security problem that exists.

While you’re switching to Firefox, check out Mozilla Thunderbird for email. It does everything Outlook does, and like Firefox, has great extensions and built-in security.

Office Applications

Eventually, you’re going to need to write something, or create a spreadsheet. Instead of paying $300 for Microsoft Office, get OpenOffice. It does everything that Microsoft Office does, and it’s completely free.

Likewise, why settle for the restricted features of Adobe’s Acrobat Reader? Get Foxit Reader instead – it’s faster, it lets you do things Acrobat doesn’t, and it’s free.

At some point, you’re probably going to want to do some image editing. You can shell out hundreds for Adobe Photoshop, or you can get The GIMP, a free, open-source alternative. GIMP can be a bit less intuitive, but once you learn to master it, there’s not much you can’t do with it.

Calendar

If you’re going to keep your schedule together, you’ll need a calendar. Paper calendars are great, and it’s a good idea to have one for those times when you can’t get to your online one. However, there are a lot of positives to online calendars: email and text-message reminders, guest invitations and RSVPs, group sharing, and of course, being able to access it anywhere in the world. When it comes to online calendars, Google Calendar is my favorite.

If you like having a desktop calendar program, I recommend getting a Google Calendar account and downloading Mozilla Sunbird, a full-featured calendar program that integrates well with GCal. If you’re using Thunderbird for email, you can get Lightning, a great calendar extension for Thunderbird.

Chatting

There are a lot of great services out there for chatting. MSN, AOL, Yahoo, and Google all have their own services. If you’re using them all, you should consider a multi-service client like Pidgin.

You can log into all your IM accounts through Pidgin and save the system resources used by running several different clients.If you want the ultimate in chatting, though, you should go for Skype. Not only does Skype provide user-to-user and group chats like the other programs, but it offers free user-to-user VOIP phone calls. You can even have large conference calls with groups of Skype users, anywhere in the world. Skype also offers plans that allow you to call landline phones, and to receive calls from landlines; in some cases, you can have your whole year’s phone service for less than you’d spend for two months with regular phone service.

Online Applications

There are some great online applications out there for students as well. Google offers a whole library of services, including Google Scholar, Google Book Search, Google Earth, Google Translate, and the previously mentioned Google Calendar.

For note-taking, NoteSake is an excellent online application. NoteSake lets you take your notes online, share them with others, collaborate with groups, organize them, and even provide copies to others who weren’t in class.

If you’re learning a foreign language, Mango provides free online language courses. You can choose from eleven different languages, with more to come. Mango is a beta release, however, so don’t be surprised if you find the occasional cucaracha.

Justin Ryan is a freelance writer and technology consultant. He is the News Editor for LinuxJournal.com and a regular blogger for Wisebread.com, where he writes on technology, personal finance, and savvy living.

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Facebook has become a major distraction for university students around the world. There is just so much happening at any one time that all thoughts of assignments and study get thrown out the window. This has happened to me on many occasions. But there are some applications you can use to help increase your productivity, and get more things done in the long run. Instead of writing messages to friends, turning people into vampires, and throwing food at others, these Facebook apps are some of the best on the web. For educational purposes that is:

1. Class Notes - If you happen to miss a lecture, then the class notes application may save you a lot of time and effort. This is basically a directory of photos of class notes, lecture notes, and anything else that was displayed at your courses. So, you just have to hope that someone has uploaded the information you are missing, but with over 1700 users that may be very likely.
2. Cheap Textbooks - All students wish they could spend less money on textbooks, and with the ever increasing cost and size of textbooks, a way to reduce this cost will become very popular. In comes Cheap Textbooks. Simply type in the title of your book and you will be shown the compared costs between over 30 online bookstore. This could save several hundred dollars a semester. And who said Facebook was a distraction!
3. Hey Math - Throughout the world most people consider maths to be their most hated and hardest subject. It can be so complicated that you are completely lost, but it can also be logical and rational. With the Hey Math widget you can finally start to understand some of the most difficult mathematical concepts. Hey Math is a library of mini movies that “visually explain hundreds of difficult maths concepts.”
4. Zoho - Zoho Online Office allows you to collect all of your documents, spreadsheets and presentations in one place online. From here you can share them with friends without needing an offline copy. With this app you will never again be restricted by the difficulty of emailing your work around. I think I will keep an offline backup as well though… just in case.
5. Ask Questions, Get Answers - If you are having difficulty with any of your uni work, then using this application, simply type in your question and sit back and relax as you wait for any answer. Basically, Ask Questions, Get Answers allows you to post questions and answers to anyone in the Facebook community. A great time saver, but only if there is someone who knows the answer.
6. Easy Bibliography Generator - Have you ever been concerned with which format of bibliography and references to do? There are dozens of different styles that could be used, and are needed depending on the scenario. Thankfully, this Easy Bibliography Generator can format your references into MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian. This can be a time saver, but only if the format you need is there, otherwise you are on your own!
7. Notely - Notely is possibly one of the best student based online tools available, and it is now on Facebook. This system is a virtual homepage for any university student. It allows you to post to-do lists and shows which ones need to be done first. You can upload notes, write notes, set up a calendar, and pretty much anything else that you have ever wanted in one place. With this single application you can transform Facebook from a distraction into a study hub!
8. Docs - Simply put, Docs is a library of uploaded schoolwork. There are over 50,000 documents available from lecture notes, to problem questions and everything in between. Even though they claim to try and deal with plagerism, I have no doubt that there would be a significant quantity of that going on within this app, yet with nearly 10,000 users I’m certain that there is a lot of useful information available.
9. Scholarium - Scholarium is a combination of several other applications into the one system. You can view your friends timetables, rate your professors/lecturers, and find classmates with who you share courses. This could be very powerful, but it is still quite new and has yet to gain much momentum.
10. To Do List - A simple, and yet powerful tool for any student. You can add to your To Do list, see which ones are approaching, and cross them off when completely. While this is a great start for any student, I do not see why there needs to be a facebook application for it. Surely it can be done much easier just with a pen and a piece of paper.

As you can see there are dozens of great applications to turn your facebook profile into a machine of productivity and achievement. The only problem is that these to could become distractions. At least you now have an excuse for spending mass amounts of time there!

It is true that there are dozens, if not hundreds of distracting applications on facebook that can make you forget about assignments, ignore exams, and skip classes. I know this from experience… a lot of experience! Actually, it seems like I spend a lot more time on there than I should, and the problems are these three applications:

1. Roshambull - A massive online Paper, Scissors, Rock competition with over 100,000 players. You can bet on each game, and eventually build up your credits. The main part of the game is to increase your rankings by beating your friends, as well as dozens of random players. I am currently the number #1 in my university, and in the top 500 in the world.
2. Vampires - Build your vampire by attacking other vampires, and increasing your vampire army. This can get very addictive, especially if you start to get into the higher levels. This app also has over 150,000 vampires, so you are never short of an opponent.
3. Pirates vs Ninjas - Who would win, a pirate or a ninja? This is one of the lifelong questions that everyone will ask themselves from time to time. I am a ninja man myself, but pirates are not far behind.

So, in conclusion. If you want to increase your grades, add the first 10 applications, and stay away from the last 3 applications. This is one of the major battles that any student will face, but you must stay strong, and focus on your studies. Stay motivated and determined!

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There are a multitude of online student tools available that can help you organize your university life. A very new website that is sure to become extremely popular amongst college students is NoteSake. Just some of its features include:

• Collaborate with Groups
• Pass Notes to People
• Access Notes from any Computer
• Organize Notes by Title, Date or any Custom Tag

This truly is a compilation of all your university work, and will definetly become many student’s homepages.

Having all of your information about your work in a single place is a very important, and will help when exams come along. No longer do you have to search through a tattered note pad or through a huge bunch of loose leaf paper. It is all there right in front of you. This can increase your productivity dramatically, but make sure you do not get distracted!

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