What's been going on? That seems to be the question everybody throws at me these days. I tell you what, it's been a wonderful 2007 so far. VarsityLounge is continuously drawing attention so that's been positive. We have a few uncompleted features in our labs and we hope some day, we will be able to afford to devote full time efforts to V-lo so as to get these features out of the lab to the live site.

By the way, I still don't have a Superbowl party to attend so if you are throwing one, let me know. I may just come crash it. GO COLTS!!!

As we all know how strees this and that is killing us. I read this article, it is about how different foods help relieve stress, and help balance various moods . Apparently some types of foods help us concentrate better. Maybe we should have taken the vitamins HUH? Read the article below people, it is very interesting.

http://food.yahoo.com/blog/hungrygirl/1/in-the-mood-for-food-you-feel-what-you-eat

Also have a great break. The varsitylounge.com team wishes everyone a merry christmas  and a happynew year . Varsitylounge has reached its 500 level mark now. Thats right 500 members in 3 months. This is how we do it.

I am really stressed here, I guess every one else is too. This will be my last major set of finals, so I will be okay once I am done with all this pressure. I wonder how every one else is doing with their finals. Good luck to everybody

I can't understand why this is the only finals where I am unable to concentrate or have no real passion for studying. I think I am just tired of school and ready to go make money and meet more girls.

Couple of announcements:

ASA party at the house on the 21st.

SASA party when the school starts.

Also some one from Yale put up old homeworks and exams on Varsitylounge so that's good. Thanks man! You know who you are.

Peace out and good luck on finals

You will also notice a summary of newly posted study materials in your school since you last logged in.

We listened to your complaints about how difficult it was to sometimes remember your nickname so we made it possible for you to use your email address to log-in.

In addition, I decided to give our members and site visitors a count of our membership and posts in real time. So we can give ourselves a pat on the back for a job well done trying to get the word out. As at the time of this blog entry, V-LO membership has expanded beyond home court (IUPUI) to schools like Howard University, University of Illinois, Rutgers, Marquette, Ohio State, Purdue and host of others. Study materials posted have also really picked up. We now have 220+ posts in the form of homework, solutions class notes, old exams, old quizes, tests, projects not just from IUPUI but from all these other schools. Way to go guys and girls!

If there are any new features you'd like to see on V-Lo please post as comments.. We will love to read from you.

Some of us are still battling with the ethical issues surrounding VarsityLounge and to this, we rest assure you that the V-lo concept is legal and ethical as long as materials posted to the site are not copyrighted. Sample copyrighted materials will be textbooks, e-books, etc.

I will also say this: If you are not yet a member, you cannot afford to sit in the same class with other students who are already using VarsityLounge. You will be putting yourself at a real disadvantage. Our members understand the power of learning from each other and are therefore able to study more, faster.

Ok.. that was my cheesy sales pitch.. I hope you bought it.. LOL! By the way, registration is still free. So sign up today.

Catch ya'all later.

Let's face it, at some point in our college career, we have all been faced with at least one the following scenarios.

1) You have been assigned a paper, some homework or project and just don't know where to start from

2) You are in the middle of your paper, homework or project, you get stuck and just don't know where to get help

3) You are about to plan out what courses to take the following semester but have no clue what to expect in that class

4) You procrastinated on a homework, paper or project or maybe you just under estimated the amount of time it will take and now you don't have enough time to complete it on your own.

These scenarios come in different shapes and forms and that is why we have created VarsityLounge to help you out. It is a place where students can share course-specific study materials and ideas with each other. This web service is offered as a resource for students in need of additional study or test material in order to help them learn more, faster.

How VarsityLounge works for you:

1) You have a paper or project and just don't know where to start from or you procrastinated on a homework, paper or project and now you don't have enough time to complete it on your own.

a. See what fellow students like you have done in similar projects

b. See what they did wrong so you can learn from it

2) You plan on taking a class next semester but don't know if you will find it interesting

a. Peep through notes, teaching slides, from that class to get a feel of it.

b. Practice with old test, and exams from the class to get acquainted with the professor's style of testing.

c. Read other students' class experiences

3) Preparing for MCATs, LSATs or any other professional exams?

a. Use our collection of professionally gathered examination questions to study what is relevant to the exams

Registration is 100% free. Be a member today and put an end to off-target studying.

With recent uproar with the BSI's proposal and every thing, I realized that IUPUI still has a long way to go. However the thing that upset me the most is the fact that only 22% of IUPUI students graduate. IUPUI really needs to fix this. I am not trying to be cheesy, but I really think, once we have implemented all the features we want, Varsitylounge.com will hopefully at least improve this number.

Also I am trying to start this mentoring program; I will talk about it at the presentation today. The basic idea of this program is to inspire and give hope to students who are failing at college. Ideal mentors could be students who have been through similar situations or had faced a lot of hurdles and over came them; or just hardworking, caring students in general. Thus the purpose is to instill a sense of determination, inspiring students who are failing through the words of other students. Finally teach them how to study more efficiently, by learning from the skills of students who are successful.

So I am thinking, that mentors can come and give speeches and share their experiences and also work one on one with students. Mentors can teach students how to manage time, study efficiently, give them access to academic resource centers like (MAC, writing centers, Bepko)

What do you guys think of this mentoring program? Let me get some comments please.

And I'd like to say a big thank you to all those who have been contributing to the varsitylounge.com databank of homeworks, class notes, projects, papers, exams, tests, etc. Together we are helping ourselves and others be more efficient in our studying.

VarsityLounge is officially 1 week old but technically only 5 days old since the initial issues we had with the servers and launch date. Things are looking good. Official count of membership stands at 130. However, only 6 of those members have put up materials. So we have been thinking: How can we encourage you guys to put up materials from your old classes? This site belongs to all of us and we will like to read your suggestions. Please post as comments.

We did talk about the V-Blogs but unfortunately we couldn\'t get it ready for the launch date. However, we are working hard on having it ready shortly. Hari and Osi have been busy studying for mid-terms but once that\'s over, we will have more time to invest in this. To refresh our memories, VarsityLounge is offering the V-Blogs as a way for students to share their opinion and ideas on personal and academic issues. We think maintaining an online diary of your experiences in a school, class, or on a project/homework can help other members in dimensions we cannot imagine.

A lot of you have shared your concerns about breaking the law. We have consulted with attorneys and top ranking officers at IUPUI. Sharing your class notes, projects you completed, test/exams/solutions, crip sheets, lab reports, homework assignments with each other is 100% legal and you have nothing to worry about. However, sharing a copyrighted electronic text book may not be legal. We also have a very strict privacy policy. This policy forbids us to share any of your personal contact information or materials with non-members of this site. If you have any other concerns, please contact us and one of us will write you back.

See you all at the house on Friday! .... Your friend, Walle.

Then we realized that the server was not powerful enough to handle our traffic. So we switched every thing to a new server, which can handle all your \"academic\" needs. So I would like to thank every one on the behalf of the V-Lo team (Osy- the Dreamer, Walle- the Performer and Me - the Motivator) for taking the interest and creating that mad rush of traffic. Also I want to thank Walle, since he did not sleep the whole weekend making sure that the server switch happened smoothly. If you guys see him around, give him a pat on the back and say \"Good job, Walle\". I personally needed the sleep.

So now that we have a more powerful server, everything is working smoothly and we are having a steady stream of students registering. So on Monday, I want you guys to find some thing that you can share with other students, and put it up on Varsity Lounge. Tell all your friends about the site. We need you to make this site great. We did our part of getting varsitylounge.com up and running. Now it is all up to you guys, to make it a resource for students world wide.

Enjoy VarsityLounge and have a good week. By the way, the VarsityLounge launch party is this Friday. Let\'s get it popping at The House. Drinks and refreshments on us.

Hari K

If you have seen me at Butler, IUPUI, Ivy Tech, Starbucks or anywhere else but my house, don't forget those cards I passed you. They are worth free V-Lo Points. The only other way to earn those points is by sharing materials on VarsityLounge. These free ones will allow you download from other members till you accumulate enough points from uploading.

Also the first 1,000 members earn cool V-Lo points + their names go into the VarsityLounge Books of Records that is going to track the first 1,000 members, and materials.

We've got lots of ineteresting things lined up for Varsity Lounge and we will need you to help us achieve this. Tell your friends to tell their friends' friends about V-Lo.  

Anyways, I got more coding to do. I'll catch up with you guys later at midnight today.

Apart from that, we are just making sure the site is user friendly and horning the search engine. VarsityLounge will be operational on Thursday. We created two groups on Facebook called varsitylounge and some thing procrastinating. Anyways add yourselves to it.

Another FUNNY thing that happened was today, I was talking to a girl about, VarsityLounge and guess what? Her momma was right there and she thought that Walle and I were hitting on her. So she got a little crazy on us. Walle will tell you guys all the details. Since he has the crazy mouth. 

So here is what you can do to be part of that history: Start gathering all the study materials you have used for your previous classes in preparation for September 21st. Once the beta version opens up for registration, we are going to be giving away free V-Lo points to the first 1000 students who complete registration and contribute to the site. What can you do with those V-Lo points? I'll share this with you on my next blog. I can't give away everything yet. Oh yeah, the launch party is still on the 29th. Details coming soon... Walle.

Anyways, we are gonna open up VarsityLounge Beta soon. We've been doing a lot of testing and the final sets of code are ready. Working on this has been pretty fun. We are also gonna have a launch party coming up on the 29th of September. We'll keep you all posted on it...Gotta go finish up some projects. peace.

Apart from that, I spoke to the Dean of the School of engineering of IUPUI. He was actaully very supportive, and told me, that one of the best ways to learn is to see what others have done in the past and not repeat the mistakes they made. One can also see the good things they did and use it to one's benefit. 

I want to know from you guys: What will you guys use VarsityLounge for? What type of materials will be looking to find on here? What type of materials will you be willing to share with fellow students? 

I'll be looking forward to your comments and thoughts.

One more thing, do you guys liking the color scheme?

I tried different search engines this morning to see how VarsityLounge is doing with them and voila: we are already indexed by MSN. Click on http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=varsitylounge&FORM=MSNH.
MSN must be serious about trying to reach out to college students especially after the deal with Facebook. I am going to keep working on getting us listed on the other popular ones like: Google, and Yahoo.

18 more days to go and here are some new developments:

1. By popular request, we have opened our blogs to public comments. We agree with you that it is necessary to read your thoughts just like you read ours.
   
2. We opened a bank account for VarsityLounge with National City Bank in Castleton (Indianapolis). Thanks to Jim Haberfiled, we got 50 free bucks for opening a new checking account. If you live in Indy area, you should all check National City bank in Castleton. They will give you 50bucks for opening a new account. Lets see, what will you do with 50bucks if you got if for free? Post your comments.

Please continue to tell your friends about VarsityLounge. Our goal is to be the largest bank of study materials and we mean it.

More developments coming soon... Walle

So after all the talking we got started to building VarsityLounge. There were some ups and downs. As we progressed, we realised, not only would it be cool to share materials, but it would be great, if we could have a section where people can talk about how they solved a problem or how theyt did a project or talk about their cultural experience in another country, basically discuss about what ever they wanted, like a forum but unrestricted.

Hence we came up with the idea of V-logs. This is basically a sort of blogging, but it could be personal or academic. Users will be able to search each others blogs for information in a very user friendly manner and respond and link like minded blogs. Hence creating a knowledge pool of information.

Anyways, i have to be up and early tommorow, got to talk to the dean of student services about the website, wish me luck.

Option 1) Email our professors and teaching assistants for help. That was about the only good option we had but it would take some time to get responses back from them and we needed instantenous help.
Option 2) Call a few friends to see if they knew anybody who had previously taken the same classes...boom! That was how we came up with the idea for VarsityLounge.

How cool it will be to have an online community of serious minded college students who are willing to help each other succeed. After passing through a class, I can upload all the study materials used in that class for other students to use to study. Consequently, when I am taking a class, I can download materials put up by fellow students who had previously taken the class and use these to better understand what I'm learning in class. This must be a good idea! Afterall, college students spend lots of hours on Facebook, Myspace and other online communites sharing pictures and blogs. Why not share study materials that will enhance our learning?

We talked some more about the idea and now, VarsityLounge is ready to unite honest and serious college students across the globe.

The journey so far has been exciting and we will be sharing everything with you. I mean everything including our ups, and downs. In the next coming days, look out for entries from Hari and Osi the other two great minds behind VarsityLounge.

Talk to you soon... Walle.