Keeping a personal website is a great asset to anyone especially students who plan to apply to colleges and eventually enter the work force.  By keeping a website you get to share your opinions and ideas with the entire world and be a source of knowledge for others. You also, demonstrate the skills needed to run and manage a website which is a extremely in demand skill in the job world in this modern tech age and you can utilize this demand by proving you have the skills of running a website. Also, if you decide to keep a blog it is a great way to keep grammar and spelling skills fresh in your mind and a blog also gives you a platform to develop your writing style without any rubrics and guidlines, allowing you to write what you feel. Blogging is a great way to express your ideas, opinions and skills to the world and can also serve as a portfolio of work you have done and can be used as part of the job interview process to show what you are capable of.  Similarly, you can also post your resume on your blog and if you are lucky you might be able to get a job offer just because a visitor found your site and love what your writing about.  Keeping any type of online presence also helps when you have your name searched on Google, (which has now become a step in many job interviews and college admissions processes). If a college or a future employer sees all good proactive things when they search your name you have a much better chance of getting admitted to your choice of colleges and you may also have to potential of earning a scholarship! Having your own website proves you have the skills to express yourself and discuss topics intelligently and I would reccommend that you get a FREE wordpress website, which is a great start for bloggers (WordPress is also  what gdovin.net uses) you can also get a bunch of your friends to blog and have a web ring and do a link exchange so you can help each other get more page views. You could also host your own site  by buying a domain through a webhost, my favorite is 1and1 which for $3/month you get everything you need including one free domain name.

If you are anything like me as a student I cannot effectively use the assignment books handed out on the first day of school and as a result, I end up either breaking it or loosing it early in the academic year, this prompts me to print my own paper assignment book which is wastes of resources.  Seeing that yesterday was the first day of school for many students, I would like to share an amazing  web application that I just discovered and highly recommend to all students! Notely is like an assignment book, note taker, calendar, task list, a schedule, a task manager, a to-do list, a link manager, a journal, a whiteboard, a contacts list, a grade tracker, a mind mapper and did I forget to mention that it is a social network as well, so you can share everything you post with your classmates! The Notely interface is very modern and can make keeping organized a breeze!  Notley allows  you to add in your homework, plan long-term assignments, track your grades, collaborate with peers much more! The great part of this application is you can keep yourself organized and make earning your A+ much easier and more enjoyable.  Notely also provides RSS feeds to subscribe to not only your assignments but, your friends as well. Notely also has more tools like a question services,  a calculator, a translator, a converter and a dictionary! I have become a huge fan of this amazing application, after only one day of using it and recommend joining  the service for any student that wants to be better academically this year and recommend it to your classmates so you can help each other out! You can have an assignment book that is available from any web browser and Notely also has a mobile version that can be accessed on mobile devices, like PDAs and cell phones, which is great because now I can make my Nokia N800 function as a assignment book that is synced so it is up-to-date information is accessible anywhere in the world! I also then have a assignment book that will fit in my pocket and can go anywhere! There is also an application available for the iPhone so it is even easier for those people to take advantage of this great tool. I hope the people at Notely will be make applications for different platforms in the near future as well because they have the perfect product for all students.

Many people buy their digital music from Apple’s iTunes Music store but, they sell their music with DRM (Digital Rights Management) for the regular $0.99/Song, these tracks have limitations on how many devices you can put your music on. Recently, Apple added an option for you to buy music for an extra dollar and you can unlock your music from their  DRM and get freedom with your tracks!  Apple has done a great job to make a one stop shop where you can play, manage, sync and buy music all from one application, and in that same application you can buy TV shows, download,  watch and subscribe to podcasts,  and buy or rent movies! Apple has made the Internet generation and even some of the older generations dependant on their software which in my opinion is slow and bulky and this is coming froma major Apple fanboy! I do not buy my music through iTunes because of the limitations and the rediculously slow application.  The best music store is Amazon’s amazing Mp3 store that is similar to iTunes’ however, all the tracks are DRM free and the starting price is only $0.88/song! It does not have a required application to buy your tunes which let’s you free up your computer but if you want an application, you can download a free download manager from Amazon, you can go online to their store and the homepage has all the tops songs and some bargain deals just like iTunes! You pay for the tracks with a credit card and they download to your pc  and you can even add it to your iTunes library! By doing this you will save $1 per song on DRM free tracks and you can put those tracks anywhere and as many places as you want and even on your iPod! Do yourself a favor and at least download your songs from Amazon and put them in iTunes and use them as you would but with Amazon you will have freedom with your music!