Site Description

I wasted a lot of time in college. In fact, I probably wasted the equivalent of a full-time job just hanging out. That’s 40 plus hours of watching TV and playing drinking games every week. Not something I’m proud of. But definitely something that happens to many students. Thankfully, there’s a site out there that aims to help you become more productive in your down time.

College-Startup.com is a blog about how anyone can run a successful business from their dorm room. Regular posts discuss topics that are motivational, helpful, and original. The site is laid out like a typical blog, with content along the left side and a navigational sidebar along the right. There is very little flash, which highlights the content. This is good, since the content is usually very, very good.

College-Startup is not your typical entrepreneurial blog. Instead much of the information is directed at how a college student can or should handle situations that come up when starting and running a business. For many reasons this is different than someone running their business full-time. Availability of resources, time management, start-up capital and more is extremely different under the circumstances faced by someone in college. This blog stays focused to that niche, while also addressing situations all entrepreneurs are familiar with.

About College-Startup.com

College-Startup was started by a student from Ohio State named Ben Bleikamp. It doesn’t say what year he began the site, but the archives go all the way back to November 2005, so we’ll go with that. Originally Ben began College-Startup as a way to help and encourage college students to confidently start businesses while still in school. That goal has been more than met. In fact, the reigns have since been handed over to a couple individuals who’ve made it their goal to continue reaching college students and also to help all who would like to be entrepreneurs but need a small nudge to get started.

What I Liked

Over the past couple years I’ve been stopping in periodically to read College-Startup.com and have always left more knowledgeable than when I arrived. If you’ve never visited this site before you’ll find hours worth of archived content, most of which is still very relevant.

If you come back to the site after lengthy absences like I do, you’ll quickly realize how reader-friendly their diverse categories are. You can find the topics that interest you quickly and easily. Most blogs are like this by design, but College-Startup has drilled down the categories into very specific niches.

From a design standpoint, the color scheme is easy on the eyes, making the articles easy to read. There is a distinct separation between the content section and the sidebars, which have red backgrounds and white font.

I really like that College-Startup doesn’t try to be anything that it’s not. It’s a blog that puts out excellent content related to entrepreneurial ventures and that’s where 100% of the focus goes.

What I Didn’t Like

I’ve praised College-Startup for its simplicity and my thoughts on that haven’t changed. Accessibility to archived content is good, but I’d like to see a page that lists post titles for each month. Currently, the archives list about five posts per page, with an excerpt from each.

This isn’t bad, only a bit clunky. If there was a month with 30 posts you’d have to click through five or six pages to see them all. Again, not the most devastating issue, but a site that has such solid archived content should make it as easy as possible for readers to wade through it.

The Final Word

I rarely leave College-Startup.com without some sort of inspiration. If you’re an entrepreneur of any age or a college student looking for some flexible ways to earn some cash, this site is an awesome reference point. The advice extends to both online and offline business and is generic enough to fit into any industry, making College-Startup.com a priceless resource for budding business people.

www.College-Startup.com

There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to sign in to a website only to realize you don’t know the password. Well, I can think of one or two things that are worse than that, but I think you get my point.

The reason I bring this issue up is there’s an open source software program called KeePass that makes it easy to organize and access passwords for all your online accounts.

Of course, a big concern with the internet and especially personal accounts online is security. There is a great deal of sensitive information kept there and if it were to fall in the wrong hands could be a very big problem.

In order to keep your accounts as secure as possible, many experts suggest you don’t use the same password for all your accounts. Instead they recommend using different passwords for each. This is a difficult task when you start accumulating usernames and passwords for dozens of websites, so some sort of method is necessary to keep them all straight.

In the past I’ve used a couple different methods like writing them in a notebook or keeping them in a Microsoft OneNote file. Neither of these methods are very secure, so to counter that I made up a simple but effective coding system in case someone were to get ahold of the notebook or file.

My way works ok, but not great, which is why I thought I’d give KeePass a try. After downloading the software and setting up my account, I added a few passwords. There’s not a whole lot of flash to it, but there doesn’t need to be as long as your data is secure.

KeePass Mobility

The part I really like about KeePass is how mobile it is. There are two different kinds of downloads. Either you can install the software on your computer (not very mobile), download a .zip file and store it on a thumb drive (pretty mobile), or with the help of some user-contributed plugins, use it directly on your BlackBerry, iPhone, or PocketPC (extremely mobile).

Because I use passwords on both home and work computers, mobility is key for me. I don’t like the idea of bogging down my hard drive with many software applications, so storing one copy on a thumb drive and taking it with me works best. I do this already with some other open-source software programs.

To Use it or Not To Use it

I really like this software as an internet tool, however, I probably won’t be making it my primary password system (at least not anytime real soon) for a couple reasons. Actually they’re more like excuses, but who’s counting.

The first is the effort it will take to set up. If you’re like me and already have a ton of accounts and passwords, setting them all up in KeePass would be very time consuming.

I think it would be a great resource once they were all entered, assuming I’d stay on top of updating it each time that I created a new account somewhere, but that’s a big assumption and probably isn’t likely.

The second reason is my concern about security. I trust KeePass’s security policies and have faith in their efforts to keep my passwords safe from hackers and such.

What I don’t have faith in is myself remembering a super-secure password without writing it down somewhere. And then if it were to fall into the wrong hands, that person would have not only the passwords but a complete list of the sites that I have accounts on.

The KeePass Predicament

This is the predicament as I see it: The experts say use a different password for all accounts. KeePass says “Use our software and only have to remember one password.”

Ok, so far so good.

But what happens when your one password is found, stolen, hacked, etc.? Now they don’t have only one bank account, they’ve got them all. And your email, and your Twitter account.

It’s a real “chicken or the egg” dilemma and I’m not sure I have the answer.

I haven’t completely made up my mind on KeePass yet, but my initial thought is for it to be worth using I’d have to set aside some time to get it started initially and then come up with a very, very secure password, commit it to memory and throw away the key. Otherwise there’s just too much at stake.

I’d like to hear what you think about password management software. Have you used it before? How well has it worked for you? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Most recently while I was poking around on Daily Blog Tips, I came across links to their network of sites, which I’ve dubbed “The Daily Tips Network” (DTN) because I don’t believe they’ve got any other name for it. There are three sites in the DTN, the previously mentioned Daily Blog Tips, a grammar/writing guide called Daily Writing Tips and the internet scoop site called Daily Bits.

Below you can read about each of them in more detail. There are screenshots and links as well.

Daily Blog Tips

I’m not even really sure when or how I first ended up on Daily Blog Tips, but ever since the first time I was there I’ve continued to end up on the site, either through links from other blogs or through the search engines. Now I go back on my own regularly.

One of the reasons I kept finding myself on Daily Blog Tips is it’s WordPress resources. WordPress is a popular blogging platform and Daily Blog Tips has some excellent WordPress themes that you can download for free. Daily Blog Tips also has links to some helpful WordPress plugins as well. The bottom line is if you’re a WordPress user, you’ve either already come across Daily Blog Tips or you probably should give it a look.

Daily Blog Tips isn’t only for WordPress users, though. There are tons of articles on all different blogging topics from monetization to driving traffic to content creation. In fact, if you have a website (blog or not) you should be able to find some useful information. If you haven’t gone to Daily Blog Tips already, go there now. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

(Cue elevator music.)

Oh, good. You’re back. The second site in the Daily Tips Network is next.

Daily Writing Tips

Nowadays the internet makes it easy for just about anyone to start a website and post their thoughts to the web. This is fine, great really, except many people lack writing skills. Unfortunately, grammatical errors can affect the writer’s ability to earn respect from his or her readers. To fix this problem the web needs sites that re-teach English. Enter Daily Writing Tips.

Daily Writing Tips explores different areas of writing from grammar to punctuation to spelling. There are already hundreds of posts touching on very specific examples. For instance, in the Grammar Category you can read articles that explain when to use “a” vs “an” or whether you should use “its” or “it’s”. Good reads, and informative too.

One of the coolest parts of the site is the Daily Writing Tips Tests. There are only a few listed right now, but they’re a fun way to gauge where you are with your writing skills. See how well you do. Go ahead, do it now. I’ll still be here.

(pick up the Muzak)

Ok, now that you’re finished let’s move on to the third and final site of the DTN.

Daily Bits

Daily Bits is a site that discusses the trends and news of the tech side of the internet. With updates on what the major players like Google, WordPress, and Facebook are up to, Daily Bits is a dependable source for keeping tabs on the state of the web.

I like how well the site has its finger on the pulse of what’s happening on the internet. Most of the posts are relevant and timely, and even though the topic is directed towards a moderate to advanced reader, the writing style is conversational and easy to understand.

The best way to explain Daily Bits, without actually going there and seeing for yourself (which you can do in just a moment), is to share the site’s self explanation – “your daily dose of internet and technology!”.

Ok, now you can take a look at Daily Bits.

The Daily Tips Network Wrapup

I hope you’ve gotten some use from my recommendation of the DTN. I think Daniel Scocco, the editor/author/developer of the DTN sites, has done an excellent job creating this network. As I mentioned before, the sites are all the perfect amount of similar but different to stand alone yet compliment each other in a way that makes them all better.

If you’re interested in hearing more, you can follow Daniel on Twitter or go to any or all of the DTN sites and subscribe to his RSS or mailing list.

**Disclaimer**
I know I made a little point about bad grammar/spelling/punctuation in bloggers when discussing Daily Writing Tips, however, I make no claims that my writing is anywhere close to perfect.

In fact, I’d be willing to bet that even after two proofreads there will be anywhere from one to many mistakes in this post alone not to mention the rest of this site.

I guess what I’m saying is please feel free to point out any typos you might find, but keep it constructive. Even John McEnroe knows everyone makes mistakes.

There are three ways you can enter Josh’s contest, and doing them all will give you up to five chances to win. They are very simple and are 100% free. The first is to sign up for Josh’s ebook about niche marketing, called “The $5 Mini-Site Formula”. All this requires is entering your name and email into a form. I’ve read this ebook a few times and found it to be among the best in walking you through how to develop and monetize mini websites. It’s much easier than you might think and can be very profitable. The ebook alone is worth entering your email address, not to mention the free shot at an iPod.

The second way is to tweet a message announcing the contest. You can find the message Josh is asking you to tweet on the contest registration page. Again, another free and easy way to enter the contest. If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s something everyone should consider creating an account on. It’s free and it’s extremely useful. While you’re at it, you might want to follow SiteRoast on Twitter, also.

Finally, the last way to enter (for three entries) is to create a post on your blog about the contest. If you have a blog yourself this is another easy way to get yourself some extra entries. Granted, the more people you tell the more who enter, but at least it’ll get your name in the hat a few extra times.

If winning a free iPod Touch sounds like a good idea to you, be sure to visit the contest registration page. Also, don’t forget to take a look at Josh’s blog – ezOnlineMoney.com. Even if making money online doesn’t interest you (why wouldn’t it!), you’ll still find many useful and interesting ideas. Definitely worth paying a visit.

For those that don’t know, open source software is absolutely free software that can be used for individual purposes and commercially.

Anyways, when he said that it got me thinking about the many open source software programs I use, not to mention the thousands that I simply haven’t had time to play around with yet. Open source has expanded to the point where you can perform just about any computer-based function without paying a dime. Of course you’ll need to sacrifice certain features from time to time, but by and large you can adequately get the job done for free.

I put together a small list of some of the open source programs I use and I included a couple bonus links that list some of the better open source software applications that are available. You may have seen some of these programs before, perhaps you’ve used them already, but if you haven’t I suggest you give them a try. You’ll be impressed with how useful they are.

The Ones I Use

FileZilla – this file transfer software lets you easily upload files to your webserver. If you don’t have a website of your own, this one won’t help you much. If you do, it’s a very easy-to-use program and works great with…

WordPress - this blogging/content management software is among the leaders in open source software. It is extremely functional and is widely regarded as one of the best blogging platforms. This site uses WordPress with excellent results.

PDFCreator – you can use this software application to easily convert any printable document to a PDF file. Nearly as effective as Adobe Writer and absolutely free.

Simple Machines Forum – a free bulletin board/forum software program that will help you have a high-quality forum up and running in a matter of minutes. I set one up for my buddies and I to talk smack and it went from an idea to a functioning forum in less than ten minutes. A SiteRoast.com forum is also in the works and I used SMF for that as well.

Complete Open Source Software Lists

Mohawke’s Open Source Software Collection – this list includes a couple of the apps listed above along with about 100 others. It’s very diverse and comprehensive. If you’re just browsing for something to play around with, you’ll find some interesting options here.

SourceForge.net – the complete list of open source software. If you don’t find what you’re looking for here, I’d be shocked. Not only will you find what you’re looking for, you might get caught up looking around for other very cool applications.

Wikipedia Open Source Software List – a pretty thorough list of open source software organized by category. A number of different options are available here.

The great thing about open source software is it’s usually very easy to use. Some programs are very, very simple and others require a small learning curve, but once you get the basics down, you’ll see how awesome the open source movement is. If you are especially satisfied, don’t forget to make a small donation to their site.