If you haven’t been subjected to one yourself, the idea is a high-tech version of your traditional proctored test — with a twist. An online proctor monitors both you and your computer via webcam and remote access screen sharing. This allows the proctor to confirm your identity and make sure that you’re not using any resources to boost your grade.

However, giving a stranger access to your computer can be unsettling. On Facebook, one reader asked us for a way prevent the proctor from accessing personal accounts. This post should give you peace of mind about the future security of your Mac.

Things to Check

Initially, I thought creating a new user account and blocking access to applications would prevent any unauthorized snooping by the proctor. If you were to leave your computer unattended for a bathroom break, that might be useful; but the proctor would not be able to access anything while you’re present without alerting you.

You also need to be logged in as an administrator for remote access to work.

So instead of worrying about this during your test, here’s a list of things to check afterward to ensure you’re safe from any sort of unauthorized access:

• Make sure the screen sharing icon is not active in your menubar — it may look like two windows overlapping or a monitor with a pair of binoculars on-screen. If you see either or these icons, someone is connected to you remotely.
• To prevent any future access, check your sharing settings by navigating to System Preferences then Sharing. You should uncheck “Screen Sharing,” “Remote Login,” and “Remote Management” if they are active.
• ProctorU, one of the most popular online test proctoring services, uses LogMeIn Rescue to monitor students during tests. In order for a proctor to access your Mac, you would need to login to Rescue and establish a connection with them. You can always uninstall the program after a test to put your mind at ease.

Image: ProctorU

The post How to Secure Your Mac After a Proctored Online Test appeared first on HackCollege.

What is DoUDeal?

DoUDeal is essentially a one stop shop for all things related to college. And the best part about it? It was started by college students, meaning it’s not full of spam or unrelated ads; you can’t even join the site without a .edu email, ensuring that it is a student only site.  “As recent graduates, we know how difficult it can be for students to find what they need and get rid of what they don’t,” said DoUDeal Co-founder Josh Currie. “It’s really frustrating to have to throw away so much stuff at the end of the year when you’d much prefer to make some extra cash going into the summer.” So why not make some quick and easy money as you move out for the summer all the while saving money for next year!

How does it work?

First off, and to most students, most importantly it’s free! After signing up with a school email address, students can search near and far for anything there looking for, need a Biology book and don’t feel like paying 150 dollars for it? Look at that, someone in New York is selling the same copy for $40. Furthermore, the site will also bring up local and nationwide suppliers of the item so you can price compare as you shop! Selling on the site is just as easy, simply post your item, whatever it may be, add some tags, pictures and descriptions and its up! Transactions can be either in person for cash or by using the built in PayPal system on the site.

The Takeaway

I could go on for quite a while on why I like this site, the searching parameters are much better than any other site, it’s much less cluttered than a student run Facebook group and If you’re like me, and sick of being ripped off by the bookstore or dealing with the questionable people found on craigslist then definitely give DoUDeal a shot. It’s a great new start up, made by students for students, all about making and saving you money, who could complain about that!

The post DoUDeal: The New College Marketplace? appeared first on HackCollege.

These voice-activated glasses are meant to give viewers the ability to use just about any aspect of both Google and Smartphones, completely hands free. From voice-to-text, to sharing what you see, it’s definitely got a lot of potential.

Here are a few of the coolest capabilities they’ve outlined on their website.

• Translate Your Voice: “Okay Glass, Google ‘half a pound in Chinese.’”
• Take a Picture: “Okay glass, take a picture.”
• Get Directions
• Share What You See

While we’ve heard that there are some complications and technical difficulties, I can only assume that the technology with become exponentially better with the second generation. For example, it might be difficult to pronounce the Chinese translation accurately (believe me, I’ve tried), but perhaps subsequent generations will have detachable earphones or speakers, making it easy to play the translation for someone else. There’s always going to be a learning curve for this kind of new technology, both for users and for the device itself, so the reported issues of low battery life, dizziness (as a result of only one eye viewing the screen), and privacy might soon dissipate. Additionally, I don’t see all of those capabilities sticking around. The GPS feature encourages the use of these glasses while driving, which is just another added distraction that drivers don’t need and lawmakers don’t want.

Google Glass have gotten a lot of attention in the tech world, but aren’t available for the general public just yet. (And at $1,500 a pop, only a small minority could afford it.) After a very successful campaign to distribute glasses to those who had great ideas to use them (#ifihadglass), Google is still in the testing and modifying phase. Many techies lined up to get their hands on the first generation of this crazy new product, but surveys show that only 10% of Americans would actually wear them. We can’t judge the future based on surveys alone, as we learned with the initially unpopular products like Bluetooth and Twitter. Just because Americans think they won’t use the product, doesn’t mean it’s true.

So what do you think? Are they cool or creepy? Are they a little too Sci-Fi, or just the right amount? Do you think they’ll change the landscape of Smartphones in the foreseeable future, or will everyone just look like this?

The post Google Glass: The Next Big Thing in Wearable Technology appeared first on HackCollege.

Omnibox Calculator

The omnibox is that place up at the top of your Google Chrome browser where the URL of the website you’re viewing is located. In that box, however, are multiple functions. You can, of course, type in the URL of your websites to go to them. You can also type in anything there and press ENTER to do an automatic web search. But you can also do simple computations in that box. Type in the numbers you want to do equations with and use ‘+’, ‘-’, ‘*’ or ‘/’ (add, subtract, multiply and divide) to manipulate them. Your answer will be the first selection in the drop down menu.

Paste And Search

You’re on a website and you find something you want to do a search for. Highlight it. Then you hit Ctrl + C to copy it. If you right click on the omnibox to paste it pay attention to the drop down menu. One of your selections, near the bottom, will be to ‘paste and search.’ Instead of having to use extra keystrokes Chrome will automatically execute your search for you with the info you copied.

Auto-Complete Your Personal Information

In the upper right-hand corner there is a ‘menu’ icon that looks like three horizontal stripes. Click it. Then click on ‘Settings.’ This is a menu of items you can use to customize your Chrome browser, but focus on the last option which is ‘Show Advanced Options.’ Click it and look for ‘Password and forms.’ Underneath that and to the right will be ‘Manage Autofill settings.’ From there you can put in certain personal info that will be auto-completed whenever a website calls for it like, perhaps, sites that have web-enabled grad-school applications?

Caution: That’s your personal info. Be careful where you leave it.

Incognito mode

If you don’t want to be tracked in any way whatsoever by cookies or anything else just hit Ctril +Shift + N. A new window will open up with a dude with a fedora and sunglasses in the upper lefthand corner. This also disables extensions, but you can turn them back on in the ‘Settings/Extensions’ menu.

Chrome commands

Chrome has a list of commands you can trigger right from your omnibox that will call up your bookmarks, history, plugins and more. Type in ‘chrome://chrome-urls’ to see the full list.

Google Task Menu

Click the Menu button and run your mouse over ‘Tools.’ To its left the option ‘Task Manager’ will show up. The Task Manager will tell you how many resources your tabs are soaking up. Under ‘Memory’ the bigger the number, the more it’s slowing down your computer. If one of ‘em is getting out of hand, kill it and watch how much smoother your other pages will run.

Show Icons Only On Your Bookmarks Bar

First, enable the bookmarks bar in your ‘Settings’ menu under ‘Appearance.’ Tick the box next to ‘Always show the bookmarks bar’ and look what shows up under the omnibox. Now, whenever you want to save your favorite websites to it you can just drag them in from the omnibox. Now right-click the link you just dragged there and click on ‘Edit.’ Delete the title of the webpage and click ‘Save.’ Now only the website’s icon will be there on your bar leaving room for tons of other pages.

Start Up With Specific Pages

In your ‘Settings’ page will be the option for what Chrome should do when it starts up. If you want it to start on the pages you last closed it on, tick ‘Continue where I left off.’ If you want it to start up with specific pages every time, tick the option below it and click on ‘Set pages’ to add the pages you want.

Pin Tab

Got a favorite tab you keep losing sight of in the myriad of open tabs you have? If you want to make sure one tab stays right where you can see it right-click it and click on ‘Pin tab.’ That tab will move all the way to the left and will not budge no matter where you try to drag it.

Resize Text Fields

Every text field everywhere on most every site can be adjusted for size thanks to Chrome. Look in its lower right-hand corner for a little set of diagonal lines. Click, hold and drag that to the size you want. Look at that. Space!

The post 10 Little-Known Google Chrome Tricks appeared first on HackCollege.

Experience

Gaining real experience with a company and doing hands-on work will help future employers see the true value that you can bring to their organization. An employer will love seeing that you’ve already had multiple experiences in the same field as their company, helping you stand out among the rest of the pack.

Experience is everything. Go out and do it.

Real Examples

One of the best perks of a summer internship is that you’ll be facing real examples of the services that the company you work for provides. You won’t be faced with hypothetical examples with no real experience attached to it. That’s always a perk.

Networking

Through working at an internship, you’ll meet some great people who will be vital to you and your future endeavors. Maybe your boss likes your work and wants to hire you in as a full-time employee? Or maybe the people you work with will be able to let you know when there are other hiring opportunities at other companies.

A lot of the job market nowadays is about who you know as opposed to what you know. Obviously you have to have some sort of skill set that will be required of you at a certain job. But it’s even better when you know the people who are doing the hiring.

Insight

You’ll gain tons of insight into how a company works, what a company does to succeed, and the things those companies are trying to stay away from. This will help you if you want to gain valuable knowledge in the business world.

Take every opportunity that you have to learn. It’ll help round out your skills and give your summer experience feel more worth it in the end.

Do it for free

My motto is to work for free at some point in your life so that you can learn what the true value of a dollar is and how far you need to stretch it to survive. By no means does this mean starve yourself or go without basic necessities to live, but if you’ve got the option to take an unpaid internship, do it. You’ll get more out of it than you think you will.

Your focus will purely be on the work your doing and not the paycheck that normally accompanies it. You won’t look forward to a reward of monetary value. The progress that you make will feel more real than the progress that you make while getting paid. Sure, getting paid is a great perk. But should that dictate whether or not you take an internship? No. Try it, I promise you’ll work more for progress than anything else.

Got any other tips? Let me know below!

The post Benefits Of A Summer Internship appeared first on HackCollege.

That’s not an encouraging thought if you’re spending many hours a day filling out applications; but it’s a fact you’ll find hard to ignore when you don’t hear back from potential employers. By maintaining a personal website, you’re giving those potential employers another way to discover you.

Last month, HackCollege’s Robbie Williford championed the personal website, detailing how it will help give you a unique presence online — outside of social media. I’ll delve deeper into that subject and detail the elements of a personal website that need to be highlighted when creating a personal website.

About Page

Most blogging and content management software will come with an About page, so take advantage of it. There’s no need to write an autobiography, but you’ll want to give the most important details about yourself in the first paragraph and expand on that information in at least two more. Think of yourself as the subject of a news article and answer the following questions about yourself and your career or field of interest:

• Who are you?
• What do you do/study?
• When did/will you graduate?
• Where are you located?
• Why do you enjoy what you do?

You shouldn’t be afraid to show a little personality when describing yourself, but the page should be professional and to-the-point.

Resume

If you’re looking for a job, there’s absolutely no reason not to have your resume on a dedicated page of your site. You want that information there so prospective employers or clients don’t have to go searching.

It’s a good idea to link to your resume from your About page, even if it’s listed as part of your site’s navigation. And make sure there’s a downloadable version available as well.

Contact Options

There’s no excuse for not having a working contact form on a separate page of your site. If someone reads your About page or resume and finds their interest piqued, they’ll be searching for a quick way to contact you.

You should also include alternative forms of contact on this page, such as your email address and Linkedin profile.

An Active Blog

While you don’t need to take a personal blog to any extreme, writing a weekly blog post in which you discuss new developments in your field is a great way to show your interest.

When shared, these posts can attract the right kind of attention. Asking friends on Linkedin to share your posts is a great way to get your name out and get connected with similar professionals outside of your current network.

Image: Juan Pablo Olmo

The post Key Elements to Consider When Creating a Personal Website appeared first on HackCollege.

The Congressional Budget Office reported on Tuesday that the 2013 fiscal year forecast had increased by 43 percent from the previous estimate in February, going from an expected profit of $35.5 billion to $50.6 billion. In total, the Obama Administration has netted close to $120 billion off of student loans in the last five fiscal years.

News of the drastically higher profit forecast comes amid increased warnings from financial agencies of how the record $1.1 trillion of outstanding student loan debt will likely pose a risk to economic growth and recovery, as student loan borrowers find themselves unable to participate in the economy as well as previous generations.

According to the New York Federal Reserve, student loan debt is the only type of consumer debt that has actually increased since the financial crisis began in 2008. The New York Fed., as well as other financial organizations and agencies like the Federal Reserve, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Treasury Department have all cautioned that skyrocketing debt for students means that the indebted will have a harder time building credit and saving for future, large-scale investments that require further loans, such as starting a business and purchasing a car or home.

The rate for student loans is set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1st, barring intervention from Congress. So far, two bills have been introduced that would partially prevent student loan rates from doubling; one, created by Senate Democrats at the behest of Presidant Obama that would tie student loan interest rates to the government’s borrowing costs and keep the 3.4 percent rate for the neediest households, and a second by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) that would cut all student loan rates to the same 0.75 rate set by the Federal Reserve for the nation’s largest banks.

For the first piece of legislation, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), would only affect a small portion of future student loan recipients over the course of two years. Current students would not be benefited.

“Today’s figures from the CBO underscore the urgent need for Congress to prevent the July 1 interest rate hike and address the crushing debt placed on students,” said Tiffany Edwards, spokesperson for the Democrats on the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Rohit Chopra of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), who previously warned of the detrimental effects that student loan debt could have on the economy if left unchecked, cautioned that simply focusing on future lenders isn’t enough.

“The whole student loan problem is a problem that should be of deep concern to this body,” said Richard Cordray, CFPB director. “These are young people that we should care a great deal about.”

“They’re the ones with the ambition, aspirations and dreams, and they’re getting saddled with debt that they don’t understand,” Cordray added while speaking before the Senate Banking Committee. “It’s holding them back and it’s making them unable to rise and succeed and become leaders in our society…It’s a significant problem and we’re going to be doing everything that we can to address it at the bureau.”

The post Obama Administration’s Student Loan Policy Nets $51 Billion Profit appeared first on HackCollege.

But in David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, which has come to be called “This is Water,” he dismissed the usual talk of the future and possible success. Instead, he took the time to address something rarely discussed about adult life: the monotony of everyday life and its in-between moments.

After Wallace committed suicide in 2008, the speech began to receive a lot of attention. It recently made waves on the web, collecting nearly five million views on YouTube after The Glossary, a video production company, created a 9-minute abridged video using excerpts from the original 22-minute address.

It’s been up for over a week now and perhaps you’ve already had it forwarded to you multiple times, but there’s no harm in hearing about it one more time.

In his speech, I believe Wallace wishes for people to consider their mindset. Those in-between moments he talks about include a long, slow checkout line in a grocery store, a situation in which one might feel inconvenienced.

All too often, it seems most of us are in a mindset that our time is more valuable than others. We don’t concern ourselves with how others feel because we let our selfish emotions automatically dictate our behavior. In a grocery store checkout line, you probably don’t think about how the other people in line feel.

I interpret this part of his speech as Wallace touching on a disconnect we have with other individuals; and how simply acknowledging other people’s feelings can help alter our mindset during an otherwise annoying or stressful situation.

Near the end of the speech, Wallace said:

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

The speech contains thought-provoking ideas that can be applied to everyday life and probably some of the most relevant advice for new graduates.

The Glossary’s video version of the speech is embedded below:

The post The Monotony of Everyday Life and David Foster Wallace’s Advice to Graduating Students appeared first on HackCollege.

Bill Bergman, an adjunct marketing professor at the University of Richmond, advises students to begin the process during the fall semester of sophomore year. You’ll want to get involved in some type of learning program that will get you acquainted with internships and introduce you to the job hunt. By spring semester, you should be thinking about a summer internship and have a resume ready.

Creating a Linkedin profile and connecting with local professionals is a great way to display your initiative early on and land internships.

Bergman says the junior summer internship is critical, so don’t take it lightly. You should pull out all the stops in order to land the best internship available as early as possible.

Come senior year, landing interviews should be a top priority; so take advantage of your school’s career placement services. And there’s no shame in using your parents’ contacts who have jobs in your desired field to get a foot in the door.

If you don’t end up with a job by graduation, the skills you’ve acquired will, at the very least, make you more prepared than others for the post-graduation job hunt.

A Year-By-Year Guide To Job Hunting During College | Forbes

Related: Job Hunting – 3 Ways to Make a Great First Impression

Image: Samuel Mann

The post Start Planning Your College Job Search Early appeared first on HackCollege.

1. Open windows and shades at night, close them during the day

Your windows will betray your comfort as the suns rays pour through them. Glass will intensify the heat and, thereby, warm up the inside of your living space. Closing your blinds or shades during the day will negate that heating effect. Also, on cooler evenings be sure to open them up so that you can lower the indoor temperature. If you time it right you may be able to keep the heat to a minimum throughout the summer.

2. Water Spray bottle and fan

Hopefully you have a water bottle laying around and you don’t have to buy one. Just clean out that old one and fill it with water. When it’s getting too hot, turn on the fan and spray your face with the spray bottle. This will cause a cooling effect on the skin that will make the heat less obnoxious.

3. Holding ice in your hand

Stanford University is developing a glove that cools the bodies of athletes and helps improve exercise recovery and performance. This works because of the heat-transfer veins in the palm of your hand. Due to the mystical magic of the body cooling your hands lowers your body’s core temperature.

But even if you don’t go to Stanford or have several thousand in research capital to give them you can use this technique yourself. Just grab a piece of ice and hold it in your hand. After a minute or so you should feel exceptionally cooler. This will also work on your the back of your neck. Throw some ice in a plastic bag and lay the back of your neck on it. You will feel cool immediately.

4. Cold Water foot bath

Your feet also have a major nest of heat-transfer veins that help regulate your body temperature. But instead of applying ice directly to them you can just take a big bowl or bucket and fill it with cold water. Use ice too if you can stand it, but you may need to build up a tolerance. Regardless, this is perfect for when you’re just sitting on the couch watching TV. Combine it with the ice pack on the back of your neck and you can laugh at the suckers paying through their nostils to run those expensive AC machines.

5. Put a bowl of ice or large frozen item in front of a fan

Frozen things will cool the air around them. Use the fan to blow some of that air on you. Feel the chill. Soak it in.

The post How To Stay Cool Without Air Conditioning appeared first on HackCollege.