The University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Microsoft Software

Creating a Budget in Excel

Creating a budget is a great way to efficiently manage your money. Excel and other spreadsheet software can be useful tools when it comes to budgeting. To start, gather any paperwork or information that you may have regarding monthly income and expenses.

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Android Apps iOS

Reddit on the Go

Reddit is a popular online website that allows sharing of user created content as well as other material found online via articles, pictures, text based stories or comments, and videos. If you use it, you might want to access Reddit from your mobile device, as Reddit isn’t optimized for mobile browsers.

There are a lot of Reddit browsing apps available for mobile devices, and most of them are fantastic. But how do you choose which one to use? The easiest way to figure out which app works best for you is to try them, and here are a few free suggestions that might be worth checking out.

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Android Apps iOS Mac OSX Operating System Windows

Note Taking on a Touch Screen Device

It seems more and more that paper is on its last legs of usefulness. Most readings are posted online and books can be read on anything from your computer to your phone. One of the few things remaining is taking notes in class. Most touch screen devices don’t have the sensitivity or the speed to take down notes as fast as you can put ink to paper, at least until now. Touch screen devices now have the capability to nearly match paper, with the obvious benefits of having a digital copy of your notes and even helping the environment. Many professors post lecture slides online before class and having a touch device makes it easy to write on them without wasting tons of money on prints (and if you’re taking Organic Chemistry it is incredibly helpful). With that said, there are a couple options to choose from.

Categories
Hardware

Arduino

ArduinoUno
Interested in circuits and programming? The Arduino is a good place to start. The Arduino (on the left) is basically a pre-augmented microcontroller that is programmed in high-level Arduino code that is similar to C++/C. The brain behind the arduino is the microcontroller (the black, rectangular chip), which is a device that, when programmed, allows one to automate processes electronically, e.g., it can be used to interpret and respond to data read in from some external sensors, or to turn motors at a certain speed for some amount of time.

Categories
Web

Data Storage via FTP

Your data is important. Scratch that – your data is very important. Whether it’s just a handful of essays, lab data, or your master thesis that launches you into the profession of your dreams, that data is still important. The worst case scenario is that, by complete accident, that data is lost and there is nothing to do about it. There is one thing to do to ensure that this never happens: back-ups. A pain? Yes. Worth it? Beyond words. Now you have a couple of options: external hard drives, cloud storage, or uploading it to a secure server. External hard drives are relatively cheap, but can be broken or lost. Cloud storage can be accessed anywhere and never be lost, but we suggest that you should be wary when uploading data to a cloud drive for security risks. Instead, a viable option is to back-up data to a server. While it can be a bit difficult at first, the process is easy with a little practice and the right software. This can all be done with with three letters: FTP.