I’m a big reader, but I know that not everyone feels the same — some people I know would much rather watch a movie than read a book. I get it — movies have awesome special affects, scores and sound effects that make the whole experience more exciting. But now there’s a new App that aims to make reading more like watching a movie!

Booktrack takes your e-reading experience to another level by adding a soundtrack. Booktracks  are e-books that play music and sound effects to go along with the story you’re reading. So, as the website explains, if you’re reading about the character in the book is at a nightclub, you’ll hear club music, or if you’re reading about war, you’ll hear the sound of soldier’s footsteps marching. What’s more, Booktrack tracks your reading speed and changes the music and effects to fit what you’re reading at the time. Read More »

One of the biggest expenses every student has to deal with at the start of each new semester is textbooks. Luckily for poor college students’ wallets, there has been a growing trend in college classes to utilize PDFs of book chapters, articles and notes instead of textbooks. However, most of the standard PDF readers (like Adobe Acrobat or Preview on Macs) don’t allow you to make any sort of edits, so if you want to be able to add notes or highlight important sections like you would with a regular textbook, you’ll have to spend your money to print them out.

That’s why you should try out Nitro PDF Reader. It’s the only free PDF reader and creator on the market that also allows for editing. With Nitro PDF, you can highlight, underline, and cross out selections of text, add notes and more. You can even pull out important quotes and pictures to use later when creating study guides or writing papers!

Nitro PDF works great for collaborating on group projects, too. You can add in your own comments or edits, and then save and share them with others in your group. You can also reply to others’ comments directly into their comment box, which keeps the discussion thread focused onto one topic. Read More »

When we first got the internet at my house growing up (back in grade school), one of my favorite things to do was send ecards to all my friends and family. I’d send them for every occasion and even for no occasion whatsoever! Luckily, my obsession with ecards died out by the time middle school rolled around, when I started thinking ecards were lame.

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As women, we face unrealistic images of female beauty in the media every single day. The images of women we see in magazines are airbrushed to perfection — which is why it’s no wonder so many women have skewed perceptions of their own bodies. According to a recent study, 95% of non-eating disordered women overestimated the size of their hips by 16% and their waists by 25% — but those very same women could correctly estimate the width of a box. It’s this skewed perception of our bodies that leads negative body images and even eating disorders. Read More »

I have to start out by saying that I probably shouldn’t be showing you this site, but I just find it so hilarious that I have to.

Harldlywork.in is a new site that allows you to access your Facebook while at work, your internship or in class… without your boss or professor knowing! How, you may ask? By transforming Facebook’s layout into something that looks like work! Simply log onto the site with your Facebook log-in information, and Hardlywork.in will transfer the normal Facebook layout into an inconspicuous Excel spreadsheet.

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I’m taking this week’s post as an opportunity to tell you all about a site that’s getting super popular and that I’m obsessing over: Pinterest. You may have already started happily pinning away on Pinterest, but if you haven’t yet, you need to start. I’ve been using it for a little over a month and I am totally addicted.

Pinterest is, according to the site, a “virtual pin board” that allows you to share things you love from the web. You can choose to follow other Pinterest users (and have them follow you back). Every time you visit Pinterest, you’ll see the recent pins of the other users you follow.

In order to join Pinterest, you have to request an invite, either from the site itself or from a friend who is a member (if you ask around, I’m willing to bet you know someone who is using the site already). Once you have an account, the first thing you’ll do is set up your profile and create a few pin boards — choose whatever categories you’d like, such as fashion inspiration, recipes, or design projects you want to try.

Once you’ve set up your profile, the next step is to start pinning! If you’re hung up on what sorts of things to pin, just trust your instincts and pin whatever you like or find interesting (hence the “interest” part of Pinterest). The easiest way to do this is by repinning something you find on another user’s pin board via the “repin” button on the page. You can also pin anything on the web, either through the add a pin page or via the “Pin It” bookmarklet you can add to your browser. It’s that easy!

Happy pinning! One word of caution: as I mentioned before, Pinterest can be pretty addictive!

I always have a difficult time staying motivated about working out. The problem is, I’m lazy, so the hardest part is actually just getting out of bed early or getting my butt off the sofa to drive to the gym and work out. Since I have a hard time dragging myself to the gym, I’m trying to stay in shape by running around my neighborhood. I still don’t do that as often as I should, but it works for me, since it doesn’t require me to go anywhere except out my front door.

The only problem with going for a run around the neighborhood is that it’s not as easy to gauge the distance I’ve run as it is on the treadmill at the gym. But that’s not a problem anymore, now that I’ve discovered WalkJogRun!

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I’m a huge fan of to-do lists. If I don’t write it down, there’s a good chance I’ll forget to do it. Some days, however, time gets away from me and I don’t end up getting as much done as I’d planned — and then I’m stuck with a bunch of leftover tasks that have to get added to the next day’s list. This is one of my pet peeves, because there is nothing more satisfying than looking at my to-do list and seeing all that I’ve crossed off it.

Now, with iDoneThis, I can get that feeling of accomplishment every day, even if I have unfinished tasks still on my to-do list. Every day, iDoneThis sends you an email asking what you’ve done that day, which you can simply reply to with a list of what you’ve accomplished. iDoneThis then takes your responses and plugs them in to your calendar, which you can browse through to see all that you’ve done today, this week, over in the last month, or even as far back as your account exists. Read More »

Every day, thousands of internet-only events take place, such as webcasts of sporting events, special sales, gaming events, and chats and more. With so many events happening every day and at all different times of day, it’s impossible for anyone to be able to keep track of what’s happening when.

But with Live Matrix, you’ll never miss out on an important online event. Think of it as a TV Guide for the internet — in fact, their tagline is “What’s When on the Web,” which sums up how it works perfectly. Live Matrix organizes all the online-only events into an easy-to-read, fully searchable grid that shows you what events are happening at what time and on what “channel” (AKA website). You can visit a channel’s page to see all upcoming events, and click on any event for more details. Live Matrix also has grids for specific types of events, such as Sports, Entertainment, Shopping, News, and more.

You can also join the site to add your own events, get reminder emails before an event that you don’t want to miss, RSVP and keep track of certain events, and add events to your computer’s calendar.

I’ve started using Live Matrix to make sure I don’t miss out on any good sales, and I’ve already learned about so many other cool events that I didn’t even know were happening in just the few days since I discovered the site. The only bad thing about Live Matrix? Now I have even more to distract me and keep me from doing work!

Summer is about halfway through, which means before you know it, everyone will be gearing up to head back to campus (sad, I know). However, it’s still far enough away from the start of school that it’s the perfect time to start looking for an apartment if you’re planning on living off campus this semester. Most of your classmates probably won’t start looking for a few more weeks, so if you begin now, you’ll have a head start and better chances of finding a great place before someone else snags it.

I know from experience that apartment hunting isn’t the easiest or most fun process in the world. There’s a lot out there, and it can be a challenge to sift through all of it to find one that fits all that you’re looking for in terms of rent price, size and location. Thankfully, there’s a solution that helps you quickly and easily sort through apartment listings in any local area: Padmapper. Read More »