For time−strapped undergraduates, efficient and useful resources are never unwelcome. Although universities strive to provide such services, the Internet is often a more looked−to source for assets aimed specifically at college students.
One such source is NoteWagon.com, a website that allows users to upload their class notes. The site then pays that user when another student in the same class downloads those notes. Founded in May 2010 by Saif Altimimi, Gabriel Chan and Ali−Reza Asaradizeh, three students from Waterloo, Ontario, the company was launched in October and was made available to Tufts students this month.
Altimimi told the Daily that the site grew out of his frustration with classes that didn't cater to his personal learning style.
"Basically [it was] a pet peeve of mine — I'd take a lot of courses which are very note−intensive," he said.
The goal then evolved to provide a resource for students who had difficulty extracting anything useful from a barrage of lecture material, according to Altimi. This aim translated into a website catering to a restricted — yet ever−expanding — community of universities in which student users tag their uploaded notes as class−specific and receive tokens for their uploads. Tokens not only give users the ability to buy others' notes but can also be traded in for actual money.
NoteWagon has now expanded out of Canada and into the Boston area.
"It just blew up at our own school," Altimimi said. "We just launched four months ago, and we're already at 15,000 users."
Despite the relatively simple service that it provides, Altimimi sees the website as much more than a forum for note exchange.
"Our vision is not just sharing notes; we're technically a social−learning platform," he said, adding that in the future the site will incorporate videos to facilitate online teaching and tutoring services.
"We're releasing new features pretty much every week," Altimimi said.
Another of Altimimi's goals is to open the site up to not only more and more universities but college−hopefuls as well.
"[We] want to open up to high school students," he said, explaining that the clientele should have the ability to go online and preview class notes to get a sense of what they'll actually be learning in college. This, Altimimi envisions, will aid the process of choosing a course of study.
Despite all of NoteWagon's future goals, its endgame remains simply to encourage learning in all forms, according to Altimimi.
"Each student has a different learning style and our vision is to facilitate those styles of learning to enhance the university experience," he said.
Another website providing a unique service is DateMySchool.com, which will make its way to Tufts next month. Founded by Columbia Business School students Balazs Alexa and Jean Meyer, DateMySchool is an online dating service originally meant to foster inter−departmental relationships.
In an interview with the Daily, Alexa related a story about a date he went on with a fellow Columbia student. Over the course of the date, Alexa's companion complained that her peers from the university's School of Social Work were mostly female, leading Alexa to realize that most of the business students were male.
A lack of communication and interaction between the schools inspired the idea for the website.
"There's not much communication going on between different departments and universities even though they are very close to each other," Alexa said.
The site is currently only available at a limited number of schools, including Columbia, New York University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and a few small colleges in California. Next month, DateMySchool will become available for students at Tufts, as well as those at local schools like Boston College, Boston University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The website's primary goal, Alexa said, is the privacy of its users; as a result, DateMySchool offers a customizable user interface.
"All the controls are in the hands of users," he said. "It's a very transparent, very clear experience."
Alexa also emphasized that the exclusivity and adjustable settings offer an appeal beyond simple privacy, saying that many students either feel too embarrassed to use online dating websites or think that the services did not provide enough safety.
"We found that less than 20 percent [of students] have tried an online dating website," he said. "People feel that it's embarrassing, [which] half of them say [is] because they are seen by friends and family."
As such, the site's privacy settings allow for fine−tuned control over who exactly can view a user's profile, providing users with the sense that they know exactly who they will be meeting, according to Alexa.
"It's anonymous, it's exclusive and it's extremely safe," he said. "[Users] go on the site, and within two hours they [have] a date … and you can be sure that you can trust them."
As a site that operates without making a profit, the founders keep DateMySchool ad−free and therefore have no incentive to sacrifice the user privacy that they pride themselves on in order to generate revenue, Alexa said.
"Whenever we face a tradeoff, we always choose to maintain the value that we promised," Alexa said. "We care about users getting the safest and most secure service and that's how it's going to be forever."
