back to school
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Reminder: Free iPod education promo ends Sept. 15
College Just a reminder: We told you in June about Apple's education promotion where you can get a free 8GB iPod touch (worth $299) to college students who buy a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, or Mac Pro. The promotion ends in just over a month, on September 15. If you haven't placed your order yet, it's probably a good time to get your act in gear. Note also that from the reports we've seen, iPod touch is not shipping with the 2.0 software update pre-loaded yet. So you'll have to shell out ten bucks for the software update. Qualified students can also opt for an 8GB iPod nano. On Sunday's talkcast, we figured it was all-but-certain that new iPod touch models and possibly laptops will drop right after this promotion ends. Keep that in mind, too.
Sears uses virtual worlds for back-to-school marketing strategy
Summer vacation is setting fast. Soon school classrooms will fill back up with eager students looking to display their latest duds and focus on buffing their intelligence. Shopping has to ensue before that big first day back, and Sears and coolness don't go together nor is it the likely first shopping choice. That's not preventing their marketing department from attempting to target teens in the back-to-school spending craze. Sears has a new strategy which is to promote their products and brand name through social networks and virtual worlds frequently inhabited by teens and kids. The new virtual Sears fronts are endless arriving all across the Metaverse. A fashion event will he held in the Sears virtual store in Zwinky's Zwinchester Mall. 3d avatar creator Meez also has Sears B-T-S boutique offering clothing, backgrounds, and animations. Additional promotions will run across Alloy. The Gofish network will be hosting a runway contest in the Cartoon Doll Emporium and also at WeeWorld. Another Sears shop is present in Poptropica and The-N.com. NeoPets has some virtual Sears's goodies in their summer faire event. If that wears you out, Sears wants everyone to lounge around. It's commercial fun for the whole family, well not this blogger. Nonetheless, it's still interesting to see the searing crossover.[Via Virtual World News]
School days: Schoolhouse student organizer
More back to school application suggestions! This time, a full-featured assignment planner, organizer and grade tracker: Schoolhouse 2.1. Last noted by Dan in April, this powerful and graceful app helps keep students on track by monitoring assigments on the calendar and associating all sorts of metadata with the tasks. You can attach your notes or research materials, assign partners to collaborate on projects, or 'classcast' your work out via .Mac or FTP.Schoolhouse is donationware, and if you find it useful we strongly suggest sending a few bucks Logan's way.
School days: Firefox Campus Edition
More back-to-school suggestions; this one has the advantage of being free. If you haven't already downloaded Firefox for your machine, it's a good idea to have it handy for those occasional sites that aren't Safari-friendly. If you're interested in a few extra plugins with a student-friendly bent, then you might check out the Firefox Campus Edition, which is simply the current Firefox build plus the FoxyTunes, StumbleUpon and Zotero plugins in one convenient package.FoxyTunes (for controlling your music player via the browser) and StumbleUpon (social bookmarking for interesting/useful sites) are both fine, but the real power tool here is Zotero: this research tool, file manager, PDF bucket and citation editor is a boon to anyone working on research projects with Firefox. Given enough practice with Zotero, it might replace a local note manager like Yojimbo or other online tools like Google Notebook.Of course, if you already have Firefox, you can download these plugins (or scores of others) separately, and all three are free. via PaulStamatiou.com
School days: Mellel & Scrivener
It's that time of year again, academicians. Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be highlighting products, tools and techniques to help students and teachers launch into the school year with style and ease. We pointed out Planbook last week, which should make lots of lesson planners happy; I'm going to cheer the hearts of language students with the news of an update to Mellel, the polyglot word processor for Mac, and also point to Scrivener, a powerful project management environment for writers in academic and creative settings.As Mat mentioned back in March, Mellel is a word processor that keeps the needs of academic writers clearly in focus. First off, it's got the best language support I've ever seen, including full right-to-left script support; it even lets you write in Syriac, which makes my friend Adam extremely happy (he's a scholar of the medieval church, and apparently the correspondence of the day was generally carried out in Syriac -- nobody speaks it today). It's also got powerful style sheet and footnote/endnote tools rolled in, and last week's update to version 2.2.7 enhanced its outlining support with the addition of OPML import and export. At $35 for student licenses ($49 for general use) it's a steal.A comment on Mat's post suggested Scrivener, which David also noted in February. While it's not a 'final format' word processor, it does provide something special: a complete idea management and organizational environment for writing, including a 'virtual corkboard' for gathering your ideas and a solid research bin for collecting source materials. The program suits those with a more improvisational or bouncy writing style, as you can quickly reorder your work from the corkboard or outline and keep revising the parts that still need more effort. For lightly-formatted writing, you can go straight from Scrivener; for more highly-styled work, the program serves as a nice front end for other tools like Mellel, Final Draft or Word. Like the student edition of Mellel, Scrivener is $35; both programs have demo versions available.
iTMS offers cultural explorations through music with new Back to School section
Just in time for a new fall semester, the iTMS has introduced a Back to School (iTMS link) section, offering playlists based on the many cultures, cliques and stereotypes that (love it or hate it) exist and collide on so many college campuses across our great planet. Groups like Hipsters, Hippies, Greeks, the Honor Roll, Club Kids, The Faithful and even Cowboys (and more) all are represented, with playlists ranging in price from around $25-$45 USD.If you ever needed a stereotyping microscope to peer into what these hooligan cliques are into these days, or if you're looking for a way into said cliques, these Back to School lists might just be the ticket.
Looking for a computer for school?
Summer's end is almost upon us, and you know what that means: back to school! Right now I am sure there are millions of students clamoring to get their various school supplies in order. Pens, paper, Trapper Keepers, and computers.Now, it won't come as a shock to you that we are a little biased towards Macs here on TUAW. Luckily, someone who writes for a real newspaper (they still make those?) thinks that no matter what institute of higher learning you're going to a MacBook will be your best companion.I can't agree more, thanks to being able to run Windows (in a number of ways) the MacBook is a great portable for any student.[via Digg]
Hey students, buy a Mac and get a free iPod nano
Apple is currently running a promotion (which goes until September 16, 2006) that many college students will like. Buy a Mac and an iPod to qualify for a $179 dollar rebate. Apple is advertising this as getting a free iPod nano, but the rebate can be applied to any iPod model you might have your eye on. Sounds like a good deal, though I never remember to fill out those rebate offers.[via MacMinute]
