Apple has started their Back to School promotion in the UK. It is similar to the Back to School promo that ran in the US, with the exception of people in the UK being able to get one of the new iPods that released at last week's iPod event.

This promotion is good on the purchase of any new Mac and iPod nano (or touch). Qualified purchasers are "student[s] at a higher education institution, a teacher or a lecturer." When you purchase your new Mac and an iPod nano, or iPod touch, Apple will give you up to £95 via a rebate check. This deal ends October 31, 2008.

You can visit Apple's UK website for more details. Do you plan on purchasing a new Mac in order to get a new iPod nano or touch? Which iPod would you choose? Be sure to take part in our poll!



Thanks, Dan!

TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings.

With students heading back to school around the country today, many are heading back with an iPhone (possibly a iPhone 3G, no doubt). In this post, I'm going to suggest a few iPhone applications that you can use to stay on task, and, of course, "make the grade." Most of these applications are free, considering that most students are low on money (especially college students).

Assignments (iTunes Link)
Assignments is an application that, as the name implies, allows you to keep track of your assignments and classes. This is perfect for both teachers and students that need to keep track of assignments in each class. Not only can you add an assignment with a due date/time and importance, but you can also add recordings. Being able to make a voice recording of your assignment is a quick way to make a reminder, etc.

The "Overview" tab allows you to see anything upcoming or due. You can sort by "All" or "Due Soon." You can also search through your assignments. In the "Assignments" tab, you can view all assignments sorted by class. The "Notes" section allows you to quickly jot a note, add a title, and add a date/time.

Overall, this application performs smoothly and works well when adding/deleting assignments and classes. You can view screenshots of Assignments.app in our gallery. Assignments sells for $5.99 (US) at the iTunes App Store.

VoiceNotes (iTunes Link)
VoiceNotes is a plain and simple way to quickly record a quick note, or even a lecture (just make sure you have enough space on your iPhone). Tapping on "Quick Voice Note" will start recording immediately, but is limited as to the length of the recording. If you tap on the + button at the top, you will be given more recording length.

VoiceNotes allows you to sync notes back to your computer using some additional software provided by the developer. Overall, this is a solid app and can definitely be used for the quick "remember to bring these books to class tomorrow" voice notes.

You can download VoiceNotes for free from the iTunes App Store.

To Do (iTunes Link)
One of our fellow TUAW-ers developed this application, and we can't get over its ease of use and flexibility in creating a simple to-do list. With To Do, you can quickly and easily add a to-do, set priority (and order), and even add a note.

To Do will even allow you to see how many tasks have yet to be completed, right from the home screen. With To Do, you will never forget about that writing assignment for English class. Best of all, this application is on a college student's budget: It's absolutely free!

Camera.app (Built-in)
Never underestimate the power of the built-in camera on your iPhone. If you find that your instructor erases the board way too fast, or if you need to capture a photo of the current slide on the screen, then just get out your iPhone. 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... clicks and you're done! A picture saved in memory, and you didn't even have to write anything. You can also combine Camera with Evernote (iTunes link) to create more structured notes or geocoding around your photos -- great for architecture students or for budding meteorologists.


Did we miss something? Do you have another application that you like/use, but didn't on the list? The party doesn't stop with the post, it continues in the comments below. Be sure to share your favorite iPhone applications to help students "make the grade."

TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings in September. Read on for a timely app update useful for students.

PDF management app Papers has been bumped to version 1.8.5, bringing what the developers claim are 100 improvements. Top on the list is a new sharing feature called Papers Archives, which lets you share a PDF file and its associated metadata with a colleague.

Papers isn't for everyone. Instead, it's specifically designed for students and academics, particularly those who deal with a lot of scientific periodicals in the course of their research. It lets you search them, sort them (manually or using Smart Folders), find them on any one of 14 different online repositories, rate them, browse your library in tabs, and much more.

Papers costs $42 for a single-user license, but students qualify for a 40 per cent discount.

TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings in September.

It's time once again to head back to school. Some are entering high school, while others are going to college for the first time. If you're taking your Mac with you, you need to learn some security basics. In this post, I will show you how to secure your operating system and hardware.

Operating System (Software)
Mac OS X makes a great operating system for students and businesses because of its inherent security. However, any computer without a strong password or other means of security is an accident waiting to happen.

The first thing you need to do is set a login password. To do this, go into Accounts in the System Preferences pane. Once there you will be able to set your password for logging in. While in Accounts, you might want to disable automatic login. This forces your computer to ask for a password upon startup and makes it harder for someone to walk up to your computer and use it (or steal it and use it).

Turning off Sharing services is another way to protect someone from remotely connecting to your Mac. Go to System Preferences > Sharing. Once there, un-check all sharing services that you don't use. Disabling File Sharing, Remote Login, Screen Sharing, and other services such as these can save your Mac from being "hijacked." If you must have these services turned on, then make sure you have a secure password set.

Hardware
Securing Mac OS X isn't the only thing you need to do. If you live in a dorm, or in a shared apartment, then you may want to consider securing your hardware. No matter what security measures you put into place, they can always be circumvented by someone just stealing the machine.

Most Macs have a standard security port to connect a lock. This is a great way to protect notebooks as well as desktops and even printers and other peripherals. The locks are fairly inexpensive (around $40 US) and can save your expensive hardware from being stolen. You can find them at most big-box computer retailers and even online from companies like Kensington.

More on security...
If you want more information on Security and your Mac/iPhone, then visit TUAW's Security category. You can also get more TUAW Back to School goodness by visiting our Back to School page.

TUAW's going Back to School! We'll be bringing you tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers right up until the bell rings in September. Read on for college-level help.

If you're a college researcher, grad student, or undergrad, Malkinware's new Reference Tracker 1.0 for Mac OS X might be just the tool to help you with your academic research. Just in time for Back to School, Malkinware is even offering a 35% discount off of the $44.95 list price through September 30, 2008.

Reference Tracker creates documents that store citations and references used in books, research projects, or essays, and creates Harvard or APA formatted reference lists on demand. You can also:

• Create Full References in a single step
• Reference Web Pages and Emails with a single click
• Easily import existing Reference Lists
• Integration with Microsoft Word and Apple's Pages
• Easily Organize References
• Export formatted lists to anywhere
• Add Sticky Notes to References

There's no need to type out the details of a referenced book. You type in the book's ISBN, and Reference Tracker gathers the details from the internet automatically. When creating Web page or email references, Reference Tracker can pull the details from Safari, Firefox, or Mail with one click.

A fully-functional 21-day trial is available from the Malkinware Web site. For info about other Mac research tools, read Brett's excellent Back to School post.

More back to school application suggestions! This time, a full-featured assignment planner, organizer and grade tracker: Schoolhouse 2.1. Last noted by Dan in April, this powerful and graceful app helps keep students on track by monitoring assigments on the calendar and associating all sorts of metadata with the tasks. You can attach your notes or research materials, assign partners to collaborate on projects, or 'classcast' your work out via .Mac or FTP.

Schoolhouse is donationware, and if you find it useful we strongly suggest sending a few bucks Logan's way.

More back-to-school suggestions; this one has the advantage of being free. If you haven't already downloaded Firefox for your machine, it's a good idea to have it handy for those occasional sites that aren't Safari-friendly. If you're interested in a few extra plugins with a student-friendly bent, then you might check out the Firefox Campus Edition, which is simply the current Firefox build plus the FoxyTunes, StumbleUpon and Zotero plugins in one convenient package.

FoxyTunes (for controlling your music player via the browser) and StumbleUpon (social bookmarking for interesting/useful sites) are both fine, but the real power tool here is Zotero: this research tool, file manager, PDF bucket and citation editor is a boon to anyone working on research projects with Firefox. Given enough practice with Zotero, it might replace a local note manager like Yojimbo or other online tools like Google Notebook.

Of course, if you already have Firefox, you can download these plugins (or scores of others) separately, and all three are free.

via PaulStamatiou.com

It's that time of year again, academicians. Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be highlighting products, tools and techniques to help students and teachers launch into the school year with style and ease. We pointed out Planbook last week, which should make lots of lesson planners happy; I'm going to cheer the hearts of language students with the news of an update to Mellel, the polyglot word processor for Mac, and also point to Scrivener, a powerful project management environment for writers in academic and creative settings.

As Mat mentioned back in March, Mellel is a word processor that keeps the needs of academic writers clearly in focus. First off, it's got the best language support I've ever seen, including full right-to-left script support; it even lets you write in Syriac, which makes my friend Adam extremely happy (he's a scholar of the medieval church, and apparently the correspondence of the day was generally carried out in Syriac -- nobody speaks it today). It's also got powerful style sheet and footnote/endnote tools rolled in, and last week's update to version 2.2.7 enhanced its outlining support with the addition of OPML import and export. At $35 for student licenses ($49 for general use) it's a steal.

A comment on Mat's post suggested Scrivener, which David also noted in February. While it's not a 'final format' word processor, it does provide something special: a complete idea management and organizational environment for writing, including a 'virtual corkboard' for gathering your ideas and a solid research bin for collecting source materials. The program suits those with a more improvisational or bouncy writing style, as you can quickly reorder your work from the corkboard or outline and keep revising the parts that still need more effort. For lightly-formatted writing, you can go straight from Scrivener; for more highly-styled work, the program serves as a nice front end for other tools like Mellel, Final Draft or Word. Like the student edition of Mellel, Scrivener is $35; both programs have demo versions available.

This is the end of our fabulous ride through TUAW's Back-to-School Giveaway. We've had some laughs, haven't we? Today's prize is another TUAW t-shirt (in the size of your choice, provided you choose small, medium, large or extra-large). But to sweeten the deal we'll give you an Ambrosia pack and a copy of Awaken.

To enter, leave a comment on this post between 5AM and 11:59PM EST on August 30. Validate the comment for it to qualify, and only one per person please. Full rules on our TUAW Back-to-School Giveaway page. Good luck and thanks for reading!

EDIT: I fixed the date-- sorry folks!

Love it or hate it, a free iPhone is hard to resist. Maybe if it hadn't been unlocked, or hacked, or unbricked there would be substantially less interest. Then again, a $600 lump of coal is still 600 Washingtons more than the guy next to you, so there's that. I'm not saying you iPhone haters should toss the thing on ebay the day you get it, but we understand some of you haven't bought into the whole "computers will inevitably get smaller" vibe. It's cool. OS X isn't for everyone either.

At any rate, today's prize is the big Kahuna: an 8 GB iPhone. To enter, leave a comment on this post between 5AM and 11:59PM EST on August 29. Validate the comment for it to qualify, and only one per person please. Full rules on our TUAW Back-to-School Giveaway page. Good luck and thanks for reading!

Unless you've been hibernating for the past six years, you've heard of our next prize: an iPod. Not a 1st-gen iPod with a janky mechanical scrollwheel and hidden Breakout game. Not a 2nd-gen iPod with handy FireWire port, or a 3rd-gen iPod with crummy battery. No, this skips the photo (4th-gen) and goes straight to video-- the very thing Steve once claimed people don't want. If you do want a video iPod, continue reading how to enter... To be clear, our prize today is a 5th-gen "video" iPod in the 80GB variety (you choose black or white).

To enter, leave a comment on this post between 5AM and 11:59PM EST on August 28. Validate the comment for it to qualify, and only one per person please. Full rules on our TUAW Back-to-School Giveaway page. Good luck and thanks for reading!

Today's prize: a pen in black with the Apple logo. Whatever you do, don't make notes on your iPhone with this thing. Use it with the meatspace Stickies app you can find at your local office supply store. To sweeten the pot we've got a clever t-shirt of your choice from Insanely Great Tees and a mystery prize for today's winner.

Same deal as yesterday: enter by leaving a comment on this post. Again, limited to the 50 US states, you must be 18 (or over) and only one entry per person per day, please. Each day we'll open a new post for comments from 5AM-11:59PM. To enter, leave a comment on the post (make sure it appears, check your email). To see full rules, go to our TUAW Back-to-school giveaway page.

Perhaps calling it a back-to-school giveaway is bad. Whether or not you're going back to school right now you're eligible to win one of our prizes. To be honest, there's nothing particularly scholarly about the prizes either. It's just an excuse to give away 14 rounds of prizes. For the next 14 days (excluding weekends) TUAW will give away 14 different prize packages. Some "packages" will be a TUAW shirt with some Ambrosia gear. One day will indeed be an Apple lunchbox, as seen at the Apple Store in Cupertino, aka the Company Store. And one lucky day will feature an iPhone as a prize.

The catch is that each day is a surprise, and each day is a completely new entry period. Again, limited to the 50 US states, you must be 18 and we insist on one entry per person per day, but with 14 chances your chances are that much nicer. Each day we'll open a new post for comments from 5AM-11:59PM. To enter, leave a comment on that post (make sure it appears, check your email). To see full rules, go to our TUAW Back-to-school giveaway page.

Today's prize? A TUAW shirt (we've got sizes XL, L, M and S) and an Ambrosia "swag pack" containing a shirt, hat and deck of playing cards. Tomorrow's prize? Oh, you almost had me. Stay tuned.

Just in time for a new fall semester, the iTMS has introduced a Back to School (iTMS link) section, offering playlists based on the many cultures, cliques and stereotypes that (love it or hate it) exist and collide on so many college campuses across our great planet. Groups like Hipsters, Hippies, Greeks, the Honor Roll, Club Kids, The Faithful and even Cowboys (and more) all are represented, with playlists ranging in price from around $25-$45 USD.

If you ever needed a stereotyping microscope to peer into what these hooligan cliques are into these days, or if you're looking for a way into said cliques, these Back to School lists might just be the ticket.

Summer's end is almost upon us, and you know what that means: back to school! Right now I am sure there are millions of students clamoring to get their various school supplies in order. Pens, paper, Trapper Keepers, and computers.

Now, it won't come as a shock to you that we are a little biased towards Macs here on TUAW. Luckily, someone who writes for a real newspaper (they still make those?) thinks that no matter what institute of higher learning you're going to a MacBook will be your best companion.

I can't agree more, thanks to being able to run Windows (in a number of ways) the MacBook is a great portable for any student.

[via Digg]