Rekindling university textbooks
Tags: amazon, kindle, university
A few days ago I talked about how ludicrously expensive university textbooks are. Here is a quick recap:
Knowledge shouldn’t be expensive. Textbooks blah blah. Most knowledge is already becoming more accessible. blah blah.
I didn’t know about Amazon’s Kindle, until Kindle 2 came upon the scene. It’s a brilliant thing that was bound to happen sometime.
Before I go off on a tangent rambling about how useless the education system is becoming (for a later blogpost), university education still exists and with it the need to buy way too expensive textbooks.
There is already a lot been said about this on the net, but I really feel that something like Kindle needs to be used for textbooks. The ease of use and the amount of money that can be saved is tremendous.
When Kindle or something equivalent finally takes over the textbook market, the old textbooks won’t be usless though. It can still be used as kindling. *ba dum tish*.
The Price of Knowledge
Tags: knowledge, university
So, my university started today accompanied with frenzied chaos as people try to sort out various stuff, like registering for the correct courses, activating student cards, etc.
Another thing that happens in the first week of class is buying exorbitantly priced textbooks. To me it is just ridiculous. About a 3rd of my course fees are spent on textbooks. We have at our university what is called WebCT. It is an online facility where you can get notes of what happened in class and engage with the lecturers and other students if they are studying the same modules.
In this age where information is readily available, ie Wikipedia, and services like WebCT exists, I just don’t get it why we still need textbooks (extremely expensive ones at that). Yes, not everyone has a computer and some students are studying on bursaries/loans. I understand that. I’m just miffed at the fact that they are charging so much for what is quickly fading out.
The price of knowledge shouldn’t be so high.
Who agrees with me?
I hate university
Tags: internet, university
Yes.
I hate it.
I hate it, because I know, as I am busy with it, I will never have such a great time in my life. I am not actually the person who is pessimistic or cynical, but somewhere deep down, there is some sense of truth in it. Without a doubt, when I start working and heading into the real world, I will try and make the best of each situation and enjoy it to the utmost.
It made me think. What is it that makes university so awesome? To me it is several things. The first obvious one, is the fact that all you REALLY have to do, is pass your subjects and get your degree. From then on, you can do anything you want. 
As life goes on, more responsibilities pile up. That I can handle. I can easily see myself having “as” a great time with more responsibilities as with less.
University is a HUGELY conducive environment for a lot of things! Because of so many similar people, with the same goals, living next to each other, things happen! I get woken up at 9 on a Saturday only to discover that 13 people want to suddenly go on a wine tour. AWESOME!
Each day is exciting, because there are always people to do things with.
AND that. That is what I am afraid I will lose when I leave university. I am afraid I will lose the spontaneous nature of everyday life.
Considering that this is something I WANT outside of university, I decided to start a web project to solve just that problem. Coming ‘09.
University e-Potential!
Tags: potential, university
So, in a week’s time I’m heading to the land of awesome that is university! I can’t wait. Of course this will mean me being less on the net.
An university environment is such a great place to create viral/social/web products. There is so much potential that is left untapped. University students social a lot, so word goes around quickly. Thus the adoption rate of something new is quite extraordinary. A new awesome song? Takes a week before its heard everywhere. Facebook became an instant hit.
So, as I’m starting my 2nd year, I’m still looking for an idea to implement while I’m still in university precisely because it is so easy to get an userbase.
Time will tell.
Integrating with Facebook.
Tags: lolstupids, university
Today, I decided to try and integrate lolstupids.com with Facebook. It was fun! Before I started I trawled through countless apps, to see how successful they are. Needless to say, loads of really stupid things (in my eyes) are ludicrously popular. I would love to see if I can do something similar sometime in the future.
Anyway, I integrated lolstupids.com with facebook. You can’t add the app (yet). I still have to wrap up the profile side of things. I want to have a random quote of the day. At the moment it only displays the last quote on the top 10.
Normal CSS don’t also seem to work with Facebook apps. If the app looks a tad better and the profile part of the app is done, I’ll submit to the public directory! It will be interesting how many users I get from it. The app will have the same functionality as the site. You can add quotes and such. The added bonus as I said, it will display a random quote of the day on your profile page.
It is very basic stuff. I haven’t really delved into the social aspects of Facebook apps (don’t know how it works).
Anyway, the site isn’t really taking off (not that I expected it to), but I am sure, once I add more quotes, it will pick up. I am trawling the web in search of quotes as I speak.
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In other news, I am going back to university tomorrow! Whoo! It will be great to see all the people again. This will no doubt put me in a no-blog mode (see jan 2008- may 2008).
That’s all from me for now. Cheers!
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