Evernote, Wikipanion & GoDocs should be in your arsenal

Target audience: Students, educators, nonprofits, social change organizations, mobile diehards.

By Jessica Haswell
Socialbrite staff

School just got easier with this collection of the top 10 apps that you can’t hit the classrooms without. Having recently left the classroom (Cornell 2010 — woot!), these are some tools that I definitely wish I had. Add them to the list of Top 10 Student Tools for Fall that we ran last month.

Evernote: A revolution in note-taking

1This app is revolutionizing notes as we know it. Evernote is a mobile and web sync friendly, media-rich note-taking machine. The basic function of the app is note-taking with the ability to add voice, photos, location and tags as well as the option to share with friends. The most exciting feature of this app is the Evernote trunk, which is filled with all sorts of valuable tools that are sure to help you excel in the classroom. Platforms: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre.

Wikipanion: Who needs a textbook?

2Who needs a textbook when you have Wikipedia’s brain child, Wikipanion? This app has really high ratings – because it’s simply a great app. You can access open source content on any topic imaginable, an essential tool for any class. Platform: iPhone.

GoDocs: Essential for your Google docs

3View, download and send your Google docs from your iPhone or iPad with this $3.99 app. Google docs are the go-to collaboration tool for students, and GoDocs will make collaboration even easier. The only thing it doesn’t do is let you edit docs. Platforms: iPhone, iPad.

Cliqset: Consolidate your stream

4Sharing, discovering and discussing on mobile and the Web just got easier: Follow your streams on Facebook, Twitter, Buzz — 70 social networks all told — in one place with Cliqset. This app is sure to help students simplify their lives and help professors keep students engaged. Platform: iPhone.

MyHomework: Digital planner in your palm

5Make sure you hand in all of the assignments on time – download this app. MyHomework makes it easy to keep track of, and color code all of your homework, classes, projects and tests. The app will also notify you when you have late and upcoming assignments by numbering them on your application icon. Buh-bye, paper planner. Platform: iPhone.

Rate My Profs: Students strike back

6The website has been around for a while — more than 10 million comments about 1 million profs — and now there is a free app available for this. Gotta admit, I love it. Rate My Professor was my bible for finding some of my favorite classes at school and avoiding some of the worst. Democracy run amok? Who cares! Platform: iPhone.

Kindle: Save money on textbooks

7Digital textbooks are for sure the way to save. With over 6,000 textbooks available for the Web, mobile and tablets, Amazon’s Kindle will save you about $60 on your average textbook purchase. Multiply that by the amount of textbooks you buy in one semester — that’s a lot of extra spending money. Platforms: iPhone, iPad.

FlashCards++: No more 3x5s

8There are a lot of flashcard apps to choose from – FlashCard++ is the best bang for your buck, going for $2.99, less than a deck of 3x5s. This stand-out study app makes it easy to study anything anywhere with your mobile phone. It can sync with Quizlet and also back-up your cards to Dropbox. If you’re not pleased with this one, check out CoboCards, Cram or Flashcards Deluxe. Platform: iPhone.

Sleep Cycle: Wake up feeling your best

9While this won’t help you get more sleep, Sleep Cycle does serve as an alarm clock that wakes you up during your lightest sleep phase, helping you wake up feeling most rested and relaxed. Sleep is almost as important as studying before a big exam. Costing only 99 cents, this app is definitely worth it. Platform: iPhone.

iTranslator: Translations at your fingertips

10You can use iTranslator to connect to Google Translator, Babel Fish or Free Translation to help with your language courses. Or, maybe it’ll help you figure out what language your prof is speaking. Platform: iPhone.

Other mobile apps to check out

Other interesting apps that have come across our desk from our friends at GradeGuru:

• gFlash + Flashcards and Tests: Create your own flashcards and share them with classmates as you study.

• Alarm Clock Pro: No need for that annoying alarm clock sound, with this app you can create an alarm clock with customizable themes and the app lets you set an ITunes playlist to wake up to.

• NY Times: Tet news from the New York Times online for free while you’re on the go to make sure you’re up to date before heading to class.

• Graphing Calculator: Not only does this app have all of the functionality of a graphing calculator, a screenshot of the work can be taken and emailed to anyone.

• Convertbot: This app converts currency, length, mass, time and much more. It supports over 440 units of conversion to help with any assignments.

• Periodic: This app offers a complete reference to the Periodic Table of Elements. It also offers useful information such as an element’s atomic weight, electron configuration, melting point, boiling point, atomic radius, ionic radius and year of discovery.

• MyGPA Calculator: Calculate your GPA per semester and cumulatively.

• Look for the upcoming release of GradeGuru’s StudyTracker ($1.99), which helps you track your effort at school, class by class, to help you achieve your grade goals.

What helps you bring home the A+? Please share in the comments below.

Related

• Top Ten Student Tools for Fall 2010 (Socialbrite)

• Jessica Haswell’s last piece for us was 5 collaboration tools to enhance productivity

The post Top 10 mobile apps for college students appeared first on Socialbrite.

I wanted to share a new service called AppMakr that allows anyone — even me  — to easily create an iPhone app for less than $200. With just a few clicks, I created an iPhone version of my blog.

The service offers a user-friendly interface to create a native iPhone application that you customize with images and content feeds. You can also monetize it by charging a fee or including ads. The service can publish your iPhone app to the iTunes app store or for a higher fee you can publish with your own branding.

What you get is a very simple, informational iPhone app — it doesn’t give you any interactive features that might be critical to achieving your goals. However, you’d probably be paying far more than $200, perhaps even as much as $10,000 for a customized app.

If you’re contemplating setting up a low-cost experiment, AppMakr is offering a big discount to readers of this blog. You can create an iPhone app for $50. Just type in KANTER in the coupon area. The discount is good through Jan. 18.

An inexpensive mobile solution

Let’s say you knew your supporters/followers were iPhone users and were asking for ways to access your content on their iPhones. And let’s say you had an extremely limited budget, no design skills, and lacked iPhone programming expertise. This service is an inexpensive way to get your organization’s content into a native iPhone.

If you want to be successful, I suggest that you spend more time designing and planning your app than I did. For example, you could create multiple tabs. You’ll also need to think about ways to promote it to your audience so they can find it and download it. And, of course, you’ll need to figure out some metrics to measure your success.

Cross-posted from Beth’s Blog.

The post How to create your own iPhone app appeared first on Socialbrite.

Improving your presentation skills from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

If you give presentations or speeches in public — ranging from a nonprofit workshop panel to a keynote about a social cause — chances are that you could benefit from sharpening your presentation skills.

I met Danielle Daly, co-founder of Rexi Media, at Blogworld Expo last month and was immediately impressed with how she and the Rexi Media team are helping to enhance the communication and presentation skills of executives and managers at major businesses and smaller organizations. In this 6-minute video interview, Danielle discusses 5 ways to make your presentation skills more effective.

A couple of days ago Rexi Media released an update to its already popular iPhone app, Presenter Pro, which lets you bone up on your presentation skills during your spare time (cost: $1.99). Presenter Pro focuses on 5 areas for enhancing presentation skills:

1) Body language: This covers areas such as effective gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, cultural gestures, use of passion, visualization, descriptive gestures, and others.

2) Vocal variety: How to add interest to your speaking style, how to sound more confident, how to add ingredients such as articulation, inflection, rate, pauses, changes in inflection and volume, and so on.

3) Structure: How to plan and structure your talk, how to hook listeners with an effective opening, how to manage time and enlist participation, how to end on a high note.

4) Visuals: How to think in pictures, how to marshal facts visually, how to use visual aids, use of color, balance and contrast, use of repetition, and so on.

5) The words you use: Think carefully about the contents of your talk — be human and accessible, know your stuff, relate real experiences, be persuasive, be economical and descriptive, avoid condescension and apologies.

Danielle emphasizes the importance of a strong beginning. “In the first 30 seconds of any presentation, people decide whether they’re going to tune you out,” she says. “It’s not about you, it’s about the audience,” and all too often presenters start out weakly by talking about themselves.

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

Rexi Media coaches on the delivery of presentations but also coaches on how to make the content of your presentation more effective. The Bay Area-based firm typically works with large companies, helping managers in large sales and service business divisions with an on-site visit followed by coaching them on virtual presentations and finally offering guidance through its mobile app, Presenter Pro.

Related

• Presentation Secrets for Social Communicators (chrisbrogan.com)

• Own the Crowd With Better Speaking (chrisbrogan.com)

• A Guide to Public Speaking (ismckenzie.com)

• Two important speaking tips (chrisbrogan.com)

• The 3 Keys to Good Public Speaking (CenterNetworks)

• How to Give a Great Speech, Part 1: Preparation (lifehack.org)

• More effective presentations (Ontech)

Cross-posted to Socialmedia.biz.

The post How to turbo-charge your presentation appeared first on Socialbrite.

I‘ve produced two new printable handouts for the annual conference of the Online News Association this weekend: 6 Twitter tools for journalists (PDF, also at http://bit.ly/6twittertips) and 8 ways to use social media in the newsroom (PDF) — see the accompanying post.

While the PDFs are spiffy-looking, they’re less than optimal for search engines and for the disabled, so I’ll mirror the handouts here in html.

6 Twitter tips for journalists

Create a Twitter dashboard

1Organize and manage your Twitterverse by selecting an app to work with throughout the day. Your top choices are two downloadable desktop apps — Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop — or Hootsuite, a configurable Web-based app. All allow you to customize your Twitterstream into groups (or, if you prefer, beats).

Find local tweeps

2Twitter’s a great way to connect to the local community. A handful of tools let you suss out who’s in your area. First try Twitter’s advanced search feature. Go to search.twitter.com/advanced, enter a city or zip code into the “Near this place” field and choose a search radius. The results are based on the location people enter in their Twitter bios. Other tools worth a try: TwitterLocal.net, NearbyTweets, Localtweeps and various iPhone apps, such as Twinkle, TwitterFon, Tweetie and Twittelator Pro. Happn.in is a new local Twitter app that lets you track trends and conversations in specific metro areas. We also like Twellow (and a href=”http://www.twellow.com/twellowhood”>Twellowhood) — the Twitter Yellow Pages — MrTweet and Justtweetit, three tools to help you discover folks relevant to your interests.

Follow breaking news

3Use Twitterfall to follow the real-time Web. Create a custom search to follow topics you specify — and save them for later retrieval. Type in an address into the geolocation panel to see what people are discussing in that area. Use this app to follow breaking news stories. You may also want to follow hashtags on topics of interest, like #health, #obama, etc. BreakingTweets is a site where reporters curate and organize news stories around Twitter. TweetBeep lets you receive hourly
email alerts of topics you specify. (Image: Waterfall by tokyogoat)

Measure your magnificence

4OK, at some point you’ll want to take account of how you’re doing in Twitterville. Fortunately, there are lots of tools to asses your Twitter chops. Type your Twitter ID into Twitterholic (you can also see the most popular Twitter users in your city), Twinfluence, TwitterGrader, Twittorati or Twitalyzer to see the power of your profile. Use Retweetrank, Tweetmeme, Twitturly or Retweetist to measure how often you get retweeted. For metrics, Bit.ly and TweetStats are good ways to see how many Twitter followers have clicked the url shortener to read that story you polished to a sheen.

Find a source

5@helpareporter connects journalists with more than 100,000 news sources. Peter Shankman (@skydiver) posts tweets with instructions on how to respond. Journalists submit queries using an online form, and sources can get up to three emails a day with 15-30 queries per email.

Report on location

6Twitcam, a new service, combines the simplicity of Twitter with the ability to stream live video, thanks to a partnership with Livestream. You could report live from the scene of a speech, a fire, a protest or another breaking news event. Chat with your viewers via Twitter right from your broadcast page. All Twitcam sessions are archived and can be embedded on your news site.

Related articles

• 8 ways to use social media in the newsroom (socialbrite.org)
• Corporate Twitter Toolbox: Twitter Tools for the Enterprise (mashable.com)

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