I can’t believe we’re already at the end of the semester. Finals start next week. I’m not going to give you any study tips because I’m the last person who should be dishing out that advice but I will tell you how you can get rid of your textbooks and make some money in the process.

To start, I want you to check out:

Textbook 123. It’s a site run by a couple of guys at UVic and it looks pretty great. It uses Facebook Connect, so you don’t have to register for the website per se, just log in with your Facebook info and skip the hassle.

Some cool things about it:

• You’re selling within your school’s market
• They have pre-filler. This allows you to just enter your book’s ISBN and it automatically displays author, version, publisher info - all you have to do is enter the price you want to sell for.
• When you enter a book, Textbook 123 automatically adds a picture of it to your listing.
• There’s a wishlist feature, too. Enter a book you’re looking for and the site will search the database and alert you when that book becomes available.

I haven’t used the site to sell books yet but I will be listing a few in a couple of weeks. You might as well give it a try, it’s free.

Textbook 123 has more of a Canadian focus right now. Yeah, we’re the world’s guinea pigs.

craigslist. As if you’re not already aware.

Here are some tips to sell your books faster on craigslist or any other online-garage-sale-site.

• Take a picture! Yes, even if it’s just with your phone. This is preferred over the actual picture of the book on the publisher’s website. Why? People want to see that a) you’re legit and b) what quality the book is in.
• State the class the book is for and the exact edition it is.
• Is the professor using a newer edition than what you’re selling? No problem. Just include a note saying that and explaining that the content is essentially the same and that professors don’t really care what book you’re using.
• Price well. Usually, I check what the bookstore is selling the books at used and I bring the price down by 10-20%.
• Are you selling a bunch of books? Make different listings for each book.

If anything, hopefully this post just reminds you to list your books somewhere!

Enjoy the 4-day week.

I can’t believe it has been a month since I’ve posted! I’m sorry, it has been a very busy month but don’t worry, I’m still thinking of you.

In fact, I’ve been working on a new interface for Schoolr. The goal is to simplify things even more and I’ll also be adding some new features. And by features, I don’t just mean more search options.

I’m going leave this post a little bare so that I force myself to share more with you.

Until then, farewell and have a fantastic week.

I know. I’ve neglected this blog for the past few weeks. Midterms came and I told myself I’d write something after they were over, then reading break, and then the last weekend of the Olympics. But I’m here now. And by here I mean on the ferry coming back to Victoria from Vancouver (Did someone say gold?). Technically, I’ll have to post this once I get home because, for some reason, BC Ferries hates WiFi.

Updates? There’s been a little aesthetic change to the main page. You probably won’t notice but I spent way more time on it than I should have. No? You want an update that’s more substantial? Something worth reading? Well, I can do that for you – just give me a few weeks.

In the meanwhile, let me introduce you to Fresh Password. The site generates a really secure password for you in one click. You obviously won’t use the passwords it generates for everything but it works well for things like online banking and the likes.

Oh, I kind of hesitate to post this but it really made my day. I got this email as a suggestion through the Schoolr contact page a couple weeks ago. It was totally unprompted and I’m not sure what the context is but it’s absolutely amazing:

“why does everyone have a hard time with homework and everything they should just put down random answers like i do but mine are educated guesses and that way they don’t fail the eighth grade

bye”

Enjoy the start of the week.

“What is RSS?” - I’ve run into this question a lot in the past couple of days so I thought I’d dedicate this post to explain.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” That in itself is of no help to you but, hey, now you know.

Let’s say you visit a bunch of blogs and news websites on a daily basis. You have to type in each address and scroll down the website to read new posts or articles. RSS feeds let you read the content on those sites without actually having to visit them.

How? Well you’ll have to use an RSS Reader (I suggest Google Reader). Once you have a reader you can click the “RSS” or “Subscribe to RSS feed” buttons on each website. This will connect the RSS feeds from the respective websites/blogs to your reader. So instead of visiting each website individually, you can now open up your reader and see all the new articles and posts from all the websites you subscribe to in one place.

Why would I want to do that? It’s a time saver and you can quickly scroll down and view new content from all the websites you subscribe to without having to actually visit them. Some RSS feeds give you the full article/post in the reader, some others only give you a headline with a link to read the full article on their website.

Should I use RSS feeds? It’s really a personal choice. Some people love them, others aren’t a huge fan. I enjoy using them occasionally but for the most part, I like visiting each website/blog individually. It’s like eating at a restaurant, things tend to taste better when you’re in their environment.

You know when you hear or learn about something kind of obscure and then out of nowhere that fact or name starts popping up everywhere? Yeah. It’s called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

I am giving you a source of procrastination. Kissed by a Bus. It’s as strange as it sounds.

So I received an email from Wayne Poncia, the CEO of Etraffic Solutions, on December 8, 2009. I’ve waited to post his email and my reply back, expecting to get a response from him or Etraffic but that hasn’t happened, so here we go:

His email to me (Dated: December 8, 2009):

Sasan,

Thank you for bringing this issue to my attention.  As soon as I received your notice, I investigated to find that, as you indicated, the www.schoolr.com URL was copied into the public source code of the SchoolWAX site.  Reading your concern about its inclusion I instructed Etraffic staff to find the reference and remove it.  I apologize on Etraffic’s behalf for the error that was made.  It should not have occurred.

Regarding the press release about SchoolWAXTV claiming to be Canada’s “first” all in one homework site, I agree that that this statement is open to interpretatoin.  In response to your concern about the claim of “first” I checked into why our marketing person wrote the sentence the way that she did.  The response I received was that the combination of video and homework help was, in her mind, a “first.”  However, I see no harm in removing the word “first” from the release and have instructed staff to remove it.

I reviewed the schoolr site and I think you are providing a great service.  It appears to be targeted to post-secondary students and is a great one-stop jumping off spot to credible research resources.  I enjoyed the humour on the site as well.

From what I understand, schoolr is a non-revenue generating site in the same way that SchoolWAX and SchoolWAXTV are free services.  SchoolWAX and SchoolWAXTV actually came from a personal frustration that I had with my own children relying exclusively on Google and YouTube for research online.  I wanted them to use some of the many homework help sites available worldwide and, as a result, had SchoolWAX and SchoolWAXTV created as a free directory of quality homework help sites.  SchoolWAX and SchoolWAXTV promise no advertising and no revenue generation from either site.  Sponsorship is free. 

SchoolWAX and SchoolWAXTV do not target post-secondary students (as you can see the SchoolWAX target audience is elementary, middle and secondary).  I like schoolr’s more mature offering for post-secondary.  If you like, we would be willing to link to schoolr from SchoolWAX and recommend it as a post-secondary resource?  As well, I would be happy to include schoolr as a sponsor on the SchoolWAX and SchoolWAXTV sites.  The only thing we ask for in return for sponsorship is that your organization (in this case schoolr) link to SchoolWAX and/or SchoolWAXTV.

I am sorry that this situation has occurred and have taken steps to address your concerns.  I wish you well with schoolr, it is a great service.

Wayne Poncia
Chief Executive Officer

My response to him (Dated: December 16, 2009)

Wayne,

I appreciate the fact that you are taking steps to ameliorate this situation. I certainty understand how personal frustration can fuel innovation and I hope that we can both continue to provide useful services to the community at large. While your vision for SchoolWax may have been pure, its implementation, by your own admittance, was sullied by a developer at your company.

While SchoolWax may not be generating direct revenue, as it is a free service, it does act as a method of promoting Etraffic’s products. An example of this can be seen through the ‘Featured Product’ section of the “Educators” page. This can also be confirmed by an educator’s testimonial on SchoolWax’s “About Us” page, “I was blown away by the Pilot Math online trial on SchoolWAX and knew I had to have it because my district is going online. -Gr. 7 Teacher, NVSD 44.”

I welcome competition and I urge SchoolWax to be constantly innovating. And while I agree that there are many similar web services and websites out there, I disagree that they can directly take from one another, unless express consent is provided; be it design, function, or in this matter, code. The fact of the matter is, a developer from your company based SchoolWax off of Schoolr and this was demonstrated by Schoolr’s code being featured in SchoolWax’s code. As a result of this, I am seeking compensation.

I hope that we can negotiate some sort of settlement, and I invite you to provide me with an offer.

I appreciate the removal of the claim that SchoolWax was “first” and you are more than free to publicly link to Schoolr.

Regards,
Sasan

It’s been almost a month since I sent my email and Etraffic has not attempted to contact me since. Maybe they figure that I’ll give up or forget about it.

I was doing some research on Etraffic Solutions and I found this article from the Financial Post Business Magazine (dated: December 2006). It talks about how Etraffic Solutions was fined $12,500 from The Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft for using pirated copies of Microsoft and Symantec products in their office. Interesting.

Here’s a quote from the article:

“Wayne Poncia, a partner with eTraffic Solutions, a Victoria-based online-learning content provider, also takes issue with CAAST’s strategy. Poncia’s company got in trouble with CAAST in 2004 for using pirated copies of Microsoft and Symantec programs, and paid a $12,500 penalty. The investigation was a result of a tip — Poncia suspects an unhappy ex-employee. Nevertheless, he feels CAAST would be more effective if it softened its approach. “Negative ads and scare tactics don’t work,” he says. “CAAST would have a far broader impact if it collaborated with companies and assisted them in monitoring their software, instead of trying to get employees to rat on their companies.” Read the full thing on Sarah Efron’s website.

That’s it for now, I have some readings to get to. I just wanted to let everyone know where everything stands now. Expect some more updates in the next few days.

P.S. Thanks for all the emails/Facebook messages! You guys rock.

What if I told you that I had something that would let you look at your computer screen at night without bothering your eyes? What if I told you it was free? Well, I think I have something to tell you.

Download F.lux right now. I’ve been using it for a week now and I love it. What does it do? It changes the warmth of your screen’s display depending on how far you are from sunrise/sunset.

Give yourself some time to adjust to it (everything looks totally weird when you first launch it). This thing has saved my eyes.

I’d prefer not to call it twenty-ten but that’s just me. In any case, welcome to the new year. Classes started up for me this past Monday and it looks like it’s going to be a busy semester.

I hope everyone had a chill break no matter how short or long it was. If you’re still on break, good for you.

I’ve been getting some emails/Facebook messages asking what the scoop is with Etraffic Solutions, so I’ll write an update in the next little while. Let’s just say that Hubert is just getting warmed up.

Hassle sucks. And no, I’m not talking about the ‘Hoff. You know when you get a new computer, or format your drive, and need to re-install everything again? It’s not a difficult task but it definitely is time consuming. Ninite solved this problem and did a great job doing it.

They give you a list of apps to pick from, you select them, then it gives you ONE installation file which installs all the software you picked at once. Beautiful.

Happy holidays! Hubert has decided to enter children’s fiction.

Jeremy Baker at The Zone (FM 91.3) did a quick interview with me about Schoolr. Check it out.

I’ve been in the library a lot these past couple of weeks and I’ve seen a lot of people making flashcards so I thought I would share Flashcard Exchange with you. Basically, you can create your own flashcards online or study off the ones that have already been posted. For the most part, all subjects are covered. It’s worth a look.

Hope everyone is doing well this exam season. I have one more to go. On a Saturday. At night.

Photo by Jason Youmans, Monday Magazine.

So Hubert made it on the cover of Monday Magazine (thanks, Monday!). The cover shot is accompanied by an article written on the Schoolr situation with quotes from the CEO of Etraffic Solutions, as well as a law prof from UVic. Check it out here.

Hubert definitely has some explaining to do.