Another summer has gone by, and
students are setting off to college. When
faced with the abundance of awesome
tools and software available for students
today, part of me wishes I were staking
out a library carrel along with them.
If you’re lucky enough to be a student in
this golden age of tech, don’t miss these
great finds. Most of them are free, and
all of them are bound to make the start
of the new school year smoother than
the last.
LibreOffice software
For college students, the old “reading,
writing, and ’rithmetic” morphs into
writing papers, doing basic stats, and
creating presentations (and yes, still lots
of reading). No matter what you’re
studying or where, you’re going to have
to perform these tasks from time to
time. Even with student discounts,
Microsoft Office Suite can cost anywhere
between $80 and $140. But if you think
there’s no alternative, you have a little
research to do.
LibreOffice Writer software includes
most Microsoft Word features, including
track changes and the formatting brush.
With its powerful Writer, Calc, and
Impress programs, LibreOffice 4 offers a
free and capable alternative to
Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
LibreOffice covers almost every feature
you’ll find in Microsoft’s tools, and it can
open and save as any Microsoft
document with a minimal learning curve.
LibreOffice’s free suite also includes Base
(an Access alternative), Draw, and Math.
Unless you’re a real Microsoft addict,
you’ll be surprised at how easily you can
get used to LibreOffice. It’s available in
Linux, Mac, and PC editions.
Zotero software
Every student knows the pain of
collecting articles, managing a library,
and, worst of all, creating citations.
Zotero is a veteran (and free) tool that
solves all these problems. Originally a
Firefox add-on, Zotero has recently
become available for Chrome and Safari
as well as via its standalone desktop
version. It works on Linux, Mac, and PC.
With Zotero’s word processor plug-in,
adding citations to your papers is
unbelievably easy.
Zotero makes it easy to collect research
papers off the Web, attach PDFs, find
relevant articles in your library, and sync
it across PCs. With the help of a
Microsoft Word or LibreOffice plug-in,
Zotero takes the pain out of citations
and bibliography, doing all the heavy
lifting for you, using any of the major
citation styles. Zotero helped me
complete my graduate degree, and it’s a
must-have tool for any higher-education
student.
ReadCube software
There’s more to your PDF library than
organization and citations, though.
Students and scholars alike have to skim
through dozens of articles, examining
figures, highlighting important parts, and
adding notes of their own. Ideally, you
should also be able to quickly refer back
to these articles and notes
Use the built-in reader to add highlights
and comments, as well as to easily find
related articles.
ReadCube is a PDF manager with a
built-in PDF reader. It makes the job of
finding, reading, and collecting articles a
breeze. ReadCube identifies your articles,
turning them into a searchable database
that also includes your notes and
highlights. We reviewed the PC edition,
but it’s also available for Mac.
Discovering new articles is ReadCube’s
forte, with powerful features such as
turning all citations into links, getting
quick lists of every article that cites the
one you’re reading, and presenting a list
of related articles you might be
interested in. Google Scholar and
PubMed searches are also built-in, and
are better than ever before. And if you
regularly need articles from Nature,
ReadCube lets you buy or rent them for
very affordable prices.
ReadCube makes it easy to browse your
PDF library, with abstracts appearing on
the right.
This fall, ReadCube promises a new and
simple citation tool, cloud sync
capabilities, and a tablet app. We’ll have
to wait and see how these new features
perform and how they enhance the
ReadCube experience.
Renting articles from one publisher is
nice, but it’s not enough. If you’re not
affiliated with a university or don’t have
access to its proxy, getting full-text
versions of articles is either expensive or
impossible. DeepDyve is an innovative
service targeted at individuals and
companies alike. It makes therapy process
much more affordable by letting you rent
articles from an ever-expanding list of
thousands of journals from Auto/
Biography Studies to Zoomorphology .
You can read any article available on
DeepDyve for free for five minutes per
day.
An abstract is not enough to judge an
entire paper. A free account with
DeepDyve gets you access to full-text
articles for five minutes a day. If you
deem an article interesting, you can pay
$20 for five 30-day rentals, or $40/
month for 40 monthly rentals.
DeepDyve’s homepage includes your
rental history, and an RSS reader for
journals.
DeepDyve’s interface is friendly and easy
to use, and a browser plug-in for Google
Scholar tells you which articles in the
results list are available for rent. Your
DeepDyve personal homepage is an RSS
reader of sorts, so you can use it to
follow your favorite journals. Even if you
are affiliated with a university, DeepDyve
is a great way to preview full-text
articles when you don’t have access to
the proxy.
Audio Notetaker
software
An even bigger part of every student’s
life is attending lectures and taking
notes. Every student knows the ever-
present dilemma: listen to the lecture, or
try to take notes? Sonocent Audio
Notetaker ($150 for a perpetual license
for Mac or PC, 30-day free trial) is an
ambitious product that brings an end to
this plight
By converting audio into bars, Audio
Notetaker makes it easy to attach colors,
text, and images to your audio.
Audio Notetaker analyzes recorded audio
to create speech bars that are easy to
navigate. You can enhance these bars
with colors, text, images, screenshots,
slides, and PDF documents, and add text
and references to boot. Audio Notetaker
can record live lectures, interviews, Skype
calls, and even online talks. It makes it
possible to concentrate on listening while
taking minimal notes, and easily go over
the recorded material later.
Audio Notetaker is an innovative way to
handle recordings, but the current price
is a serious hit to a student’s budget.
The PC edition I tried also crashed
multiple times, causing me to lose my
work. It’s a great tool, but not yet one
on which to rely completely.
Notable.ac software
Some note-taking techniques are
kludgey: printing out slide decks and
writing on them, for instance, or copying
and pasting images into a word
processor. Notable.ac is another attempt
to take on the note-taking problem—in
the form of a free-to-use Web app.
students are setting off to college. When
faced with the abundance of awesome
tools and software available for students
today, part of me wishes I were staking
out a library carrel along with them.
If you’re lucky enough to be a student in
this golden age of tech, don’t miss these
great finds. Most of them are free, and
all of them are bound to make the start
of the new school year smoother than
the last.
LibreOffice software
For college students, the old “reading,
writing, and ’rithmetic” morphs into
writing papers, doing basic stats, and
creating presentations (and yes, still lots
of reading). No matter what you’re
studying or where, you’re going to have
to perform these tasks from time to
time. Even with student discounts,
Microsoft Office Suite can cost anywhere
between $80 and $140. But if you think
there’s no alternative, you have a little
research to do.
LibreOffice Writer software includes
most Microsoft Word features, including
track changes and the formatting brush.
With its powerful Writer, Calc, and
Impress programs, LibreOffice 4 offers a
free and capable alternative to
Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
LibreOffice covers almost every feature
you’ll find in Microsoft’s tools, and it can
open and save as any Microsoft
document with a minimal learning curve.
LibreOffice’s free suite also includes Base
(an Access alternative), Draw, and Math.
Unless you’re a real Microsoft addict,
you’ll be surprised at how easily you can
get used to LibreOffice. It’s available in
Linux, Mac, and PC editions.
Zotero software
Every student knows the pain of
collecting articles, managing a library,
and, worst of all, creating citations.
Zotero is a veteran (and free) tool that
solves all these problems. Originally a
Firefox add-on, Zotero has recently
become available for Chrome and Safari
as well as via its standalone desktop
version. It works on Linux, Mac, and PC.
With Zotero’s word processor plug-in,
adding citations to your papers is
unbelievably easy.
Zotero makes it easy to collect research
papers off the Web, attach PDFs, find
relevant articles in your library, and sync
it across PCs. With the help of a
Microsoft Word or LibreOffice plug-in,
Zotero takes the pain out of citations
and bibliography, doing all the heavy
lifting for you, using any of the major
citation styles. Zotero helped me
complete my graduate degree, and it’s a
must-have tool for any higher-education
student.
ReadCube software
There’s more to your PDF library than
organization and citations, though.
Students and scholars alike have to skim
through dozens of articles, examining
figures, highlighting important parts, and
adding notes of their own. Ideally, you
should also be able to quickly refer back
to these articles and notes
Use the built-in reader to add highlights
and comments, as well as to easily find
related articles.
ReadCube is a PDF manager with a
built-in PDF reader. It makes the job of
finding, reading, and collecting articles a
breeze. ReadCube identifies your articles,
turning them into a searchable database
that also includes your notes and
highlights. We reviewed the PC edition,
but it’s also available for Mac.
Discovering new articles is ReadCube’s
forte, with powerful features such as
turning all citations into links, getting
quick lists of every article that cites the
one you’re reading, and presenting a list
of related articles you might be
interested in. Google Scholar and
PubMed searches are also built-in, and
are better than ever before. And if you
regularly need articles from Nature,
ReadCube lets you buy or rent them for
very affordable prices.
ReadCube makes it easy to browse your
PDF library, with abstracts appearing on
the right.
This fall, ReadCube promises a new and
simple citation tool, cloud sync
capabilities, and a tablet app. We’ll have
to wait and see how these new features
perform and how they enhance the
ReadCube experience.
Renting articles from one publisher is
nice, but it’s not enough. If you’re not
affiliated with a university or don’t have
access to its proxy, getting full-text
versions of articles is either expensive or
impossible. DeepDyve is an innovative
service targeted at individuals and
companies alike. It makes therapy process
much more affordable by letting you rent
articles from an ever-expanding list of
thousands of journals from Auto/
Biography Studies to Zoomorphology .
You can read any article available on
DeepDyve for free for five minutes per
day.
An abstract is not enough to judge an
entire paper. A free account with
DeepDyve gets you access to full-text
articles for five minutes a day. If you
deem an article interesting, you can pay
$20 for five 30-day rentals, or $40/
month for 40 monthly rentals.
DeepDyve’s homepage includes your
rental history, and an RSS reader for
journals.
DeepDyve’s interface is friendly and easy
to use, and a browser plug-in for Google
Scholar tells you which articles in the
results list are available for rent. Your
DeepDyve personal homepage is an RSS
reader of sorts, so you can use it to
follow your favorite journals. Even if you
are affiliated with a university, DeepDyve
is a great way to preview full-text
articles when you don’t have access to
the proxy.
Audio Notetaker
software
An even bigger part of every student’s
life is attending lectures and taking
notes. Every student knows the ever-
present dilemma: listen to the lecture, or
try to take notes? Sonocent Audio
Notetaker ($150 for a perpetual license
for Mac or PC, 30-day free trial) is an
ambitious product that brings an end to
this plight
By converting audio into bars, Audio
Notetaker makes it easy to attach colors,
text, and images to your audio.
Audio Notetaker analyzes recorded audio
to create speech bars that are easy to
navigate. You can enhance these bars
with colors, text, images, screenshots,
slides, and PDF documents, and add text
and references to boot. Audio Notetaker
can record live lectures, interviews, Skype
calls, and even online talks. It makes it
possible to concentrate on listening while
taking minimal notes, and easily go over
the recorded material later.
Audio Notetaker is an innovative way to
handle recordings, but the current price
is a serious hit to a student’s budget.
The PC edition I tried also crashed
multiple times, causing me to lose my
work. It’s a great tool, but not yet one
on which to rely completely.
Notable.ac software
Some note-taking techniques are
kludgey: printing out slide decks and
writing on them, for instance, or copying
and pasting images into a word
processor. Notable.ac is another attempt
to take on the note-taking problem—in
the form of a free-to-use Web app.
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