I have now seen three college commencement speeches in my life, all on YouTube. Those speeches were by Steve Jobs, Michelle Obama and then today I watch Salman Khan’s speech at Rice University to the 2012 graduates.  Like any other commencement speech Khan had some general life advice for the college graduate’s futures. However, I found Khan’s speech to be greater than most of the average commencement speeches, as it seemed more personal advice to the graduates. I found this advice to be good advice to not just graduates, but ALL college students, and to all humans in general.

Increase Positivity  

Khan spoke of validating and empowering others.  A lot of people speak of doing random acts of kindness to strangers and to the people whom you are close with. Khan takes this idea one step further by saying, when you see someone do a random act of kindness, react to it. Tell the kind person that you appreciate what they did, and that will make them feel good for being good. This in turn creates a sort of chain reaction, causing that person to do more nice things, and others around them will also want to be nice and have that same recognition.

Be a Life Long Learner

Khan stresses that we should all enjoy learning, no matter what our age or state, and just always continue learning. The end of this term is here, or approaching for some of you, and that means you either get a long summer break or that you’re done with college forever. However, this does not mean we should stop learning.  Learning is great. Why would we not continue?  Even though school has ended we can all keep learning in many ways, like by reading, or watch Khan Academy videos. And now that we are not in school, learning will be a lot less stressful without tests and homework.

Put Life in Perspectives of the Universe

Life is tough, we  are always going to have setbacks and small stresses. Khan reminds us during his commencement speech to keep in mind who you are. Humans are a small blemish of history on a tiny planet in a ginormous universe. Is your broken phone really that big of a stress? Probably not. It sucks, but you’ll live.

I recommend watching Khan’s speech here, in order to gain a better sense of some of these ideas he shares.

Next week, we’ll discuss what humans can learn from Andy Samberg’s speech at Harvard.

It is that time of year to pack up apartments and dorms to move for the summer.  While the stress of finals may be over, the stress of how in the world you are going to pack up all of your stuff (how is it that you have so much stuff anyhow?!) and get it all home is just beginning.  Although I’m not moving this semester (yay for me!), I have moved so many times in my life that I am now a master packer.  Here are my three tips for packing up your dorm or apartment painlessly.

Organize:  This is the biggie and if you do it right, you’ll save yourself a world of stress if you take a moment to get organized.  The first step is to know when you are moving and where you are moving to.  The second step is to figure out what you are going to pack up and take with you.  Get rid of all the trash and broken things that can’t be used again.  Donate or sell anything that you don’t need or want.  If you have roommates, don’t forget to discuss who is taking what shared items (like a fridge or microwave).  How are you getting the rest of your stuff home?  Are you driving it home?  Will it all fit in your car or will you have to rent a truck?  Have you thought about shipping some things home (USPS has flat rate priority mail boxes that are reasonably priced)?  Now that all the extra stuff is taken care of, your space should only include the things you are packing.

Packing: Packing is like an extensive game of Tetris.  The key here is to make sure you find sturdy boxes that won’t fall apart easily.  I like to try for super markets or other stores for free boxes – the best time to get them is to go in the morning and ask the manager for them.  Get the boxes early because this time of the year is moving season and once the stores run out of boxes, you won’t be able to get any.  Often times, they’ll give the boxes to you for free.  Be sure to pack like items together and don’t forget to clearly label what is inside.  For things like dishes or cookware, make sure you use lots of newspaper or bubble wrap to ensure that it doesn’t break.

Fun: While packing certainly isn’t high on my list of fun things to do, you can make packing a lot more fun by doing some simple things like play music or invite a friend to help.  Music will help pass the time and help keep your energy up.  A friend offers company and a bit of help – but don’t forget to return the favor and offer to help when they begin to move.

Are you getting ready to pack up your place and move home?  Or are you staying put in your apartment?  How much stuff are you moving?  Any moving tips to offer?

[Photo Courtesy of Flickr User Steven DuBois and used with C.C. 2.0 License]

Hopefully you know all about Google Voice, the great (and free!) messaging/voicemail/call management system the minds in Mountain View have cooked up. I know I use it everyday to text from my computer without having to deal with slowly typing from a touchscreen. The one big annoyance with GV on a computer is that your messages don’t automatically update – you have to manually refresh your GV page to check if you’ve received new texts. While previously mentioned GVNotifier does the trick for Windows users, I’ve been looking for a great GV client for my Mac for ages; fortunately, I’ve finally found one in GrowlVoice, my featured App of the Week.

Platform Availability: OS X 10.6 and up; you’ll also need to set up a free GV account here.

Cost: It’s $5, but it’s also definitely worth that much. The developer has graciously provided a three-week trial version, which should give you more than enough time to decide if you like it enough to plunk down five bucks. Get the full version from the Mac App Store and download the free trial here.

What it is: GrowlVoice is an elegant and very Mac-like full-featured GV client that lives in your Mac’s menu bar. That means you can access all the functionality of GV without dealing with Google’s annoying and confusing GV website.

How does it work: After signing in with your GV account, GrowlVoice will automatically load all your messages in a small box that pops out of your menu bar. Double click on each message to move over to another window that looks just like your phone’s messages app. Texting has never been easier!

Features: Real-Time Updates – As I mentioned before, the main drawback to the GV website is that you have to refresh the page every time a new text arrives. To make sure you’re on top of all your friends’ drunken texts, GrowlVoice does as its title says it should and automatically notifies you whenever you receive a new text with a chime, and Growl notifications. This is the number one reason I prefer GrowlVoice to the official GV website.

Keyboard Shortcuts – GrowlVoice lets you customize shortcuts for Open First Inbox Message, Compose Text, Open Inbox, and Place Call. I particularly like having a shortcut for Open First Inbox Message because it allows me to quickly and easily respond to my most recent text, all without having to touch my mouse. If you’re used to the GV website, you can also enable GV keyboard shortcuts, and use GrowlVoice from your Mac just like the website.

Mac-like Appearance – This is where GrowlVoice really separates itself from other Mac GV clients. While free clients like VoiceMac basically allow you to do the same things as GrowlVoice, its GUI is just really ugly compared to this App of the Week. You have the option of choosing a light or dark skin, along with other features like rounded corners and buttons that just ooze that very specific Mac aesthetic.

The Competition: There are a couple GV desktop clients out there:

VoiceMac – Free – OS X 10.4 and up – Download it here

BigPhone Pro – $4.99 – OS X 10.7 and up, 64-bit processor – Download it here

VoiceMac and BigPhone Pro basically mirror GrowlVoice in allowing you to access all of the GV website’s features from your desktop. But GrowlVoice integrates much better into my Mac with its keyboard shortcuts and very Mac-like GUI. If you just want something that works for free, go with VoiceMac, but I really think GrowlVoice is worth your five bucks.

Summary: GrowlVoice is a very well thought out GV client that makes texting just as easy as IMing one of your friends. Get the trial and see what you think, but I bet that you’ll get too used to the convenience of GrowlVoice to want to let it go.

Do you know of any other GV desktop clients? Why do you prefer them to GrowlVoice? Let us know in the comments!

This week I’m hosting a few unexpected guests at my college house. My housemate who is gone for the summer invited a few of her friends to stay over for a week at our house, and those friends decided they would also host a friend of theirs and one of their girlfriends. I was uninformed until they started moving furniture into my house.

Hi.

That passive-agressive intro besides (I mean, come on: that’s absurd) there is an important upside to this: the four unannounced strangers crashing at my house (told you it’s absurd) are some of the best house guests I could ask for.  With that said I thought I’d share some of the lessons they taught me by example. Feel free to apply this next time you’re crashing at somebody’s place you don’t know quite as well as you should, couch-surfing, or have to deal with your boyfriend or girlfriends’ housemates after a hungover party. All these tips will help smooth over any potentially awkward hosting scenarios where the host isn’t your good friend.

1: Be Friendly

It’s on the guest, sub letter, or crasher to be friendly to the host. This might seem counter-intuitive: after all, it might be your instinct to try to be as inoffensive as you could be and blend in to the furniture. That’s a good instinct, but it isn’t quite right. The host, after all, can close a door and regain privacy at any instant. It’s on you, the guest, to make yourself known as a friendly, normal guy. Make the extra effort and the hosting will be super smooth.

2: Be Grateful

It’s really hard to turn down a request when someone is already thanking you for agreeing to it. Weather it’s a loan or a coach to crash on, the gratitude gives the host a feeling of accomplishment and goodness: “I did you a favor” you think, rather than a feeling of frustration: “This guy is imposing on me.” If you make it about the host and let them feel in control, an extra day or a minor problem won’t annoy them.

3: Do (more) than your share

My house guests  helped me clean up from a party I had. That’s pretty standard, except for the cool part: they weren’t even there. They were out visiting a friend, but when I woke up in the morning, most of the damage was handled. It wasn’t much, but collecting the cans off the tables and floor (as the case may be) is a really cool gesture. It’s a participation thing: if you take a part in whatever bad parts of the house (take out the trash, help with the dishes) than your entitled to the good parts (Beds, whatever’s in the fridge).

4: Ask

Obviously, you can shower. But you may as well ask- maybe the hot water is out, or someone jusssst got back from the gym. Asking stuff reminds the host that you’re grateful and it’s always good when in doubt. Slighting a random host might irk them more than slighting a pal might, but by asking, you can clear up any misunderstanding before they start. Also, by asking, you remind the host, “oh yeah, of course” and that hey, they should be a good host too.

5: Offer

You don’t need to bring a six pack or a nice bottle of wine, but if you do? My oh my. You can surf my couch, anytime, internet guy (offer void for weirdos).

As college students, a lot of our lives revolve around food – whether it is a late night snack, a quick breakfast that is eaten while running out the door, or the classic pizza night, we eat a lot of food.  As college students, we are also always short on cash and can’t always afford the highest quality or healthiest food options.  Therefore, there are certain foods that every college student should have at the ready for delicious grub, anytime.

Peanut butter is one of my favorite things to have in the house because it is a crucial building block to all sorts of great meal and snack ideas.  Spread it on toast, bread, crackers, or celery.  Dip apples or bananas in it for a healthy snack. Use it for the base of a Thai sauce for noodles or chicken.  If you want to keep on the nut butter flavor but want something a little different, I find that almond butter is just as (if not more) delicious and just as versatile.

Yogurt is a staple in my fridge.  It is a great addition to breakfast or an easy snack.  Add it to a smoothie to make a creamy and portable snack on the go.  Freeze it to make a cold treat to help you cool off in the summer heat.  Make a yogurt parfait by adding your favorite fruit and granola toppings.  There are so many varieties of yogurt these days that it is sure to please any palate.  And if you want to try something new, try Greek yogurt.

Fruit is always in my fridge simply because it is so portable and easy to eat.  Always keep staples like apples, oranges, bananas, and pears around in the fridge for a grab and go, no prep needed snack.  Naturally sweet, fruit can hold over a sugar craving while still be healthy for you.  Add bananas to smoothies or to peanut butter sandwiches.  Put a stick through a banana, cover it in chocolate sauce, and then freeze it for a delicious and relatively healthy snack.  Don’t just think of the staple fruits either – branch out to things like berries and apricots when they are in season and on sale.

Soup is a big staple in my cupboard and I probably eat it for lunch at least twice a week.  Soup is wonderful because it is cheap, often comes from a can, and takes little effort to prepare.  You can make soup better by adding more of your own vegetables, meat, and spices to it.  You can put it in a thermos and eat it on the go.  It is perfect for warming you up on a cold day or for comforting you when you get sick.  If you get something like cream of chicken or cream of mushroom, you can easily add it to chicken to create a quick and delicious meal.  You can even spice up ramen noodles with a little herb action (I suggest adding lemon grass and spinach to add flavor and a tad bit of nutrition).

Rice and pasta are two items that I always have a large supply and diverse variety of in my cupboards.  Both options are cheap, filing, and super versatile.  Rice can be flavored in so many different ways – use some sort of stock (like chicken or vegetable broth) instead of water to add instant flavor.  Add citrus juices and some garlic for a tropical flavored side dish.  Make brown rice for a healthier alternative to white rice.  Rice-a-Roni is cheap, delicious, and can easily be made in a microwave with just some butter and water.  Pasta comes in so many shapes and sizes these days that you are sure to find something you like.  Use a premade sauce like marinara or alfredo to make a quick and easy dinner.  Don’t be afraid to do some experimenting and make your own sauces to come up with a delicious meal – think of how impressed your date would be if you made a delicious dinner (and they won’t even know how cheap it is!).

What food staples are always around in your kitchen?  Do you have any favorite and cheap recipes to share?

[Photo Courtesy of Flickr User Eleazarteodoro]

Recently, I’ve been using a lot of web apps or “extensions” on Google Chrome and have found that some of them really change the way I do my internet browsing. These five “apps” are just some of the essential apps that I think the browser should come stocked with anyway, and are definitely worth the download.

Note: These extensions are all for Chrome, but a lot of them overlap to Firefox and other web browsers.

AdBlock 

AdBlock or AdBlock Plus is a must have, if you do not have it already. AdBlock does exactly what it’s title describes and blocks ads. It blocks ads on the side of websites telling you to lose weight, Google ads at the top of websites, and whole page ads when you first get to theonion.com. Best of all, however, AdBlock can block those atrocious thirty second ads at the beginning of YouTube videos. So, if you decide to install any of these extensions, AdBlock is probably the best one to have.

WOT

WOT is kind of a neat idea for a browser app that tells you if a website or link is safe. It ranks the site on trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. This is a good app to have if you want to see if that Frank Ocean download link is safe, or if you should trust buying something off of koolkidshoes.com.

Awesome Screenshot

Awesome Screenshot is a simple screenshot app that allows you to screenshot the entire webpage, or a chosen a section like your normal screenshots with windows or mac. However, what is cool about this extensions is that it allows you to make quick edits to the screenshot like make a red circle around what you’re try to show, point an arrow at it and it even has a blur tool. That’s a good benefit, as you no longer have to open the screenshot in Photoshop or MS Paint just to make a quick arrow, or something.

FB Photo Zoom

This extension is Facebook specific, and allows you to see people’s pictures full size by just hovering your cursor over them. Saves you like 1.2 seconds.

Google Mail Checker

Google Mail Checker is also a simple app. It simply just shows you a tiny notification when you get some new mail.

Know of any cool “must have” web browser apps I left out? Let us know in the comments.

Most of us can remember keeping a journal or diary as a kid.  The little notebook held our deepest and most private childhood thoughts – all about the unfair punishment a parent dished out to us or the crush we spend all of class daydreaming about.  We often even password protected the journal and guarded it with our lives for fear that a sibling or friend would discover it.

Just because you are older, doesn’t mean that you can’t still keep in a journal.  In fact, writing in a journal has proven benefits.  Studies have shown that journaling can relieve stress, be a place to write about your hopes and dreams, and be a place to get the creative processes going.  Journaling – especially reflective journaling – can be a great way to help you decide what you want in life and how you’re going to get it.  Reflective journaling is great for college students because this is the time in our life that we are trying to figure out our futures.

These days, there are tons of options for how to keep your journal.  You could keep it handwritten and buy either a basic composition notebook or get a really nice notebook.  There are also a variety of digital options too.  You could use something like Evernote or a word processor to write down your thoughts.  There are so many app options so that your journal can be synced to all of your devices – your phone, your computer, your tablet, whatever.

Your journal doesn’t have to be filled with long, elaborate, super detailed entries.  Your journal can have short, quick, bulleted pointed or it can be in paragraph form.  There is no minimum length of entries or rules for what must be included.  The whole point of the journal is that is serves as a place to reflect on your life and the direction it is going or the direction you want it to go.  Your journal is a place to take responsibility for your life and what you want.  It is a great way to reflect on your strengths, your weaknesses, your fears, and the realities.  The journal helps you grow and serves as a record of your progress.

Do you keep a journal or diary?  How often do you write in it?  Is it kept in a notebook or on a computer?

[Photo Courtesy of Flickr User Basekys and used with a C.C. Attribution 2.0 License]

I’m an English major because I love writing. It’s something I do for school, for cash, and in my free time. Bored in class, I’ll often tinker with a piece or a play I started, only to abandon it a week later. That’s fine: I write for my own sake.

The problem, of course, is sometimes I have to do mercenary work. So do you, if you’re a college student: you have papers and essays at best or an arduous thesis at worst. Even I freeze up when I’m assigned work: if you don’t like writing as much as I do, I imagine it’s even worse. Fortunately, through my many years of cutting corners I am proud to share a few tips I developed that will have you knocking out minimum page requirements with minimal effort.

1: Set-Up is your Friend

I could have started this piece just with this, of course: there was absolutely no need for the backstory I shared. But if you continously find yourself a page short in essays, consider this: that set-up I included was 150 words of “free” writing, which is to say, writing without a point. In an essay, you have limited amounts of “source” to work with. You only have so many opinions  to have and sources to say to carry your paper ten pages. Thus set up is your best friend: it can help pad what you have to say effortlessly and actually convey extra importance behind your points.

2: Misdirection

An anecdote about writing papers: once during Sophmore year I was at the tail end of an all-nighter. I had a fifteen page paper due that afternoon and, seven pages in at around four A.M. I was losing my focus and my sanity. We had no coffee in the dorm and no energy drinks left. The only caffeine available was in my room-mate’s 4loko can. I stared it down for a few long minutes, realizing that whichever choice I made, this essay was going to be in some serious trouble.

A cool story? Not especially. Related? Not especially: I took the broadest idea of my topic (papers) and took a detour for a few paragraphs. And that’s the point. If you’re running out of things to say in a paper about a specific topic, open the topic up. Take a detour: if you’re talking about France, talk about all of Europe before coming back to France. It’s a quick trick under-utilized and it opens up your topic, giving you more things to write about. It certainly beats extending your margins.

3: Analyze

If you’re saying something as a statement, analyze the pros and cons of it, or, at the least, take a moment to debate how it (whatever it is: a character, a situation, a metaphor) can be interpreted in one way or the other. The upside of that is that instantly extends your writing; it gives you the chance to add a sentence, perhaps two, on to an otherwise very simple statement and it makes you look analytical. On the other hand, if you use that too much, you might arouse your professor’s suspicions and not all statements or facts can be properly analyzed that way. You might actually even make mistakes in your arguments by seeking to extend your paper!

You’ll noticed I just did that up here. A few extra sentences isn’t much, but it adds up when you can keep applying it.

4: Repetition

When it comes to writing, it’s best to do your best. It’s best to have all your facts, sources, and time to put forward your best effort. But in college and in life, sometimes the best situations don’t present themselves. In these scenarios, these these three little tricks: analysis, misdirection, and set-up can be the difference between panic and a paper, an outline and a rough-draft. On the one hand, this may not be ideal, but it gets the job done, and isn’t that what we ultimately want?

Of course, if those three quick tips, feel free to do what I just did for this paragraph: repeat them all in the guise of a conclusion. A crummy move, perhaps. But it won’t get you a crummy grade.

***

Those are the four main tips I have for you. For all your English assignments, I wish you the best of luck. As always, math people, you are on your own, and I fear and envy you both.

Best,

Lev

I recently mentioned Wunderkit on a previous post and wanted to go into more detail about this great productivity tool. As we have previously disucssed, using a productivity tool can really boost your efficiency and make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Wunderkit breaks things up into different workspaces. Each workspace acts as a folder or higher level hierarchy for your tasks. You might set up a workspace to control tasks for each semester, or maybe just a workspace for each class. It’s up to you to built Wunderkit to fit to the way you work.

Once you drill down into a workspace, you have the option to view the Dashboard, your Tasks or the Notes you’ve taken. The dashboard shows a feed of everything that has been going on within that workspace.

The task lists breaks things down into lists and an inbox. The inbox is for tasks that you just added to Wunderkit. (These tasks haven’t been sorted yet.) Once you have a moment, you can sort these tasks into various groups, called lists. You can also assign due dates and tags.

Notes is the final mini-app each workspace has. Notes are pretty basic, with the ability to highlight text as bold and add links. I’m not sure you’d be able to replace an app like Evernote with this notes feature, but it’s handy to throw some basic information in, like due dates, specs for a paper that is due soon, or something the professor says at the end of a class.

Wunderkit is also built with the idea of collaboration in mind. With the ability to share and collaborate within Workspaces, working with classmates on a project is incredbily easy. While there is a higher overhead than email for task delegation, as everyone must sign up to Wunderkit (which can be done via Facebook or Twitter), this web app makes sharing tasks simple and elegant. What I found to be really neat is the ability to comment on notes, tasks and other items throughout the interface. On the dashboard, there is a status update option that can help keep everyone in sync with what work is getting done.

I personally set up a workspace for school in general, then used the built in list feature to manage each class seperately. It would also be easy to break things up through tags.

I’ve recently switched an organization I’m part of over to Wunderkit, and so far it is smooth sailing. I would highly reccomend Wunderkit to my friends to manage both their personal life as well as their organizations or group projects.

Give Wunderkit a try and let us know what you think!

Many of you have probably heard that Adobe Creative Suite 6 launched last week. From May 17-18th, I had the incredible opportunity to join a group of 18 other talented student bloggers and art student representatives for an intensive two-day event at Adobe’s San Fransisco campus, where I learned all about Adobe’s latest and greatest software (in addition to eating a lot of delicious food and touring the beautiful city of San Fransisco!) For everyone who couldn’t be there, not to worry– here’s a recap of what I learned at Adobe Days 2012!

Creative Suite 6 - Heidi Voltmer, Director of Product Marketing for Web and Interactive Solutions, gave us a rundown of the major upgrades in Creative Suite 6. As the first major release of Creative Suite in 2 years, CS6 comes jam-packed with a slew of improvements and new features. “The key focus for CS6 was on speed and performance,” Voltmer said. Photoshop CS6 has a revamped interface, a faster Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine, blur effects, a Content-Aware Patch feature and 3D imaging tools. Illustrator CS6 has 64-bit support and improvements to the Image Tracing Engine and pattern creation. New features in Dreamweaver include support for fluid grid layouts and CSS transitions, which Voltmer believes, “… will make [Dreamweaver] much more approachable for students just starting out learning web design.” In addition, two new tools for HTML5 were introduced in CS6: Adobe Muse™ and Adobe Edge Preview.

Creative Cloud - Along with CS6, Adobe also announced its first cloud offering this year. A monthly Creative Cloud membership provides users with access to download and install every new Adobe CS6 application. Integration with the new Adobe Touch apps for tablets means your work will be synced across all your devices. Members will have access to application upgrades, including new CS point-product features, before they are launched as part of major CS updates. Customers can still purchase the standard boxed suites: Design Standard, Design and Web Premium, Production Premium and Master Collection. The Student and Teacher Edition of Adobe Creative Cloud is available for US$29.99/month. Can’t decide if Creative Cloud is for you? ”If you’re considering getting the Master Collection, Creative Cloud is the way to go, because it has everything in the Master Collection and more,” explained Voltmer.

Personal Branding 101 - A major theme throughout the event was the importance of establishing a strong personal brand in today’s uber-competitive job market. Dave Rosenberg from GMR Marketing gave us tips on how to brand yourself to employers, and also shared what he looks for when reviewing resumes. He stressed that having a strong skill set isn’t enough. “You need to show how you’ve used your skills in real business situations… to produce tangible, measurable results. There is no excuse these days to say you weren’t able to find opportunities to get experience for your resume.” Get involved with campus organizations, volunteer, etc.

So what is Adobe’s role in helping students build their personal brand? “Adobe is about making creativity and business work together,” Rosenberg explained. Adobe products can help students effectively tell their story through multimedia-rich portfolios, websites and applications that stand out. For example, InDesign CS6 streamlines the creation of multiple layouts from a single set of content, helping to deliver interactive campus publications for iPad, Kindle Fire and Android devices.  Dreamweaver CS6 enables students to create high-impact school or personal websites. There are so many ways Adobe CS6 can help you achieve your career goals!

Well, that’s an overview of what I learned from the many workshops and labs I’ve attended the last two days. Now, while all the presentations were extremely interesting and informative, the highlight of the event for me was on Thursday evening, when we practiced our photography skills on an open trolley ride through San Fransisco, then headed to Tres Agaves for a taco bar and unlimited margaritas! I’m glad to report that all in all, Adobe Days 2012 was a huge success– let’s just say I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a chance to return to San Francisco in the near future. Thank you, Adobe, for this unforgettable experience!