Google Documents is Now Google Drive. With Drive you have more space, more variety in uploadable file types, and it’s a lot easier to share files with other people. Just be careful not to put too personal of information onto your Drive and share it.

Every Cornell Student has access to Google Drive with their student Google account. Not sure how to get into Drive? Stop by Tech Tuesdays in the Commons, or come down to the Academic Technology Studio in Cole 127 and we can help you learn more!

Intro to Drive

Pros and Cons of Drive

More Info About Drive

Check out our Rock the Block playlist on Grooveshark!

Paul’s Playlist

1. Reunion by M83
2. Mountain Sound by Of Monsters and Men
3. Sim Sala Bim by Fleet Foxes
4. Louder Than Ever by Cold War Kids
5. Why is Dad So Mad? by The Board of Education

Greg’s Playlist

1. Somebody That I Used to Know by Gotye
2. In the Mood by the Andrews Sisters
3. Tacea la notte placida by Verdi
4. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach
5. Bad Romance by Lady Gaga

Mary’s Playlist

1. Jupiter by Gustav Holtz
2. Spring by Vivaldi
3. She Blinded Me with Science by Thomas Dolby
4. The Elements by Tom Lehrer
5. A Glorious Dawn (remix) by Carl Sagan

Jen’s Playlist

1. Yellow Submarine by The Beatles
2. If Only Tonight We Could Sleep by The Cure
3. Queen of the Highway by The Doors
4. Seven Devils by Florence and the Machine
5. Primadonna by Marina

Glenda’s Playlist

1. Boogie Nights – Heatwave
2. Iowa Waltz – Greg Brown
3. Superstition – Stevie Ray Vaughan version, Stevie Wonder version second choice
4. 59th St. Bridge Song – Simon & Garfunkel
5. Reverie – Claude Debussy

Brooke’s Playlist

1. The Man They Call Jayne from the Firefly Soundtrack
2. An Awful Lot of Running by Chameleon Circuit
3. The Ballad of Barry Allen by Jim’s Big Ego
4. Still Alive by GladOS
5. Write Like the Wind (George RR Martin) by Paul and Storm

Jessica’s Playlist

1. A Praise Chorus by Jimmy Eat World
2. Some Nights by fun.
3. Closer to the Edge by 30 Seconds to Mars
4. Good Feeling by FLO RIDA
5. Love and Memories by O.A.R.

Laura’s Playlist

1. Trombone Shorty: Neph
2. Tom Waits: Diamonds and Gold
3. Gillian Welch: Hard Times
4. Bruce Springsteen: Backstreets
5. Dwight Yoakam: Back of Your Hand

Shawn’s Playlist

1. Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
2. Set Fire to the Rain – Adele
3. Think – Aretha Franklin
4. Mr. Blue Sky – Electric Light Orchestra
5. Rainbow Connection – The Muppets

Cathy’s Playlist

1. Watercolors – Janis Ian
2. Let It Go – Tenth Avenue North
3. A Home – Dixie Chicks
4. My Favorite Memory – The Cox Family
5. Brave – Nichole Nordeman

Andrea’s Playlist

1. White Room- Cream
2. Jumpin’ Jack Flash- Rolling Stones
3. Fly Me To The Moon- Frank Sinatra
4. Kashmir- Led Zeppelin
5. I Wish You Love- Shirley Bassey

Grace’s Playlist

1. “Dance this Mess Around” by The B-52’s
2. “Creep” by TLC
3. “Crawling King Snake” by The Doors
4. “Honest I Do” by Jimmy Reed
5. “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Kristin’s Playlist

1. You and I – Lady Ga Ga
2. Long Time – Boston
3. Crazy on You – Heart
4. Need You Now – Lady Antebellum
5. Bubbly – Colbie Caillat

Roxy’s Playlist

1. Chelsea Morning – Joni Mitchell
2. My Lovely – Eisley
3. First Day of My Life – Bright Eyes
4. Ambulance – Eisley
5. “Moonlight Sonata” – Ludwig Van Beethoven

Matt’s Playlist 

1. Clutch: The Mob Goes Wild
2. John Denver: Country Roads
3. Michael Jackson: Smooth Criminal
4. 30 Seconds to Mars: Kings and Queens
5. The Doors: Riders on The Storm

Are you working on a group paper? A symposium project, or just a story that you and your friends want to write together?
Use Google documents. With this handy tool you can simultaneously edit documents that you’ve shared with your friends. Better yet you don’t even need to sign up for a new Gmail account. With your student Gmail account, you also get the benefit of access to Google docs!

Here’s some articles about more interesting things you can do with Google docs.

14 Best Google Doc tricks

6 Tips To Help You Get the Most Out of Google Docs

Are you doing research from a mobile device or tablet? Several library resources have mobile apps and websites which will help you access scholarly research from these devices, including EBSCO.

To access these databases from an Apple or Android device, search the app store or market for the free EBSCOhost app. To authenticate the app, Cornell users just need to navigate to any EBSCO database interface page through the electronic resources page, scroll down to the bottom of the search page and click on “New: EBSCOhost iPhone and Android Applications” From there, you will enter your Cornell email address.  You will receive an automatic email message from EBSCO with directions and a link that will activate your access to the EBSCO Mobile App.

Are you buying a new computer, or perhaps building one yourself? Either way, while there are many factors that come into play when selecting your new PC or Mac, the most important (other than price) is perhaps the processor. The processor, which determines how fast the machine performs, varies from computer to computer, and in order to get the most bang for your buck here’s what you need to know.

There are two main brands of processors on the market today, Intel and AMD. Like all processors the speed is measured in GHz, or Gigahertz. Intel Brand has three categories of processors out there now, Celeron, Pentium and Core. AMD has Sempron, Athlon and Phenom. Both brands come in single core, or one processor, and multicore, which has between two and typically six cores. The more cores you have, the faster the computing speed. But faster processors produce more heat, which is why you need a proper fan/cooling system built into computer. The last thing you want to do is overheat your processor, which not only slows you down, but may cause you to end up replacing the processor sooner than you would’ve needed to.

Like all technological innovations, processors become outdated as new systems are developed. For Intel, the newer processors are the I3- I7 series. I3 are the cheaper of these three, but they are also slower than the I7. The I5 is considered the standard ‘midrange’ processor for Intel these days, performing faster than the I3 but slower and cheaper than the I7. The second generation of these three processors, referred to as Sandy Bridge perform up to 40% faster than the first generation and have an on board graphics chip, which though not of super high quality, serves the daily use of watching movies on your machine.

AMD processors aren’t as fast, but they are cheap and compatible with most AM3 motherboards, which is important when upgrading processors without losing the computer. Of the three types, AMD Athlon II are the budget processors. These come in a number of varieties indicated by X2, X3, or X4. The number indicates how many cores they have. Athlon II has enough power for basic PC tasks and is relatively cheap for a processor of this caliber.  Phenom is 35% faster, and is comparible to the Intel Core I3 in performance, but the I3 still has 10% more processing speed than the Phenom. Intel I7 is 2X the speed of the Athlon, but almost twice as expensive.

In conclusion, if price is key,  go with the  less expensive AMD Athlon processor, multicore which is cheap and has decent enough computing speed to get by. If you have a bit more money to spend and want better performance, go with the Intel Core series.

-Rachael Maxon, ATS Student Manager

Where did Wikipedia go??
Wikipedia, along with other popular websites such as Reddit, Boing Boing, and sites on the icanhazcheezburger network will go black on Jan. 18 to protest SOPA and PIPA, two bills introduced last year. Other sites, such as Google, will remain active while including links to information about the bills and stating their opposition to them.

What are SOPA and PIPA?
SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA, the PROTECT IP Act, seek to eliminate online copyright infringement. Supporters of the bills include the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of American), Time-Warner, and several major publishing houses.  The bill as initially proposed would allow copyright holders to file a court order against any site linking to illegal content; actions taken against the site could involve blocking ad revenue to the site, blocking it from search results, and requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block users from accessing the site.

Detractors of the bills say that it is too vague and too broad; and that ANY website could be easily shut down using the bills–especially those which contain large amount of user-generated content such as Facebook and Twitter.  They claim both bills violate first amendment rights and stifle creativity. Detractors of the bills include Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, the ACLU, and the American Library Association.

For more information about the bills and the opposition to them (and what you can do about it), take a look at these links:

Texas A&M Libraries Guide to SOPA and PIPA

How SOPA Affects Students, Educators, and Libraries

How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation

A Technical Examination of SOPA and PIPA

Library Copyright Alliance Letter to Chairman Lamar Smith (Smith introduced SOPA to Congress)

Infographic: What is SOPA?

Infographic: What it means for business and innovation

Gizmodo: What is SOPA?

SOPA Strike (Information on the Jan. 18 Blackout)

Fight the Blacklist: A Toolkit for Anti-SOPA Activism

Stephen Colbert Explains SOPA (video)

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet (video)

Evernote is a super-cool note-taking/scrapbooking service that syncs anything you add to it with all of your devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone) AND a slick web interface.

We’ve already discussed some cool storage and word-processing options in the cloud, specifically Dropbox and GoogleDocs, but what makes Evernote different is the mobile aspect.  It has fantastic apps for plenty of systems, including iOS, Android and Blackberry, in addition to the web interface and desktop application.  You can snap a picture of something cool and record an audio file about it (or add a text note). As an added bonus, Evernote actually runs images through word-recognition software–so you can take a picture of a whiteboard in class or a handout and then search for words from that were on the board or in the handout to find notes quickly and easily without shuffling through a pile of papers.

Evernote also has a couple of browser add-ons which allow you to clip pieces of web pages into notes and store them all easily in one place–so if you find a fantastic recipe, blog post, or tidbit of information, you can quickly and easily add it to your Evernote database–it’ll store just that part of the page (or the whole page, if you so desire) to your notebook, with a link back to the live version.

Check out some additional resources here:

• 7 Ways to Make Use of Evernote
• A Guide to Evernote Trunk
• The Complete Guide to Evernote
• Getting Started with Evernote

Head Volleyball Coach Jeff Meeker geeks music and high fidelity sound!

How (and when) did you start geeking music and Hi-Fi?

Growing up I was always involved in music, I sang in the choir, played bass drum in the marching band and remember cranking the soundtrack from “Grease” with my sister when we were young.   In high school I was a big into Led Zepplin and The Doors and purchased my first stereo.  In college, my first-year RA, Tremier Johnson had the biggest, baddest stereo I had ever seen…I was hooked!  He had three 15” woofers and an EQ that “bounced” with the beat.  His collection of early Hip-Hop and Rap also made an impact on my musical tastes.  In college, I was always the guy picking out the music.

In grad school I began working at a high-end audio store.  The most expensive sound-system I ever sold was in the $35,000 price range – talk about high fidelity!

I love music and a great audio system.  I like to think I am amateur DJ; my resume includes The Kindergarten Circus, Mini-Relay for Life, graduation parties, friend’s birthday parties and home volleyball matches–impressive huh!  My iDJ app on my iPad is pretty sweet.

What is your favorite thing about music?

My favorite thing about Hi-Fi and great music is simply its power to move emotion.  Music has the power make you happy, sad, or get you pumped up for a volleyball match.  We associate music with events, people or different periods of our lives.  I think your musical tastes are a reflection of who you are.   One of my favorite memories of our recent volleyball season was during our pre-season retreat.  We asked each player to choose an intro song, as if they were a major league baseball player walking to the plate…it was an early glimpse into their personality and a ton of fun!  My musical tastes are very diverse, from Flo Rida to Miles Davis, Kool Moe Dee to U2.

What’s one thing you think everyone should know about Hi-Fi?

Vinyl records actually sound way better than your iPod!  Music is so much more than the noise in the background while studying, walking to class or working out.  If you were to put together a “soundtrack” for your life, what music would you choose?

What do YOU geek? If you’d like to share what you geek with the Cornell community, contact imason@cornellcollege.edu.

Art Professor Tony Plaut shared what he geeks–mechanical art things!  Professor Plaut recently constructed a “block clock” which resides on the third floor of the library.  The clock keeps time according to the day and week of the block and is definitely a mechanical art thing.

How (and when) did you start geeking mechanical art things?

My first memory of that is receiving a little metal robot when I was in kindergarten or nursery school.  I loved it…and I took it apart.  Then, of course, I couldn’t put it back together.  But that’s what I do–I take things apart and I put them back together.

What is your favorite thing about mechanical art things?

My favorite thing about creating mechanical art is that I can bring many facets of myself to those tasks.  I can use my creative, imaginative part with the art side, and then I can use my technical and engineering skills on the mechanical side. I can also use my sense of humor in there…so it really brings together the full package!

What’s one thing you think everyone should know about mechanical art things?

They take a lot of careful planning…AND a lot of trial and error!

What do YOU geek? If you’d like to share what you geek with the Cornell community, contact imason@cornellcollege.edu.

RefWorks is an online program to help organize your research.  You can create an account through the library’s homepage, or by following this link.  Using RefWorks, you can easily put citations you find in different academic databases, like Academic Search Premier and JSTOR, into a single, personal RefWorks database.  You can organize your research within RefWorks using folders, and can add notes to different sources.  RefWorks can also help you create a bibliography for your paper–you can select individual references, or a folder full of references and create a bibliography in several different styles (including APA and MLA).  RefWorks also provides some additional tools, RefGrab-It and Write-N-Cite, which help making citations within your papers even easier.

Getting Started with RefWorks

To create an account, simply follow the link to RefWorks on the library’s homepage (or click here).  From the login screen, you can create an individual account.  Once you’ve finished creating your account, you’ll be taken to your new RefWorks database.

RefWorks 2.0

If you’ve just created a new account, it will already be in the newest version.  However, if you already have a RefWorks account, you will have to shift to RefWorks 2.0.  You can access it by selecting ‘RefWorks 2.0′ in the upper right hand corner of the screen.  It’ll ask you to confirm that you want to switch, and then you can get started in the new interface.  (It’s a MUCH friendlier interface than RefWorks Classic, so I would recommend giving it a shot–and you are able to switch back to RefWorks Classic if you’re not a fan).

Once you’ve shifted over to RefWorks 2.0, you’ll notice three buttons near the top of your screen (New Folder, Bibliography, and New Reference) and two tabs below them (References and Organize & Share Folders).  These will be your primary tools for navigating and organizing references.

For a quick guide about navigating RefWorks, you can view a video here, or check out this handy .PDF file.

To add references to your RefWorks database, you can enter them manually, by hitting the ‘Add Reference’ button…or you can import them from a database using DirectExport.

For a quick guide about adding references to your RefWorks database via DirectExport, you can view a video here, or check out this handy .PDF file.

Additionally, you can use one of RefWorks’ tools, RefGrab-It, to add items from the web easily.

You can organize your references into folders to make keeping track of what you’ve used in different papers easier–and you can use these folders to quickly create bibliographies.

For a quick guide about using folders in RefWorks to organize your references, you can view a video here, or check out this handy .PDF file.

Finally, RefWorks offers many advanced tools and features to finely hone how your resources are sorted, and to help you get your reference works cited quickly and easily.  Write-N-Cite, for instance, creates a bibliography for you as you write your paper.  Take a look around RefWorks and explore, or stop by the reference desk for help.  We’re happy to show off some of the cool features of RefWorks!  You can also e-mail ColeReference@cornellcollege.edu with questions!