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That time is once again among us. The time when parents rejoice and children cringe: Back to School!

I’ve compiled a list of Web 2.0 websites sure to help you with any school related matters! So whether you’re going to college for your first year or returning yet again, this list is sure to help you out!

Facebook.com – If you have not yet created a Facebook account, there is no better time than now. Use Facebook to meet new people, learn about new activities (whatever they may be), and stay in contact with other students and friends.

RateMyProfessors.com – This one can help you GREATLY! With RMP you can find information about teachers or even add your own. Use this before you start to make your schedule to learn more about particular teachers.

Ebay.com & Craigslist.org – Use both websites to get good deals on text books and school supplies! But why these two when there are many others dedicated to solely school matters? Well with Ebay and Craiglist you can buy almost ANYTHING else too!

Yelp.com – If you’re going to school in a new location, you will need to know all the not-so-hot and HOT spots. Yelp is a review site where all reviews are user submitted, so you can learn about places before you check them out- right from other students.

Stu.dicio.us – There is nothing worse than losing notes or just leaving them somewhere. With Stu.dicio.us you can take/save/share notes, todos lists, documents, and even connect with Facebook friends, and have everything available from any computer with Internet access.

Citationmachine.net – MLA, APA- WHAT? Still having trouble writing citations? Use this website to correctly structure your citations for your papers by simply filling out a form.

Books.Google.com – Need to check out a book, but have no time to get to a real library (who still goes to those places anyway?), just try doing a search in this Google tool. You will find hundreds of books completely digitized by Google. Though, they do not have as big a selection as some libraries, it is still a good start.

All of the mentioned sites have helped me in school, but I am sure there are many other great ones out there. So if you have any not on the list, just add them to the comments section.

Good luck!

In case you hadn’t seen it, George Hotz, the teenager from New Jersey who has spent the last two months (yes, 500 hours of time) hacking the iPhone so that it’s compatible with carriers other than AT&T, has traded his newly created device. The deal? Hotz traded his “invention” to CertiCell, a Kentcucky-based cell phone repair company, for a car and three new 8 GB iPhones. According to the AP article, Holtz will be sharing the devices with the two friends of his that helped him hack the device…no word on how they plan to share the car.

You can also check out Hotz’s official blog.

It will be interesting to see what this changes. Realistically, probably nothing. Holtz has posted his information on his public blog, so anyone could technically “do it” now, though it’s not the kind of thing the average person can pull off easily. The average person has no shot at pulling this off, despite the fact that Hotz says he can now do it in an hour. If, however, another company decides to get several people who can do this in an hour and sell them in large quantities, then we’re talking about a different story. From what I’ve read, this would be perfectly legal (you can buy a car, tinker under the hood and sell it for more, right?) but if some sort of mass distribution were developed we might see some additional legal claims from folks at AT&T.

Speaking of AT&T, they have not issued a public statement but I’m sure are not too excited about all this publicity with Hotz on tv saying he was bummed that it could only be used on AT&T and so he went around it. Even if people can’t do it themselves, it has to have folks thinking that a cross over model will be available sooner rather than later.

Apple, on the other hand, saw its stock rise…

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Update - According to this blog, the DMCA doesn’t necessarily cover hacking the iPhone and selling it commerically…

The article also notes that there is also a blogger who has offered $100,000 to anyone who can unlock a software release of the iPhone. The person claims they just want to post it freely and release the iPhone to the world.

Google has formally announced that it will begin trying ads on select YouTube videos. The way this will work, according to the announcement, is by having a short ad rise up from the bottom 20% of the video. The ad will have an X for you to close it out if you wish, and if not it will go away after it has played.

If you click on the ad, it will pause the video playing and play another short video in the middle of your video player. Once it has finished (or before if you don’t like what you see) you go back to your video. Clicking onto the ad video will also launch a new destination page for the advertiser, if you so choose. See some screen shots from the Linkin Park video below for an example:

On Click:

You can also see another example HERE - this one sheds a little more light on the relevancy factor, illustrating when these ads will actually show up. Of course with audio-to-text still not very good, relevancy will continue to be a question.

There are, of course, many people not too excited and a quick look at the comments on the blog post indicate that Youtube users are not really looking forward to this at all. But it will probably be a little longer before we see truly how everyone feels. The ads will only show up on YouTube content partners’ content for now (approximately 1,000 partners or so) and I’m sure won’t be rolled out entirely at once. But once users start to see them more, we’ll certainly see things showing up in the blogosphere about it.

I think it’s a step in the right direction. Others have been trying it - VideoEgg, for example, has tried something similar, as some have noted. However in YouTube this will certainly be the big stage for this all to play out on. In the Linkin Park example above, for instance, as the video is letterboxed the ad doesn’t actually interfere with any of the video’s content at all. Even in the Hairspray example, I’m really not bothered. And as someone who generally despises the approach of traditional advertising, I think that’s pretty impressive.

It’s understandable that your average YouTube user will not be too appreciative of the overall situation. While it is the truth, many folks probably won’t be thinking about the fact that Google put $1.6 billion dollars of investment into something that wasn’t making money and needs to find a way to change that. In fact, even though it is the almighty Google and they have a decent amount of cash to spare, if they cannot find acceptable ways to monetize YouTube it might not be long for this world. So while people may complain for now, I think “YouTube with ads” will be better for most than “no YouTube at all.” And this isn’t just for YouTube, it’s for all video sharing sites. There’s an awful lot of bandwidth being used up and someone has to pay for it.

Something has to be done in this space, so here we go. For me, the biggest questions will revolve around revenue sharing, copyright issues around ads and relevancy. I’m excited, should be interesting…

In case you missed it, Google officially ended its DTO/DTR (download to own, download to rent) video service last week. Google let folks who had previously purchased a video know (like me!) that:

…we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007…After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.

To fully account for the video purchases you made before July 18, 2007, we are providing you with a Google Checkout bonus for $2.00. Your bonus expires in 60 days.

As you may have guessed, many people weren’t too happy with the way this originally went down. People who had purchased videos now had about a week to watch them before their purchases were rendered useless. The consolation? A $2.00 Google Checkout bonus.

Not too long after this announcement - about a few thousand letters and blog postings later - Google admitted that they made a mistake. On their official blog they wrote:

When your friends and well-intentioned acquaintances tell you that you’ve made a mistake, it’s good to listen…we thought offering the refund in the form of Google Checkout credits would entail fewer steps and offer a better user experience. We should have anticipated that some users would see a Checkout credit as nothing more than an extra step of a different (and annoyingly self-serving) kind. Our bad.

Among the changes they are making, Google will now offer a full refund to anyone who purchased a video, will allow users to continue to watch their videos for another 6 months and will also allow you to keep the $2.00 Google Checkout credit you’ve received.

This will no doubt make people much happier, and I believe, as I’m sure many others do, that it’s always good to see a company admitting they made a mistake and fixing it.

One thing that this does entire story does make you think about (which I thought PC Mag’s article captured quite well) is how this kind of thing really could happen. Google is a giant and therefore decided that based on the negative feedback it was getting they would remedy the situation - so more time to see your movies, a full refund and an additional credit for you. But what if this wasn’t Google? What if a video company or picture uploading site or blogging service that you had invested your time, uploads, content or writing to just went under? If they didn’t have the power of Google to give more back, where would you be?

All that said, I firmly believe that this is the nature of the evolving digital marketplace. It’s happened with other industries, that’s just the way it goes. In order to make things happen you have to try new things out. Way back when Google decided to roll out its own video service along with this DTR/DTO functionality, nobody had a clue on how to monetize video online. Surprise surprise, no one has really figured it out now either. So while there might be some repercussions that come along with this type of experimentation, there are still benefits that come from it. Now in this particular example the negatives are exacerbated because of the fact that users’ money is involved, but think of all of the benefits that come from companies like Google experimenting (and often failing) in the online sphere and developing (mostly) free products for folks to use. I think dealing with some failure is a byproduct that, in the end, most people are ok dealing with. The above blog entry from Google actually ends with a similar thought.

We make mistakes; we do our best not to repeat them — and we really do try to fix the ones we make. That said, the very least that our users should expect from us is that our mistakes be new and innovative, too.

Sure, there is a certain degree of spin on everything. But putting it all into perspective, I think these are things that we as users of the magical interwebonlineportalspace should not only expect, but embrace.

Now for some changes to the Google Video service as a whole…

I love Digg and other social bookmarking websites. They are the news sites for the Internet- by Internet users, for Internet users. But as great as they are, they are also known as “Site Killers”. If a blog with very little bandwidth in it’s hosting package gets picked up by Digg or any of the other social bookmarking websites, and it all of a sudden gets a massive amount of hits, it can go down. And this can be a pain for both the website administration and the user.

In fact, there have been countless amount of times where I have found a very interesting link, and I could not see it because the site has gone down! So, to fix this I have been using a very useful Firefox extension, Mr. Uptime. The extension works by popping up whenever you arrive at a web page that is down and asking if the web page should be bookmarked for later.

If you decide the website is important enough and would like to bookmark it. Mr. Uptime will now keep an eye on the site, and it will alert you once the web page goes back up.

Thank you Mr. Uptime!

But not just Gmail! Picasa Web Albums and all of Google’s services are getting get a lot better!

Why? Well today Google announced on its blog that it will begin offering fee-based “additional storage plans” for all of its services- first starting with Gmail and Picasa Web Albums and later adding the plans to other services, such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets, in the near future.

Truthfully this is a wish come true for me. Like many, I use Gmail as not only my e-mail, but as my online storage solution (Thanks GMail Drive). And even though I have yet to reach the current maximum storage of 2.82 GB provided by Google. I knew the sad day would someday come when I would reach the end and be forced to start using something else.

So, what’s more storage costing us?

The plans may be somewhat more expensive than some online storage solution services, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay to add more storage to what IS the best e-mail service around.

It was announced Monday that the National Music Publishers Association has joined folks such as Viacom (MTV & Comedy Central), Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon in their suit against Google’s YouTube for copyright violations. The problem, as many know, is quite simple - these companies believe that YouTube is seeing success, audience and profit (well, at least in their sale) largely due to use of copyrighted content. Sure, YouTube houses hundreds of thousands of home videos of dogs and swimming pools, but would it have reached its current heights if you users couldn’t have logged on and seen clips from Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show? At the very least, it’s a legitimate argument…

GoogTube, of course, claims safe harbor under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). The act essentially protects user-focused sites like YouTube and other video sharing site by not holding them liable for the illegal activities of their users provided that the sites take action once they discover the illegal content. The legal issue is, of course, that YouTube still needs to make an effort to prevent people from uploading illegal content. Do they? Many, including the outspoken Mark Cuban make the legitimate argument that they don’t. This, for me, is the interesting part…

If one could argue that YouTube has not done enough to prevent this type of thing, and that it has profited greatly from copyrighted content, then what percentage of its value comes from these infringements? If that is the ruling, could it be determined that 60% of YouTube’s value comes from illegal clips? 90%? If all copyright infringing content were removed tomorrow and no one could see any more family guy starting immediately, would people still go there? Would sponsors still buy ads? Would Google be able to sell it to anyone for $1.6 billion again?

As fellow blogger Leo noted last week, we might soon find out as YouTube plans to roll out its copyright fingerprinting technology in September. Theoretically, this will check for copyrighted songs and video and disallow content that contains them. If the technology works, it would certainly make publishers happy. But what will it do to the millions of people who log onto YouTube (remember, most are viewers, not creators) to see The Simpsons or a movie clip? Or what about that home video that you made to “Eye of the Tiger?” If there is a sweeping change, there will surely be a similar change in the way people see the site.

Take-Two Interactive’s announcement regarding its plan to delay the release of the highly anticipated “Grand Theft Auto IV” has been a shock to many. The franchise’s newest addition is being postponed from its original release date of Oct. 16th to as late as next fall. Which means it will miss the highly profitable holiday shopping season and disappoint scores of eager gamers who have had the game reserved for months- people such as myself.

Even if, we have many great games on the horizon (Halo 3, Assassin’s Creed, and Metal Gear Solid 4) none will fill the void of no GTA in my book…

Just a cool site worth taking a look at - http://iphoneapps.cnet.com.

The folks at CNET show some cool apps that have been developed specifically for iPhones. Including….Da da da Daaaaa - the tip calculator. Is it possible to have any electronic device that doesn’t calculate tip? I don’t think so.

Enjoy…

Thought this article was a good one from MicroPersuasion. It talks about an increasingly relevant issue (rising, of course, with iPhones all over the place now) - mobile sites and their compatibility and display on different mobile devices. As the article points out, most sites (at least the ones who think that there might actually be someone interested in accessing them from a phone) will detect (or “sniff”) what device you are browsing from and deliver the appropriate content. If you’re accessing from your PC, you get the full version with all the bells and whistles. But if you are accessing from your phone, you’ll get the slimmed down version - fewer graphics, more text, a simpler layout etc…

The challenge, of course, is that not all phone are created equal, particularly now as the iPhone and its neat little screen bring so much more screen space to the table. So while a site might want to re-direct you to its slimmed down text version, you might want to say, “Hey, I just paid $600 for this iPhone and I have the screen turned sideways and I’m connected via wi-fi so I want the regular site.” Steve Rubel pushes for user choice so that scenarios like this don’t annoy people.

Certainly this will continue to be something worth monitoring. Browsers on phones, connection speeds and screen size will allow for more compatibility, but it’s hard to imagine wanting the full site experience on your phone for all sites. Plus, given the nature of the “mobile” part of the phone experience, it’s reasonable to expect that most people will be looking to do things quickly, so mobile sites will probably be best suited to reflect this. For instance, if I’m checking on the status of my package through UPS, I probably don’t really care about how I could open a UPS corporate account at my office. I’ll handle that stuff at my office. As one of the commentors to the article notes, mobile devices, while they will continue to get better, will also continue to be designed for your hand(s). Inherently this will probably always lead to some necessary separation of mobile and desktop sites (not to mention all other applications).

Note -Screen shots above are from http://ready.mobi, which tests your site for how it might look on a mobile phone (keep in mind however, it is created by a company that makes its living by developing mobile sites for people…so let’s not be surprised if it skews on the negative side at all…)