Posts Tagged ‘student’

11May

No More Notebooks – Social Wishlisting

By David in Startups with 1 Comment

No More Notebooks is an online wishlist website with a social aspect. Twenty year old Luke Harrison, the owner of No More Notebooks is currently in his final year of studying New Media at the University of Leeds, UK. He built the entire website from the ground up himself, which means low to no development costs!

The App

You start off by adding a the plugin they provide you with to your browser. This gives you the ability to add items to your wishlist from the item page you’re browsing (amazon, etc) . Since this method isn’t quite 100% full proof, there’s also the ability to add in items manually.

You’re also not limited to having just one wishlist. You can have wishlists for different categories such as “Books I want for my birthday” or “Things that make me giggle”.

The second part of No More Notebooks is the social aspect. You can view other members wishlists, add them as a friend and comment on their “notepad”.

Another nice feature is that they have a built in price comparison system (kelkoo.co.uk) to help members find the best deals available. Two other notable features are the ability to subscribe to other users wishlists via RSS feeds, and the option to take another user’s wishlist and use it as your own.

Over the next couple of months there will be more features added, and the existing features will continue to be perfected. I think integrating No More Notebooks into existing social networking sites could be extremely beneficial for them. This looks like a promising young startup, and I’ll be curious to see how everything pans out.

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28Mar

Study Curve

By David in Startups with 13 Comments

Study Curve launched last August, after a year of development and beta testing. It is the brainchild of a Aaron Allina, a recent college graduate who had the idea when he was asked to do some computer programming on software that he had never heard of, and it took him weeks to finally find someone to help.

Allina thought it would be great to create a network where help was easy to find and the platform was equally easy to use. He began the development of Study Curve with the help of some students from a local university. The initial funding was between 50 – 100k, which came from years of savings, and from a couple family members. It seems quite steep, but what kind of things can you get for that kind of money? A Study Curve car for instance!

Since launch, schools have started using Study Curve as a student aid, and Study Curve has been recognized by the National School Board Association, the media, and are a finalist as “Educational Newcomer of the Year”.

We tried out Study Curve for ourselves, and we found extremely beneficial. During the signup process, you include courses that you have or are currently taken, as well as your general interests. Upon completion, you get prompted to your main page where it displays questions you can answer based on the information filled out. We didn’t have to dig through subjects we didn’t care about – we just got sent right there. The discussions were great, and everyone was very helpful. Study Curve also gives you the ability to rate other peoples answers, which is a great way to weed out the inaccurate answers. There’s also various social networking aspects, such as profiles, photo galleries, and groups.

Although startup costs seemed quite high, Study Curve looks like a promising site, and a fantastic resource for anyone in school.

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