A new semester has started, but the same old story continues. Textbooks still cost too much, and most cost even more than last year. The number of major textbook publishers has gotten lower, meaning an increasingly smaller hegemony of publishers is dictating what we'll use and how much we'll pay.

On the bright side, many classes across the country are looking to more open-sourced solutions. Professor notes, collections of readings, and online resources (like those we feature here at www.College-Cram.com) are taking the place of traditional textbooks in more and more classrooms. Keep up the good work, everyone!

P.S. Here's a shout out to the latest websites that are finding our resources valuable to their visitors, such as SkyLine High, and those incorporating us into their WebCT/Blackboard courses (like the accounting classes at University of Houston and Chippewa Valley Technical College).

I saw the new Pixar movie Wall-E this past weekend, and it was a visual marvel. I've long since stopped really noticing that these animated movies are animated, because the techniques and tools have progressed so far. (Did you even notice the appearance of actual live non-computer-generated footage?)

From a straight movie perspective, it was ok -- certainly not my favorite Pixar movie. But what it lacked in strong actor presence it made up for with educational value. Here are the top seven things I learned about life from watching Wall-E.

** Warning: Potential Spoiler Alert **

1. Capitalism is bad --  The movie takes place some 700 years after an exodus of humanity from a trashed and poisoned Earth. Presumably, this is the result of the "benign" rule of the BnL corporation. So, the big bad corporation is the cause of the downfall of Earth. (I'm guessing that between the technological requirement of Wall-E and the political requirement of a corporation taking over a united Earth, I'm pegging the exodus at a hundred years or so from now.)
2. Apple is good -- Talk about product placement, way to go Steve Jobs! From the still functioning 800 year old iPod to the Macintosh startup sound when Wall-E reboots, it's nice to see that the rumors of Apple's imminent demise have been (greatly) exagerated.
3. People are sheep -- We let the corporation take over the world, we let (helped?) them trash and poison it, and then we let them talk us into running away from the problem. Then, given the "Shangri-La" environment of the Axiom, we devolved into overweight, glowing screen addicted blobs. (Oh wait, that last part isn't really evolution, now that I think about it...)
4. People are adaptable -- After a seeming lifetime of relative ignorance, the Captain stays up into the night querying the ship's computer (Sigourney Weaver in her finest ship performance since Futurama) about Earth. John and Mary instinctively seize on their new-found freedom once made aware of the "real world" by Wall-E, and sacrificed their own safety to protect a sliding mass of children on the Ledo deck. Seemingly nobody on-ship objects to returning to Earth and starting anew. Yes, people seem to have an inherent attraction to what's fundamentally right and a curiousity about what's around them.
5. Computers are evil -- The autopilot deviously tried squashing concrete fact in order to maintain its hold on power. (Where have I heard that before?) The repair bots tried to "fix" EVA in a move reminiscent of Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest". Hell, EVA tried blowing Wall-E away on several occasions. They just can't be trusted. (Except, of course, for the computer I'm typing this on... heh heh...)
   
6. Robots are good -- EVA and Wall-E were just doing their jobs, but realized that there was a new directive worth striving for. The "broken" bots also pitched in to help them achieve that goal, as did the writhing mass of humanity. Ultimately, the bots tried to do what's best for us.
7. Stuff lasts forever -- Come on, a Rubix Cube, iPod, and Atari 2600 that are still in one piece 800 or more years later? I have a cube that didn't last 5 years in my closet, and who knows where my 2600 is. Still, the idea that our trash is still around hundreds of years later rings true. After all, I've been to New Jersey.

Some of these may seem contradictory, but that's the nature of the future. And of cartoons. So deal with it.

Another semester has come to a close, and with it some (hopefully) better grades.

So what are you doing this summer? If you're like most students, you might benefit from this post I wrote a couple of years ago about how to spend your summer vacation. 

For me, there's no rest for the wicked... We've enjoyed a doubling of usage in each of the past three semesters, and I aim to keep that trend going for the fall. I'm sitting in the local Starbucks right now, enjoying a too-large coffee and thinking of more cool and useful things to do with College-Cram.

Enjoy your summer!

Between wrapping up the spring semester and starting my summer "vacation" plans, I changed my profile page to include links to some of the most popular articles I've written over the years.

In case you hadn't seen them all, here they are:

• Best Ways to Cheat in College
• Seven Keys to Getting Better Grades
• How to Write a Killer Essay
• How to Take Good Notes
• How to Work with Word Problems
- - - - - - - - - - - -
• Seven Keys to Writing a Better Resume
• Seven Keys to Ace Your Next Job Interview
• Secret Behind Textbook Costs
• Finding a Holiday Job
• Giving an Oral Presentation
• How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Enjoy these, there are plenty more where they came from.
 

No, this isn't about Star Wars. We had some pretty serious thunderstorm activity pass through here early this morning with torrential rains, lightning strikes, tornados, and sporadic wind damage scattered throughout the area. While College-Cram is hosted by a major hosting company, unfortunately that company is located about 30 minutes north of us and was also caught in the same storm front.

The results, as some of you may have noticed, were some intermittent outages all day today.(I believe we were down about an hour total, in about four separate incidents.)

I applaud those of you who braved the elements and stuck with us, including Dzenana looking for Macroeconomics homework help on market equilibrium, and those who even managed to keep a sense of humor.  You're the real storm troopers.

A couple of years ago we translated our Periodic Table into a flash program for your cell phone, and posted it up on the Adobe website for free.

I ran across it this morning while running a Google search, and thought I'd post it here for you. Here is the Periodic Table for the cell phone.

Some of you have asked for an easier way to find out the latest buzz on the site -- the most recent blog posts, who's commenting on what, and the newest notebook entries. We've put together a way for you to easily keep up to date.

Just click on these links to get the latest buzz on blog posts, notebook entries, and member logins/communities.

All for you!

Professor Cram 

Lorna, a UK student taking Spanish, created some vocabulary lists in her Notebook. We took those lists and made her flashcard Cramlets to help her study. (Check out her flashcards under LORNA, and our custom Cramlets under SPANISH.)

Want your own Cramlets to help you study for finals? Create your own Notebook entries and we'll take it from there!

College-Cram helps you get better grades in less time with our Create/Connect/Learn approach. Here's how Learn works:

•  Cramlets: Most online resources do a poor job of explaining topics, or end up explaining way too much. Our Cramlets focus on a single topic, letting you choose what you want to learn and when. Want an example? Try one of these:
• Periodic Table of elements
• Balance Sheet financial statement
• Factoring Trinomials tutorial
• Multi-Step Income Statement tutorial
  
  
• Search bar: Looking for help in a particular topic? Type it into the search bar above and find out what learning resources are available and who created them. You'll get Professor Cram's blog entries and Cramlets, plus icons for any other students or study groups that have resources that could help. For example, search for "Periodic Table" and you'll find Cramlets in Astronomy, Biology, Physics, and Chemistry. Below them are articles from Professor Cram plus suggested alternate tags below that.
  
  
• Tag cloud: Like the Search bar, click on any term in the tag cloud to find out what learning resources are available about that term, both from Professor Cram and from your fellow students. Be sure to tag your own creations well so other students can benefit from your wisdom too!

Just click here to sign up for free and start getting better grades faster with College-Cram.

College-Cram helps you get better grades in less time with our Create/Connect/Learn approach. Here's how Connect works:

• Search bar: Just type your interests into the search bar to find others that are interested in the same things. Search for "vegetarian" to see folks interested in a meat-free lifestyle, or for "Brian" to see who has that name.
• Study Groups: Also called Communities, these are collections of students interested in a topic or theme. For example, type "Astronomy" in the search bar to find users and groups, and click the Astronomy icon. At the top of the left-hand column you'll see a link to "Click here to join this community" (if you're logged in). Click it -- that's how easy it is to join up.
  
• Professor Cram's Study Groups: As a bonus, these groups have hundreds of Cramlets and tutorials in their notebooks. Once you've selected the group, just follow the "Notebook entries" link at the bottom of the left-hand column. Here are links to these groups so you can go join right away:
• Business
• Accounting
• Business Math
• Economics
• Finance
• Science
• Astronomy
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Physics
• Math
• Algebra
• Pre-Calculus
• Trigonometry
• Languages
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Other
• Mythology
• Trivia
  
• US Government
• World History
  
• Blog entries: Once you've joined a Study Group or community, you can start posting in its blog and commenting on others' posts. Just use the "Community blog" link on the left-hand column to get there.

Just click here to sign up for free and start getting better grades faster with College-Cram.