Welcome back to the grind! The snow has melted and the semester has officially started. It’s always difficult trying to get back into the swing of things after a long break—especially an extended one—and the stress can make things even more difficult. Here is a list of extensions and applications you can use on Chrome and some other browsers that can make the transition a little bit easier.
Momentum: Momentum acts as the Homepage or “Open” page on your Chrome web browser. It greets you with the date and time, a personalized message and an inspirational quote to keep you going. You can even create your own to do list and keep track of all of your assignments and due dates.
DashNotes: DashNotes is a note-taking app that allows you to jot down quick thoughts just by opening a new tab. You can save videos from YouTube or another video streaming site, and watch them on your DashNotes page. Along with the videos, you can also save pictures, articles, pages and write captions and notes about them. It’s a great app for writing down immediate thoughts or inspirations for projects or papers.
Evernote Web Clipper: Evernote is an amazing app you can use on your smartphone or tablet device, and it just got better! You can now install the Evernote Web Clipper app onto your browser, and connect it to your Evernote account. This extension allows you to “clip” or bookmark specific pages or articles to your Evernote page. You can also highlight and annotate these articles online, to avoid all of those pesky loose notes. It’s super helpful with research projects and papers.
Microsoft OneNote: OneNote is a relatively new Microsoft program. You can download it for free onto your computer and access it online. You can create notebooks with tabs and tabs with pages. For example, I have a Towson University notebook. I have two tabs on this notebook—Class Schedule and Future Classes. Under my class schedule, I have several pages, filled with all of my class information. It’s great for keeping all of my information organized. The best thing about OneNote is that you can import links, PDF files, videos and so much more. The OneNote program rocks.
Google Drive: Ah, the trustworthy and 100 percent necessary Google Drive. The best thing about Google Drive is that you can access your drive on any computer with a browser, so you can ditch the freak-outs over lost Flash Drives. It’s also great for group projects. Associated with Google Docs or Google Slides, you can make all of your project materials available to all of your group members at the same time. It can help you avoid the trip to the library or the stress of meeting up the night before the due date.
And, that bonus app for when it all gets too stressful and you just need a break…
Hola: Hola is an app that acts as a VPN, which means that it lets you access websites as though you’re accessing them in another country. Yes, you can now watch Netflix on servers all over the world. For future reference, if you’re in the touching (albeit hilarious) rom-com mood, I recommend watching ‘Love Rosie’ on the UK Netflix.