I am going to do a series about tech that I think college students should use. This first post will be geared toward the communication platforms. I am a true believer in ubiquity, that I should have access to all my communication platforms anywhere. Everything that I will outline below I use on a daily basis, and have played with to find my top tools.
Everyone and their mother has heard of Twitter. If not, watch this video. Twitter is useful for much more than just status updates. Use it to find out who is hanging out where, have public conversations, and keep track of what is going on with events. With my group of friends, it gets used more than email. Leverage the direct message, @replies, and the like.
(shameless plug-follow me here)
If you are reading this blog, I am guessing you know what email is. However, I have a few things for you to think about:
- Create an account for junk-rather than clogging your main account with newsletter and the like, use a seperate account, or at least setup filters to keep it out of your inbox
- Use GMail-whether or not you hate Google, GMail is king. It is free, you will have a hard time filling it up, and its tagging/search feature is killer. Plus, it can check other adderesses, which is helpful for point 3…
- Use an account other than your school account as your main account-Many schools will not let you keep your email past graduation, and employers dont really want to see your .edu email. Do yourself a favor, grab firstname.lastname, firstinitiallastname, or firstnamelastname from gmail. Use this for your main email-resumes, biz cards, everything. If you have to use your school email, you can still do that from GMail.
- Get it on your phone-Personally, I use a Blackberry, so all 6 of my main email accounts travel in my pocket. However, you dont need a really expensive phone and data plan to make it work. You can get email via SMS from google-just set it up to forward it to your SMS gateway (Google that and your carrier name to find out what it is). Having your email everywhere will really let you stay on top of your world.
Facebook is a no-brainer. However, make sure to have the SMS aspects turned on. This lets you use it mobile, if you dont have a smartphone with the native application. If you do, make sure to sync it to your adderess book. I cannot count how many times I have not had someones number, but Facebook does.
These are the main communications platforms that everyone should use. If your office/school/friends swear by IM, use that too. I conduct 95% of my communications on Twitter, Email, Facebook, and IM.
That does it for the first installment of College Tech. If you have any questions, topic requests, smack talk, or just need help figuring out how to do one of these tips, please let me know at mitchell@zencollegelife.com, or in the comments below.
Next installment will be web apps that are free, and every student needs.
