The Student Nerds Blog

Be safe and have a great night.  We will have some exciting new features next year and can’t wait to get them out.  We’ll see you on Monday!   Here is a Random Link for the New Year.

I spent way too much money a few years ago buying DVDs. It was a waste of money and I recently tried to recuperate some of that cost by selling them back to a local store (I unfortunately got about $1/DVD).  But first, I backed up my entire DVD collection to a hard drive on my computer in a two-step process.  I would first rip the DVD to the hard drive and then I would convert that to a smaller AVI file.  It was kind of a pain to do it, but now there is a program that can do this process in 1 click.  It really is now that easy and if you’re worried about losing your favorite movie or just want to try and sell some DVDs on Amazon or at a garage sale, check out this guide . [Via MakeUseOf ]

This post will have a little different flavor, but it is something important I think, and I really hope to get our readers perspective on this.  Now that the democratic vote on bailing out the Big 3 automakers has failed, and we have successfully set aside the democratic process to enact the bailout anyway, the dust and discussion has settled a bit on the debate (at least for the time being) I wanted to weigh in on what I would argue to be an unfair amount of blame and criticism that has been laid at the feet of the UAW. Before we begin, I think we need to be clear about the role of the union. From its website and the preamble to the UAW constitution “Essential to the UAW's purpose is to afford the opportunity for workers to master their work environment; to achieve not only improvement in their economic status but, of equal importance, to gain from their labors a greater measure of dignity, of self- fulfillment and self-worth. “ The UAW's mission is to represent it...

For all of those who get nervous about when Santa is going to arrive, or whether or not he can find you at Grandma’s house.  Don’t worry, the Gov’t is here to help. The great people at NORAD (the same people who track and protect us from Nuclear Missiles) runs a global Santa Tracking Network.  http://www.noradsanta.org/en/home.html As of this posting, Santa was currently delivering Joy, Peace and Blackberry Storms to Brunei. Word is that part of Obama’s stimulus package will be extending the tracker to both the Great Pumpkin and the Festivus Merekat.     Merry Christmas from Student Nerds!

Throughout the rest of the week, we will be posting a quick tip that may help you with your computer needs. Today’s tip is to secure your wireless network.  Here is a great guide to help you do it. [Via PracticallyNetworked.com ]

If you read this blog, it won't come as a surprise to you that we here at Student Nerds love technology. We love how it changes lives and connects people, There's an innate “gadget” factor that I think we all buy-into, finding new devices that do old things better, as well as new things for the first time. But Tech is more than just processors and touchscreens, uploading photo and gigabytes. Tech is a way of thinking, it is believing that if an old way of thinking doesn't work, or did, but doesn't anymore, then it's part of what makes us people to try and find a way that does. Our country is faced with unparalleled challenges and pain, there's a fear out there that can be felt in many, and a sense of confusion and apprehension that can be felt by all. We are not going to grow out of this by doing things the same way. The trust that we put into our regulators to monitor the financial services industry has been shown to be sorely misplaced. The refusal of ...

So last night I was reading about Songbird which is a program powered by Mozilla (Makers of the popular Firefox browser).  Songbird is an open source music management program to compete with iTunes. In fact it looks just like it, brushed metal and all.  But here’s the kicker, you can not only browse the internet within the program, but you can have all these add-ons just like Firefox.  An add-on can enhance your experience while using the program.  It is very simple to figure out how to get the add-ons.  Install the program, and on the left side where you would see your iTunes library there is a Songbird – add-ons playlist.  Below are my favorite add-ons: SeeqPod – This is by far my favorite, you just search for your favorite artist/album/song and it populates a list, and then you can right click on it and  play the song, or download it.  What this add-on does is search around the internet where someone has posted the full song, if...

Google is always coming up with something really cool to use.  From Gmail and Adsense , to SketchUp and Google Docs .  Today I’m going to show you more about Google Docs and why I think it is such a wonderful way to do work. I started using Google Docs almost right when it was released back in 2006.  Since it’s initial release, the Google Docs team has steadily improved their products and for basic use, I could recommend using it for a full Office program.  Documents, spreadsheets and presentations can all be created with the suite. There are two main benefits of Google Docs (at least as I see it) are: The ability to access your documents on any machine with internet access.  You don’t have to worry about having the right software installed; you only need to have a fairly recent browser. (The Student Nerds recommend Firefox ) Collaboration. You can invite others to view and/or edit any of your Google Documents. This is great for wor...

I recently purchased a new Netbook, while there are a number on the market from Asus and Lenovo. I chose to good with the Dell Inspirion Mini-9. I chose the Window XP version configured here . The reason I decided to go with the Netbook was two fold. First, and probably most important was price. As configured, and with discounts and coupons found my Netbook cost me $350 pretax. That's cheaper than my newly purchased Kindle (reviewed here) and about the same as an unsubsidized Blackberry Storm. To get the (close to) the functionality of a full laptop, at that price point, is very compelling. The second reason, and by far the more interesting one, is just how functional this device can be with its limited resources. With open source and web based software become better, cheaper and more user friendly, the need for big, powerful and costly devices is rapidly diminishing. For instance, right now, I am drafting this post on OpenOffice.org's Writer software (I uninstal...

Shopping during the holidays can be a real pain. I can't stand crowded malls, so I prefer to do as much shopping online as I can. I have found many great sites over the years and I'm going to share them along with some of my tips for having a painless holiday shopping experience. First, I'm going to share with some of my favorite sites that I frequent when shopping. Amazon - It's amazing what started as an online bookstore is now a place I can buy a Nintendo Wii and toilet paper at the same time. I shop for TVs, audio equipment and cologne here. I also prefer Amazon's MP3 download store to iTunes as Amazon does not have any DRM in their files and the album artwork is already embedded in the files. Newegg - I use Newegg for almost all of my computer equipment. I have built many wish lists for different projects that I would like to tackle someday. Newegg does a wonderful job with customer service and they always seem to have the best prices. Always ch...

I was reading this post from Roger Ehrenberg.  Normally I agree with pretty much agree, or at least am educated with everything Roger says, but in this instance I think that he misses the point.  Rogers complains that “bankrupt companies are spending millions on influencing key policy-makers while their destiny hangs in the balance, something is terribly wrong.” While I don’t disagree that this is a moral issues, I question where the blame lies, should we be pointing the finger at Firms? The courts and (ironically) legislators themselves have decided that political donations are a form of protected free speech, further, it is the fiduciary duty of every board of directors to act in the best interest of their shareholder.  Bankruptcy (in theory, perhaps not in practice) is clearly the worst possible result for equity holders.  As such, corporations are obligated to attempt to influence politicians in whatever legal way available. Our government ha...

Well as most of you may already know we at Student Nerds are looking for a programmer to complete what we feel will make our site a successful venture.  The tricky part about starting a website is finding the right people to help you get your product to market quickly and effectively.  Recently (in the last two weeks) we have been searching for a PHP/Facebook API  specialist and we got a quote which I felt was a little ridiculous for the amount of work.  Now, we aren’t completely incapable of doing this ourselves. We have basic knowledge of programming and Praz can program on his own, but is not as effective as someone who can do it full time.  So we reached out to someone on the Facebook developer site, and got a quote of $4,500. This guy was the novice compared to the other guy we messaged.  This is a college kid who wants to charge that amount of money, and my guess is he has people beating down his door for that price, during a Recession! ...

Twitter , the short message, micro-blogging website, is loved and hated, but mostly misunderstood I think. I love to use twitter to talk to, keep in touch and learn more about my friends, but to be honest, of my close friends on twitter, I have all their email addresses, most of them I spam on Blackberry Messenger and I know I could Facebook message anyone of them. If worst came to worst, I’m sure I could pick up a phone and actually call them. So as a communication tool for keeping in touch with your friends, Twitter is by no means indispensable. But Twitter is more than messaging, I frequently learn where my friends are, what they are doing, how hungover they are and so on. But again, with most of them, I’d learn anything notable anyway when we got together next. Now maybe their chicken dinner on Tuesday wouldn’t come up, or maybe I wouldn’t know how bored they are on Wednesday, but they’d probably share the story about their office closing early due to too much drinking at...

I’m not suggesting that Facebook is going anywhere, too many users, too stable and all that. But what I do find strange is that despite emerging in one of the biggest tech cycles since well…the last huge tech cycle, Facebook as of yet has not been able  to figure out how to monetize itself effectively. If this downturn lasts until 2010 , like some people are saying, advertising budgets will certainly be slashed, even if popular opinion hold that they will be up or at least flat in 2009. In 2010, Facebook will turn 6, that’s pretty old to still need to figure out how to make money (people are already giving Twitter a ton of crap , and it’s barely a year old. Further, with the money, resources and personnel that Facebook currently has at its disposal, their lack of success is even more troublesome. I remarked to Klear the other day that Facebook is the new Yahoo!,   and while I was joking, I could see it happening, there are many parallels, between the quality of ...

Keeping your digital photographs organized can really help you along with helping your family and friends.   I started using Picasa a few years ago and Google just recently released Version 3 of the software.  Today I’m going to show you how I use Picasa to organize my pictures and also use it to share with Facebook. The first thing you should do is have just one folder where you store all of your photos. This isn’t a necessity, but it makes it much easier to backup your pictures which you should be doing. I personally have a subfolder for each year then have another subfolder with the date and the name of the event.  My folder structure looks like this: E:\Pictures\2008\(12-9) Weekly Blog Post Once you have that setup, go and get Picasa (Windows & Linux only).  After installing Picasa you can have it scan your computer for your pictures or you have the opportunity to choose a folder manually.  Now that all of your pictures are load...

I recently got a Kindle ,  and apparently I was lucky to do so, as Amazon is reporting that they are sold out of version 1 of the device until after Christmas. I think this speaks both to the popularity of the devices (a good thing for Amazon) as well as the failure of Amazon to get Version 2 of the device ready for the holiday season (a very bad thing) Overall I have a very favorable impression of the device. I have subscribed to the New York Times and Atlantic Monthly on it, neither of which I read on a regular basis on paper. I have also purchased a book as well. I have read the NYT’s regularly, but have only sporadically touched on then book, more a statement on being busy at work, rather than the quality of the book or Kindle experience. Before the kindle I was very skeptical of e-books and e-reading in general. Obviously the convenience was appealing, but the loss of the tactile and ergonomic sensations of books was to big a deal breaker for me. The Kindle has changed th...

At Student Nerds we have started compiling a list of on going free software because we believe open source can be much more powerful than closed source because it is constantly being upgraded and fixed.  There will always be the need for closed source programs for software companies to profit on, but just think about the amount of money companies that rely on Microsoft spend on their products that could be replaced by free software.  Just humor me here, these are the programs that came installed on my company computer when I received my laptop: Microsoft Vista - $199.95 per computer vs. Open Source ( Ubuntu ) Microsoft Office - $149. 95 (Holiday Sale - $69.95) vs. Open Source ( Open Office ) and Gmail ACT contact manager -$229.99 (Sale - $199.99) vs. Open Source ( Gmail ) Microsoft Mappoint - $260.99 vs. Open Source ( Google Maps ) or ( Mapquest ) Total Savings for 1 computer = $840.88 (this is not using the sale prices).  If you assume ...

A couple weeks ago, I was heading to Iowa City. A new Blackberry owner, I couldn’t resist Google Chatting on the drive there. Since I don’t typically enjoy putting hundreds of other drivers’ and my lives at risk, the idea of voice-recognition on the Blackberry naturally came to mind. A quick Google search later (by the way, check out http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/ ) and I had come across vlingo 2.0 , an application for the Blackberry. Essentially, it takes over the already included voice-dialing operation for the phone, but expands it to include voice: text messaging, emailing, googling/yahooing, and a bunch of other  commands I haven’t gotten around to learning. This thing rocks. I say “message Mike Klear message hang on a couple more days and I’ll write that column” and it produces it within seconds. Usually on a message of that many words there will be one or two I have to go back to and correct, but the corrections aren’t manual: scroll to the word and it suggest...

I’ve written about backing up important files before . I think it’s a very important thing to do because it’s one of the worst things to have to deal with. I just recently had been turned on to Dropbox . Dropbox is a great program that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Today, I’m going to show you how to use it. First you need to download the software. During the installation you will create your free account that gives you 2gb of storage (You can upgrade for more room at a cost). Once you have the software installed, you will have a folder on your desktop that you will be able to store your important documents. The great part of Dropbox is you can install the software on many computers and keep all the files in your Dropbox folder synced with all of the computers that you use. I personally use it to keep spreadsheets that I build at work available at home for me to edit. Another bonus for Dropbox is that there is a public folder where you can put files and then share a link wit...

I love my blackberry, I could gush endlessly about it.  And I know people out there free the same way about their iPhones.  There are pluses and minuses to both to be sure, but this report from SquareTrade Inc, an electronics warranty company surprised me.  SquareTrade found that Blackberrys fail at nearly twice the rate of iPhones (11.9% to 5.6%. Treo of course failed at over a 16% rate – Palm sucks) Anyway, what I found surprising was not the Apple device’s low fail rate, but the blackberry’s relatively high rate. I have had great luck with my RIMM phone(s), the only real failure came from a screen cracking when I hurled it against a wall (probably the 20 th time I had done that my friends will remember), so I can hardly consider this a relevant data point. I can think of a couple reasons for this disparity, one of course being that the iPhone data is a projection based upon a model that SquareTrade has built. But I don’t want to get into that here. ...

I don’t have a real good grasp on all of these CD’s quite yet, but the best music I listened to last week was: Common – Universal Mind Control – this is the only song I have heard on the CD but if you like hip-hop like Atmosphere and Blackalicious , then I think you will find this song very likeable. ( Amazon – iTunes ) Kanye West – Heartless – Most of this CD sounds exactly the same, but there are a few good songs.  I must say its not his best work but its still listenable. ( Amazon – iTunes ) The Killers (Day & Age entire CD) – haven’t listened to this cd extensively quite yet, but on initial listen seemed like a very well put together album if anyone else disagrees please comment. ( Amazon – iTunes ) Ludacris feat T-Pain (One more drink) – if you haven’t seen this music video I recommend you take the time it watch.  Its  pretty entertaining. WATCH NOW! ( Amazon – iTunes ) The last song by Ludacris is courtesy of Jam of the week on ...

Robert Reich is a very smart man.  I have enjoyed and learned a lot from reading his blog .  While this post is packed with insightful and interesting analysis, I think that his focus on the infrastructure aspect of Obama’s “Economic Recovery Plan” is especially pertinent.  The American Society of Civil Engineers believes that $1.6 Trillion in infrastructure   investment is necessary to bring our infrastructure to a GOOD level.  The key implication there is that we currently have a BAD or at least non-good infrastructure.  This is very disturbing.  Especially since not $0.01 of the $700 billion TARP investment, or of the $25bn Auto bailout is going to investment, but just to maintain the status quo.  Now this is not necessarily an indictment of either of these programs, that can be done elsewhere.  But if it isn’t clear that we are faced with a fundamental structural crisis, then it should be.  I think we would all prefer...

Google continually pushes out new and useful features for Gmail . Some of these features are a little gimmicky, but some are very helpful.  I’m going to show you some of my favorite ones and also how to enable them. To get started, you need to be using a recent internet browser.  The Student Nerds team recommends Firefox , but Internet Explorer 7 should be fine too.  If you are using Internet Explorer 6, you should upgrade, but if you can’t, make sure you have all the updates installed as some of these tips may not work. First, log in to your Gmail account and look for a green flask in the upper right part of your screen.  If it isn’t there, click Settings and then Labs.  There are plenty of options to choose from, but here are the ones that I use: Pictures in chat Custom keyboard shortcuts Mouse Gestures Signature Tweaks Muzzle Right-side chat Default ‘Reply to all’ ...