Student who aren't terribly organized quickly learn they need to be. Managing workloads, taking class notes, studying for exams, juggling hectic schedules and social lives---it's all part of being in college. Organization is critical.

That's what occurred to Bryan Healey, a student at Northeastern University in Boston. He recognized the need to coordinate something as simple as taking notes, and created a web application called "Student Manager." Now the site offers much more. I'll let Bryan tell his story through the following Q&A:

UW: What prompted you to create Student Manager?SM: Originally, this project started as a very simple solution to a personal problem of mine. I am currently a student at Northeastern University, and last January I was taking a class on operating systems that required a significant number of notes to be taken each day (sometimes as much as 10 pages). Now, it's important to note that I have horrible penmanship under the best conditions, and it only degrades even further the more frequently I write continuously. So, I setup a simple web-based app for myself that ONLY took notes. As soon as I started using it, some of my fellow classmates curiously inquired as to what it is, and once I informed them about what it was, they immediately asked if they could use it also. I had no problem with that, so I added a little login page so that multiple users could use the tool. Then, I started to add some minor features to it as I needed them, such as a simple calendar, etc. My fellow classmates loved the app, and it suddenly occurred to me that this is something that I would imagine many students could use. So, I scrapped the original code and started over, this time with a clearer goal in mind as to what I wanted: A complete information management application for students.

Before I knew it, 11 months had passed and I had single-handedly written several million lines of code (including back-end), and I had a fully functional information control and management application that was about to go into a short Beta period (which was, essentially, a three-week time span where my friends used it and found bugs for me to fix). Then, after Beta was over and I was confident that the app was bug-free, I opened up registration to the public.
UW: How does it work?

SM: In essence, Student Manager is designed to operate as a complete and unified information control and management application to help students with their academics. Inside the application itself there are only a handful of truly unique and original tools (such as Connect and Study); however, all of the tools have been personally programmed and meticulously refined to coincide and integrate with the truly original tools, thus providing a single, easy-to-use interface that allows students to perform any task they would need during their academic studies AND outside of their academics: detailed note-taking tools; study tools that provide practice quizzes generated from fuzzy logic programming; interactive flash cards; and a fully-functional scientific calculator; journaling; calendaring and task management; file management, including complete version control and backup protection; easy categorization and organization with labeling; complete contact management; easy bookmarks management; high-powered and detailed search capabilities; and social interaction and information sharing capacity with Connect.

Furthermore, Student Manager acts as a publication utility, allowing a user to share or privatize any information that is provided to Student Manager. You can make any file, journal entry, calendar event, etc. as private as you want (fully protected and invisible to anyone but yourself) or as public as you want (truly published and accessible by anyone) and any level of privacy in between those two extremes, including user-specific sharing, user-group sharing, etc.UW: How does it benefit students?SM: It will benefit students in several distinct ways:

1) Relieve some stress. I mean, let's face it, the life of a student is not exactly easy or stress free, and it doesn't make it any easier when, in addition to actually DOING your complex assignments and studying for all your exams, you also have to remember important appointments, maintain and keep track of all your notes and files and contacts and assignments details for all your various classes, AND try to develop new and more efficient ways to remember all your class notes for your various classes. Therefore, Student Manager simplifies this process by allowing the student to focus on getting a great education by letting Student Manager remember all the important events and appointments, even REMINDING the student about them using Alerts, and also housing all the important documents, files, class information, deadlines and task details, and so on and so forth.

2) Make inter-student collaboration simple and easy. Using our unique Connect tool, students will be able to collaborate with project partners and other classmates with more ease than ever before, including simple and easy information sharing, including files, notes, journal entries, task details, etc.UW: Does it assume students have laptops in class?SM: While Student Manager can be used anywhere that the user can access the web, certain tools (such as the note-taking tools) are much more valuable when used during the classroom setting. While currently this does mean that the student must have a computer with an internet connection while in class to use this tool during class, programming has already begun to offer more options to students, including:

1) A mobile-version of note-taking, allowing students to take notes on their WAP-enabled cellphone.

2) An off-line application that allows the students to take notes on a computer without an internet connection and simply synchronize with our servers when they are able to get online next.UW: What are some unique features students can't get elsewhere?SM: 1) Note-taking: Our note-taking tool makes taking class notes simple and painless with a sleek and fast (making rapid note-taking simple by eliminating load times) interface. You can also jot down diagrams and sketches using this tool, and once entered, you can easily maintain these notes, edit them, remove them, label them, privatize or public them, etc. And Student Manager will automatically organize your notes for you and provide printable material for later use, including printable term lists, notes and flash cards.

2) Study Tools: Because of the integrated nature of Student Manager, all tools accessible are crossed with one another. This ability allows our Study tools to access your class notes, and, using a series of fuzzy logic programs, read and interpret meaning from those notes, and then break down and reassemble those notes into various practice quizzes and interactive and printable flash cards. Furthermore, this tool has a fully functional scientific calculator to help with those math assignments.

3) Connect: With Connect, students can easily share information, message and interact with, and help and collaborate with other students extremely easily. Furthermore, Connect allows students to easily manage user-groups and friends, as well as centralize the detailed privacy and publication capabilities available to the user (in addition to the ability to set and modify all privacy and publication settings within their individual tool-sets).UW: How do students sign up? Is there a cost?SM: Anyone can register a Standard account completely free of cost, AND if a student decides to register a Standard account, he or she will not be pestered in ANY way to upgrade. However, a Standard account is missing a few features for cost-related reasons, including Alerts, File management, Publication tools, and Study tools. Everything else, however, such as note-taking (including printable notes and flashcards), journaling, calendaring, etc. is available to a Standard account.

However, if a student would like to register an Advanced account, which includes all of our tools, including File management, Alerts, Study tools, and Publication tools, the cost is either $1.00 for 1 month, $3.00 for 3 months, $6.00 for 6 months, and then $9.99 per year after that.

To sign-up, just go to http://student.infinience.com/register/?reg_type=select and select an account type, or click "Learn more" to get more details about each account type.UW: How might you expand or improve it in the future?SM: In the near future, I will be adding additional mobile support, as well as developing an off-line application so that those students who do not have internet connections in their classes can still use the tool during class (I intend to make this app for all platforms, including Mac). Furthermore, I will be implementing full 256-bit SSL encryption application-wide before the end of 2005 in addition to the current security protocol which is already in place.

Also, I always have and always will take each and every comments, suggestion, complaint, criticism and concern extremely seriously, and will personally respond to all e-mails and requests in a timely fashion and fix/add features where necessary as quickly as possible. The first priority of this application is serving the student, and that philosophy will remain eternally.Intrigued? Take Student Manager for a test drive and discover how it can help organize YOUR hectic schedule.