Skyping with the iPhone

Skype for the iPhone was released today and a lot of people on the internet are making a big deal out of it.  I downloaded it myself to see what the hype was all about.  The program itself is designed very well, intuitive and you can do almost everything you can on the normal desktop version of Skype.  Will it be enough to make AT&T; sweat?

I’ve been trying to think of the ways that this program can hurt AT&T; and the biggest concern I can see is the international calling.  The international calling plans on Skype are incredible and if you do a lot of overseas calling, this might be huge for you.  As of now, you can’t use the program over the 3G network; you have to be on a Wi-Fi network.  For some, that’s not a big deal as they might be constantly surrounded by a Wi-Fi signal.  For others, it could be a problem.  The other issues I see with the service is that the iPhone can’t handle the Push Notifications yet.  While it is coming, it still leaves the program lacking a bit.

If you’re a heavy Skype user, this is a great release.  I don’t think this will hurt AT&T;… yet.  If Apple ever allows Skype to use the 3G network, AT&T; would suffer greatly.  Maybe someday it’ll happen, but until then let us know what you think of Skype on the iPhone.

Oh, and they’ll be releasing Skype for the Blackberry in May, but who cares about that?

Link to download Skype for the iPhone

Conficker Computer Virus Set for April 1st

There is a nasty little virus that has been attacking computers for quite some time and is set to be released on April 1st.  The risk of catching this virus is very high.  No one is really sure exactly what is going to happen but they do know that this virus is going to do some serious damage when it attacks.  Right now Microsoft has $250,000 bounty for anyone who rats the owner of this virus out and there have been no leads as of this point.  What you can do to protect your system is make sure you have all your virus software (Norton, Symantec, AVG etc) is up to date with virus definitions, and also make sure if you have a computer running Windows you have all your automatic updates downloaded and installed.

If you are not sure that your computer is up to date, go to your start menu, then control panel, then automatic updates do a check to make sure you are.  I am not 100% sure that this is strictly limited to Windows but I do know if you have a Mac you are less likely to be infected.  The good thing about this virus is that it can be removed.  See this site if you do get infected by this virus.  Let us know if you have questions or concerns.  Always remember that if you are shopping online when you are getting ready to checkout make sure the URL starts with https:// instead of just http://. This means it is a secure site, and every reputable site will have this security.  Also don’t go downloading stuff you are unsure of the source (i.e. screen savers, desktop backgrounds, or music from random sources).

Friday Linkage

Here our the best links of the week.  Check ‘em and let us know what you think.11

Gummi Shot Glasses
How To Easily Compress Video For Web With Movie Maker
Monster "HDMI Difference" scam still kickin' in Fry's Electronics
Twitter Implicated in Break Up Between Aniston and Mayer
Academic Earth - Video lectures from the world's top scholars
101 Undiscovered Freebies: The List - PC World
New Microsoft Ads Point Out, Cough, High Cost Of Macs
Shut Up, Twitter: Everyone's Real Fake on Twitter
First Look at Tesla's Stunning Model S

Twibs and Growing our Twitter Presence

A lot of companies are trying to grow their following on Twitter and I think it has the potential to be a great marketing tool.  It’s also a great discussion tool with your followers.  Hopefully some day it won’t be as hard to get followers.  With that said there is a wonderful small site called Twibs and what they have created is a search for Twitter users that are companies bring them into one spot. 

Its amazing but they found us and added us as a company to their list.  Our next goal is to show up frequently on their site.  They are offering a way to get on the main page and its through a voting process.  We need our readers and Twitter followers help to get us on the main page of Twib.  If you enjoy reading our blog, or are excited for when we actually offer some services let us know by voting here.

We need everyone’s help!!

ReTweet if you want to help us even further!

http://twitter.com/studentnerds

Show My PC!

I’ve written a previous blog post about remote assistance.  You can read about it here if you want, but I’m going to talk about an alternative today.  I was previously using Ammyy Admin to help family and friends with their computer problems.  About a week ago, I tried using it but was told that I needed to purchase a license.  Purchase a license? Ha!  There had to be a free alternative and I found one; ShowMyPC.

ShowMyPc is a free program (really free too, you’ll never need a license) that allows you to share your PC with a friend to have them use the computer with you.  It does not work on Macs and if anybody has a solution for you Mac people, please let me know.

To start using the program, go to showmypc.com and click “Show My PC to Remote User.” If you’re helping someone, click the link below it (It’s actually the same file, but I think they are just trying to simplify things). 

Once you have the file downloaded, double click it and click the appropriate button.  If you are showing your PC, you’ll be given a code that you need to give to the person who is going to be helping you.  If you’re the person helping, type in the code and you’ll be using the computer with the person you’re helping.

If you have any problems or other ideas, leave them in the comments.  Thanks to Arjun for the idea to post about this.

Play PC Games without a Gaming PC?

Keeping a computer up to date to handle the latest and greatest video games is a very expensive process.  It involves having the newest motherboards, processors, video cards and sound cards.  This easily costs hundreds of dollars if not over a thousand.  What if you didn’t have to worry about doing any of that.  What if you could play these games on your old crappy computer and not have to spend all your hard earned cash keeping up with the latest hardware? Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?

OnLive is a company that claims they can deliver on this concept.  What they do is run all of the games on their servers and send the video to your computer.  This means you could potentially play the newest PC games on your old eMachine’s computer or even an underpowered netbook.  It’s a fairly exciting idea that is currently being beta tested.  They have even designed a small box to hook up to your TV that allows you to play these PC games easily in your living room.

Kotaku has a great preview of the technology here.  Even though people have been talking about the death of PC gaming for over a decade, this could really help that section of the video game market stick around even longer.

A Pain-Free Reformat

We have talked about reformatting your computer before and why it can benefit your experience on your computer.  It makes the computer run faster and gets rid of all of the crap that you may have accumulated over the years.  Most people dread the process of formatting, but it doesn’t bother me at all.  I’ve got the process down to a system and now I don’t stress about it when I need to do.  Let me explain what I do.

There are a few programs that help me with keeping track of all the little pieces of a reformat.  Here’s what I use:

1. Dropbox – I’ve talked about Dropbox before and it really does save a lot of time.  It keeps files synced between computers and also stores those files online for free (up to 2gb).  I use this to store settings and also a list of the programs currently installed on my computer.  I have substituted Dropbox for the My Documents folder which makes it one less thing I need to backup.
2. SyncBack – I’ve talked about SyncBack here, but it basically is a program that makes keeping folders backed up or synced very easy.  I use it to backup the following on my laptop: Music, iTunes settings, a list of programs I have installed and all of the Pictures I have.  It copies all of these to my 2nd computer which then backs up the files with Mozy.  If you don’t have a second computer, you can use the program to back up files to an external hard drive.
3. Firefox (w/ Foxmarks) – The most used program on my computer is Mozilla Firefox.  I have hundreds of bookmarks that I would never want to lose.  The Foxmarks plugin not only backs up my bookmarks, but it syncs my bookmarks between my computers.  There’s also an added bonus of them having a mobile version of their website so I can always get to my bookmarks when I’m travelling.
4. Windows 7 (or Ubuntu) – I use to worry about finding all of the drivers for my comptuer before formatting my computer.  I don’t anymore.  I first tried Ubuntu about a year ago and was pleasantly surprised how well it detected the devices on my computer.  I always wondered why Windows couldn’t do the same thing.  I’m now using Windows 7 and it’s even better than Ubuntu in recognizing all of my devices.  I’m very impressed with it.

These programs make it easy for me to not worry about the time when I need to format my computer.  They also make it an easy way to back up my important files without me having to do anything.

Feel free to Twitter or E-Mail me if you have any questions or want any clarification on any of the programs I use.

Friday Linkage (and our 100th Post!)

It’s Friday once again and we have the our favorite links of the week.  This also happens to be our 100th post on this blog and I can’t believe that we got here so fast.  I had really wanted to use our 100th post to announce the new features of our website, but unfortunately we’ve had a few setbacks.  I guess that’s the case with any startup.  We are still working hard to get our new features launched and it should be very exciting when we do so. 

Here are the links:

• President Obama - Full Interview
• The Media Mecca
• The Five-Minute Prison Workout Keeps You Fit in Any Space
• Hulu's Latest Commercial Stars Family Guy Creator Seth McFarlane
• Hey Jude (Sung by a Korean Baby)
• Start BitTorrent downloads remotely with Dropbox
• The Fastest, Safest Way to take Taxis!
• Facebook Poll: 94% Of Users Don’t Like Redesign
• Do It Yourself: How To Set Up An Auction Using Craigslist and Google Docs
• The Financial Times Launches Its Own Business News Search Engine
• Federal Reserve buys bonds
• Hands On: Metal Gear Solid Touch iPhone App
• Make Your Own Sports Drink
• WorldWide Telescope Puts the Night Sky in Your Browser

The Best Phone System Ever

Google has finally done something with Grand Central (The company it bought over a year ago).  Grand Central’s core feature was the ability to have one phone number that would ring all of the phone numbers you currently have.  It was great for someone who had an office phone and would travel a lot.  Google has just recently announced Google Voice and it has upgraded the features that Grand Central had.

Some of the features that Google Voice has includes:

• Call Screening
• Phone Routing
• Forwarding
• Voicemail Transcription
• Personalized Grettings
• Conference Calls
• Record your phone calls
• Create Groups
• And many more

For a great walkthrough on the service, check out Lifehacker’s post here.  Now we just need Google to open the service to everybody so we all can use it.  Come on Google!

Laptop vs. Desktop?

*This Post is by Arjun Sharma

My internet isn't working on my desktop, so I’m forced to type from my laptop.  Arguably, my laptop is more powerful than the desktop.  That’s only natural: I built my desktop in the summer of 2002 and my laptop was purchased (by my sister) about 1.5 years ago.

When I went to college some 7 years ago, the big question was laptop vs. desktop.  That is no longer a valid question.  Today, the laptop reins supreme.  The advent of wifi means there is almost no reason for the clunky old desktop.

Yet, in this post-collegiate setting, I have both a laptop and a desktop.  And invariably, I will use my desktop over my laptop.  The arguments remain the same:

1. Bigger workspace – my laptop desktop maxes out at 1200x800.  As old as this desktop is, with my 18”monitor I’m still riding happily with 1280x1024
2. Mouse control is a zillion times better.  My left thumb keeps hitting the fucking touchpad and sending my cursor to the left side of the screen.  I haven’t been on a laptop where this doesn’t happen
3. Photoshop blows on a laptop.  In fact, my homepage, iGoogle, blows on a laptop. 800 pixels north/south are not enough.
4. My hard drive is huge.  I know these days you can get bigger HD’s.  but the fact is that in the 7 years I’ve had my laptop I haven’t run out of space.  I have an 80 gig primary os (2 actually) and a 120 gig media HD.  More than plenty.  Most laptops still don’t have that kind of space.

I’m probably going to have to completely renovate my computer for Starcraft 2.  The question, of course, is whether to upgrade, get a new laptop, or get a new desktop.  The relative cost, estimated by me, is $300, $400, $300.  I look forward to the comments.

March Madness is Here!

If you are like me you look forward to this weekend more than any other in college basketball.  This weekend is arguably the most intense weekend for any sport.  You get to see more upsets, Diaper Dandy’s, PTPers, and Cinderellas than you do all year long.   The reason is because you have the largest stage, with teams that got no coverage throughout the year because they weren’t in the top 25 but have a solid team and pulled a victory out in the end of the year conference tournament and earned a bid to the big stage. 

This year I am hoping to partake in a “Player Draft” where each person drafts good scoring players and then you track their scoring throughout the tournament. You then total up your team’s points and compare it to everyone else you are playing against.  It makes the tournament much more fun because you want to cheer for not only the teams you like, but the teams with your player on them.  Even if you aren’t playing in a player draft you should at least go fill out your bracket on Facebook (http://apps.facebook.com/cbssports/?ref=ts) or CBS (http://www.cbssports.com/) and see how you do against everyone else.  If you have any questions or want to join our group hit me up on Twitter or michael.klear@studentnerds.com.

iPhone 3.0 Better Be Good!

I had the original iPhone and I loved it.  I currently have the iPhone 3G and I love it (AT&T;’s service is another story though).  It is one of greatest devices I have ever used and does many things wonderfully.  But Apple, we have a problem.  You let some of the simple things slip by you and you need to address them.  I’m hoping you can do this tomorrow during your press event and put the final nail in the coffin for other smart phone manufacturers.  Kevin Rose (pictured) has some rumors of what Apple is going to say and I’m he’s wrong (partly).

Rose says that the new iPhone software will have copy and paste but it will not have background tasks.  If the iPhone wants to compete with the new slew of smart phones coming out (Android and the Palm Pre come to mind), it needs to have background apps.  Location aware applications have the potential to be huge and they will need the ability to run in the background.  Instant messaging programs also need to be able to run in the background so you can receive messages even after turning your phone off.  Anyway, here’s the video of his predictions (NSFW; some F-bombs are dropped)

Friday Linkage

It’s Friday again and here is some of the best stuff we found this week.

• Stewart vs Cramer: The Complete Ass-Kickingo Any Computer
• Happy 20th Birthday, World Wide Web
• Put Google Calendar and Notes on Your iPhone Wallpaper
• RerunCheck Are you doomed to a rerun tonight?
• Big Music Will Surrender, But Not Until At Least 2011
• SNL Digital Short: Lazy Sunday
• Share Your Business Card via SMS
• Study: Weather Change Can Trigger Throbbing Headaches
• 5 Easy Ways to Earn Mad Money Headaches
  

Organize Your Music

Having an organized music collection has many benefits.  It allows me to make better playlists, take advantage of iTunes’ Genius features, and find any song very quickly.  This was not an easy thing to do and it does require a great deal of patience.  It took me about 3 months to finish organizing my music collection.  This includes making sure every song is named correctly, has embedded album artwork and has a genre if available.  Here’s how I did it.

The first thing I did was made a backup copy of my music.  I did this just in case I messed something up and couldn’t go back. I highly recommend doing this if you have the space.  Once you have the backup, you’ll want to go get Mp3Tag.  This is a free program that I used to “tag” my music (this is a Windows only program. If anybody knows a Mac equivalent, please mention it in the comments).  The reason it is called “tagging” is because every MP3 file has an ID3 tag.  This ID3 tag contains all of the information about the MP3 file including artist, album, title, genre, etc.

Once Mp3tag is installed you should know be able to right click on each of the album folders in your MP3 collection and select Mp3tag from the menu.  It will load the current album into Mp3tag and you’ll then be able modify the songs in that album.  My favorite feature of this program is the ability to scan your album and find all of the ID3 information from Amazon.com’s music store.  This will correctly label your files and embed the album art into your files.  To get a better idea of how to use the program, check out the author’s website.

This is a very time consuming process but it was definitely worth it.  There are some pieces of software out there that claim they can do this automatically but I did not have good luck with them.  I was able to make sure everything was perfect and now when I get a new album, it doesn’t take long to properly tag it. 

Even the people that I share my music with appreciate how organized my collection is.  Feel free to ask any questions via my Twitter or Email.  If anybody has any other ideas for doing in a simpler way, please share in the comments.

Need a Cheap Flash Drive?

While we are in the process of compiling the list of products that we are going to recommend, we are still trying to help everyone find a good deal.  I had a friend, Steve, who came over to “borrow” some of the movies we have and he brought a 4 gig thumb drive and I just laughed because he will only be able to get maybe 3 movies on it.  Here is a product that he should have purchased or should purchase if he truly wants to make the trip worth his while.  Although we did have a mean match of Goldeneye Source when he was over.

$28.99 Kingston DataTraveler 16 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive DT100/16GB

This is a good quality maker of Flash drives and it has 16GB’s of space which means that it has the same amount of space that the iPod touch’s have. It is capable of holding around 14 full length movies or thousands of songs.  The nice thing about this device is there is no installation needed at all; just plug in and it shows up as a hard drive on the computer.  I think everyone should have one of these little devices for work or just fun.  You can click the picture to go to the Amazon Site or you can click here.  This is the best deal.

Get Some New Music on your iPod

If you have been looking for new music I will make it easy on you and filter through some of the crap out there.  Below are some full CD’s and also some single songs that are worth downloading or going out and actually buying the CD!! Yes, you heard that correctly.  I said “buy” music.

The Fray – The Fray (Full Album)

Coconut Records – West Coast & Nighttiming

Ben Folds – You Don’t Know Me, Kylie from Connecticut, & Cologne

MGMT - Oracular Spectacular (Full Album)

Matt & Kim – Daylight

Weezer – The Greatest Man That Ever Lived

Keane – Spiraling

Rivers Cuomo- I was Scared

Glasvegas – Geraldine

Chairlift – Bruises

Carolina Liar – Coming to Terms (Full Album)

Franz Ferdinand – Tonight (Full Album)

3oh!3 - Don't Trust Me

Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend (Full Album)

That about rounds out the list for good music.  If you are interested in listening to the songs before you purchase you can hear them on my http://songza.com/mklear page.  Thanks to Sirius Radio Alt Nation for alot of this new music.  I am glad it keeps me up to date.  If you dislike some of my choices feel free to argue with me in the comments.

My Top Firefox Add-ons

I love Firefox and recommend the web browser to anyone I can.  Not only is the browser more secure than Internet Explorer, it has a wonderful selection of add-ons that make the browser even better.  I'm going to share the add-ons that I use that make my browsing experience that much better.

I try to keep my Firefox installation lean and mean, but sometimes I just have to have some new features.  Here are the Firefox add-ons that I use:

• Picnik – Adds a menu when you right-click on images so that you can edit those images online at Picnik.com.
• Save Image in Folder – Adds a menu when you right-click on images so that you can save images to custom folders that you set up.  It comes in handy when I save wallpapers I find and want to put them in the right folder.
• Foxmarks – I’ve talked about Foxmarks before and it allows you to sync your bookmarks between multiple computers and backs them up online.
• Ubiquity – This is an interesting add-on that really needs to be tested to see what it does.  It provides a natural language search for anything.  Check it out.
• Fission – Adds a progress bar to the address bar. Very simple and unnecessary.
• Greasemonkey – Allows you to run scripts written by other users to change the way websites work or function.
• Better GCal – Adds more functionality to Google Calendar.
• AVG Safe Search – Comes with the newest free version of AVG.  Keeps me safer online.

Let us know if there are any Firefox add-ons that you love and use everyday.

Friday Linkage

Here are the best links that we found this week.  Enjoy!

Watchmaker Ulysse Nardin Creates Smartphone Juiced Up by Kinetic Energy
Watchmen MMO coming out for the iPhone
Our Favorite Lifehacker Posts of the Week
1.2-Mile Vodka Pipeline Built Between Russia and Estonia
15 Simple Changes That Will Quickly Improve Your Health
How To Keep Your Credit Cards Safe When Shopping Online
No Doubt: Buy A Concert Ticket, Download All OurSongs
Amazon gives gamers another option for used game trade-ins
Uh, We Almost Got Asteroided Yesterday

Facebook Is Revamping…. Again

Facebook is going to be changing the homepage that you see after you log in.  On March 11, they will be making it more like a live stream.  You can already get a preview of this by clicking on Live Feed.  They will make this the default and it seems to me that they are doing this to compete more with Twitter.

Here is a preview of the new look:

Facebook is also redoing the pages that celebrities and companies use.  You can check out the new look by clicking here.  It is the new Student Nerds page. *Note, you must be logged into Facebook for it to work.

I actually like what they’re doing a lot.  It should be much easier for companies to share information with their fans and customers.

Your iPhone is now a Kindle

Amazon has just released an iPhone app for reading eBooks on your phone.  On the heels of annoucning their brand new Kindle 2, this should only further cement Amazon as the leader in digital book delivery. 

There are a few problems with the application but it is understandable.  With Apples terms of service for iPhone applications, you cannot sell third party stuff through an application.  It’s smart on Apple’s part, but it requires you to purchase Amazon’s eBooks on their website and then go to your iPhone to read it (you could do it all on the iPhone with Safari, but that can be a pain sometimes).

On the other hand, Amazon has a great feature that lets you sync where you are in a book between multiple devices.  Say you start reading a book on your Kindle.  You can go on a trip with only your iPhone and pick up where you left off.  They call this feature “Whispersync” and it could come in handy for you Kindle owners.  I personally don’t own a Kindle, but I’m going to try this and see if I like it.  I’ve recently been getting into audiobooks and I love them.  Audiobooks allow you to do other things while still “reading” the book.  If you’re interested in that, check out Audible.com (also owned by Amazon).

What is Twitter?

When I read the news, blogs, or watch TV.  I am constantly surrounded by Twitter.  Yet only about 10-15 of my friends are actually on it. I think that is partly because people don't understand what it is for or why they would want to use it, or even how to use it. I am going to give you an example of how I use Twitter and how you could or should use it. 

Twitter is a micro blogging website with an API that allows programmers to create software that works in conjunction with their website. That is how you can have an application on your iPhone, or you Blackberry, or Google Phone. This allows you to participate in the micro blogging daily.  Let me explain exactly what I mean by micro blogging.  You have 140 characters to say something about what you are doing, or what you are thinking.  For example:

goochdotcomI'm always afraid of what I'll find in my hotel room- and I blame CSI for that about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

This is one of my friends on Twitter and hopefully he doesn’t mind me posting one of his Twitter updates.  What normally happens when one person makes a statement that generates interest, similar to the one above, people will comment and post on their own Twitter page something like:

mklear: @goochdotcom you shouldn’t use the glasses in the bathroom they just rinse them out windex– and then by putting the @ symbol it will respond to what he said on your page, and he will get a notification that someone posted a reply to one of his updates.

Twitter has now evolved from making dumb statements or status updates about what people are doing.  Now companies have figured out that people are constantly checking Twitter, almost neurotically.  For example, some people will make posts every half hour, more than most would check their email.  So CNN will use Twitter as a platform to post new news blips, so I am constantly getting up to date news on my Twitter feed.  O'Hare airport will also twitter weather delays and the list goes on.

Then the next step of Twitter evolution is promoting your own business on Twitter. Studentnerds has a Twitter page where we make sure our Twitter followers receive our blog posts and any updates about our company.  Many companies use Twitter like this also one of our partners will Twitter about relevant info to their company like:

gimmegolf Ogilvy wins Accenture match play in a rout over Casey: http://tinyurl.com/ad5oszabout 12 hours ago from web

I hope this makes Twitter a little more clear, and hopefully this will inspire more people to start using Twitter so i can have more friends.  Hit me up on the twitter.com/mklear

twitter.com/studentnerds
Let us know how we can get better!

Need a Cheap Computer?

If you need to get a cheap computer for any reason, I have come up with a list of parts that should provide a nice cheap computer.  This thing won’t be a super fast machine, but it will definitely handle your everyday tasks.  It is also a very simple machine to put together and could be a great starter machine for any wannabe computer builder.

Here are the parts for the computer:

1. MSI Wind Black Barebone - $139.99
2. Seagate Barracuda 250gb Hard Drive – $49.99
3. LG 22X DVD Burner - $24.99
4. Kingston 2gb Laptop Memory - $23.49

Total price comes to $238.46 before shipping.  The MSI barebone box comes with a built in processor.  It’s not the fastest thing in the world, but this machine would be great for Ubuntu or Windows XP.  It would be great for browsing the internet, listening to music and writing documents.  If you need help building a computer, here is a great guide for the absolute beginner.