UTSMC

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President of UT Austin College Republicans Publishes Regrettable Tweet

President of the UT Austin College Republicans, Lauren Pierce published a tweet today about the temptation to shoot Barack Obama.

Graphic by Todd Wiseman

In less than an hour and a half, ABC News posted a story titled: "Texas College GOP Leader: Obama Assassination 'Tempting.'"

Lesson to be learned: Be careful what you publish online! It can and will be taken seriously and may damage your reputation.

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Is UT Putting Its Students' Privacy At Risk?

Bleed "any color" and have an iPhone? Then you can access the UT Austin ‘Directory’ in the University of Texas iPhone app, a feature that lets users search for any student at UT and view their name, major, phone number, address, and email.

Since no form of student verification is needed to download and use the free app*, the risk of someone misusing that private information is very high. A student can restrict their info through UT to make their information private, but finding that resource wasn’t easy and, in my opinion, isn’t promoted well enough by UT’s administration.

Are other schools doing this too? Unfortunately, yes. Texas A&M's "TAMUMobile" iPhone app offers the same feature, and I'm sure plenty of other schools do too.

How can they do this?

Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), universities can disclose "directory information" without the student's permission. This long list includes:

Student's name

Local, permanent, and email addresses

UT eid public username

Telephone listing

Date and place of birth

Major fields of study

Dates of attendance

Enrollment status

Degrees, awards, and honors received, including selection criteria

Most recently attended previous educational institution

Classification

Expected graduation date

Participation in officially-recognized activities and sports

Weight and height, if a member of an athletic team

Student parking permit information

Job title and dates of employment when employed by the university in a position that requires student status

Don't want this information public? Restrict your info here.

*EID verification is needed to see Finals, Class Schedule, Bevo Bucks, and Blackboard.

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Music is Changing

With the launch of Spotify in the US, consumers now have a variety of new ways to enjoy music.

Below is a simple breakdown of what Spotify, Grooveshark, Pandora, and a few mixtape websites offer. For a more detailed analysis, check out this article.

Note: Spotify is $10 a month

Not included in that article is Turntable.fm, a music service that is generating an enormous amount of buzz. As the picture below will show, Turntable.fm is a social music platform that encourages users to enter virtual (public or private) listening rooms to hang out with people and share or discover music. If a DJ is playing a song you like, you can add it to your playlist, buy it on iTunes, or launch Spotify.

Mixtape Sites

Want to listen to and share undiscovered music?

Sites like goodmusicallday, dirtymexicanlemonade, thissongissick.com

let you discover underground music and download it via Hulkshare.

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6 Student Email Discounts

Prezi

Make content private

Use your own logo, instead of Prezi's

Price: FREE

Omnigraffle

User-friendly diagramming app for mobile app wireframes, UI mockups, network diagrams, etc.

Price: $60 (Normally $100)

Amazon

Get 50% off Amazon Prime

Unlimited FREE Two-Day Shipping with no minimum order size.

FREE Release-Date Delivery on video games, DVDs, books and more.

Plus unlimited instant streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with Prime instant videos.

Price: $39/year (Normally $79/year)

Adobe

Price: Up to 80% off

NOTE: Better deals at Campus Computer Store

American Airllines

Price: FREE

10% off Airfare

5% off Land Components

Campus Computer Store

Price: $33 Microsoft Office

$389 Adobe Design Premium

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Interview: Kristy Owen (365 Things to Do in Austin)

We interviewed Kristy Owen, the creator and editor of the well-known site 365thingsaustin.com, to see how she used social media to establish one of the most recognized blogs in all of Austin.

Do you think blogging has helped you become a better writer? If so, how?

I think that blogging has defiantly helped me become a better writer. I think by doing anything everyday you improve at it much in the same way as if you practice a sport. As more people began to follow the blog, more began sharing their opinions and critiques so that helped me become much more aware of my writing.

Who was your favorite Professor at UT?

Too be honest I could not remember the names, I do remember that I took a class with Dr. Matt McGlone and I really enjoyed it, but there are many more.

What are some of your favorite blogs?

I don’t read many blogs consistently. I am always researching different things from happenings around Austin to celebrity gossip, just depends on the day.

What do you think about parents on Facebook?

My parents are not on Facebook, they read the blog through www.365ThingsAustin.com website. They are definitely amazed at the following and support that I have received through Facebook.

Have you considered taking 365 overseas?

Might be fun! I have definitely thought about expanding beyond Austin, I am in the process of talking out ideas now.

What are three items on your bucket list?

Drive the Pace Car at an Indy Race, experience zero gravity and hand over a big check to charity (literally – you know those checks that are 6 feet long and figuratively – a generous amount).

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Interview: Tim Weber (Good Music All Day)

GoodMusicAllDay.com is a taste-making website that provides the best legally free music in a variety of genres for young adults ages 16 to 24. Unlike other music websites, GoodMusicAllDay is not defined by one genre of music and does not cost money. The website uses these two unique qualities to establish itself as the leading taste-maker for college-aged consumers: influencing what they listen to, the clothes they wear, and the issues they talk about.

We interviewed their Founder and CEO, Tim Weber, to find out how he uses social media to grow his young and innovative business.

1. What was your purpose for starting this site? Is it any different now?

During high school, music got me through some down times. I loved music, and I began to feel the power a song could have on not only my mood, but also my outlook on life. When I headed off to college at Notre Dame, I didn’t exactly attend every class and thus had more free time than ever before. Having just discovered the concept of legally free music and blogs, I spent nearly all of my time searching the internet for new music. Once I discovered that there were thousands of music sites to download from, I wanted to be a part of it. So I joined two websites, blazed1.com and 5starhiphop.com, and started blogging for them (only for a matter of weeks). Around the end of October, I decided to start a website called tweb90.wordpress.com with one intention: to keep a group of close high school friends in the loop on what I was listening to and vice-versa. To be honest, I always felt like my friends and I had a good taste in music, so the site acted as a way for us to continually share with each other the music we enjoyed.

For the first two months, the site was pretty low key. Only my friends and those at my high school and college knew about it, which is what I wanted. I didn’t think of it as a blog, website, company, or anything of that nature. It was  just a website for me to review songs that I liked. In January, we hit 1k views in a week for the first time, and at that point I actually thought about shutting down the site because I thought it was getting too big and not personal anymore.

Obviously since then, my purpose of the site has changed completely. I began to look at the site as a way to learn about the music business, and now approach it just like a business (we’ve recently become: GoodMusicAllDay LLC).

2. Which blogs/websites influence you and your staff? Everyone. Simply put, there is too much music out there to pick just one website. For myself, I have always loved Pigeons and Planes just because of their diversity and honesty in their reviews. Shout out to Confusion. 3. How/do you market to the high school demographic? We actually consider our target market College campuses and College aged students 18-22; however, we realize that music goes beyond an age, and that we get a lot of traffic from high school students as well. We don’t go out of our way to market to high school students simply because we are still growing and have to focus on the markets that we target. 4. What do you think about Facebook’s  development over the years? Do you think its sustainable? Facebook’s development has been nothing less than remarkable. Their ability to combine listening to their users feedback with using their own ideas to stay one step ahead is admirable. I think Facebook is beyond sustainable just due to the principle that people of all generations have a desire to stay connected with friends, and they have established themselves as the best at doing that (and saying the best is an understatement). 5. How have the prominent social media tools (Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) allowed you to market your site and spread awareness? Social media is the easiest way to market a new company or website. Facebook and Twitter have been two resources that allow us to get the word out about our company without spending a single dollar. I can not over emphasize how important it is to get people to follow your company on Twitter and Facebook, and keep them engaged. As long as you have the content and quality to back your brand up, the hardest part is getting people to hear about your company. Social media has allowed almost any company to have the chance to go viral overnight (if the idea is good enough). 6. Do you plan on continuing this site post-graduation? I actually attended Notre Dame, NYU, and Belmont before taking a break from school to focus on my company. The more I learned about the music industry and those whom have succeeded in it, the more I realized how important it is to work as hard as you can, be confident in your work, and network constantly. Over the past year, I decided that a college education wasn’t needed to do those things just yet. Obviously, not getting a full college education means I have to work that much harder and teach myself many basic business skills, but in my mind it was more efficient than taking out loans to get a degree I wasn’t passionate about. That said, it is never too late to go back to school, and I realize that. I just didn’t want to live with any regrets. 7. How have you leveraged your experience with the site when applying for jobs/internships? While I consider the website my full-time job (about 70 hours a week), I use my experience to network with other people in the music business and learn from them and collaborate with them.

To find out more about Good Music All Day, visit their website at www.goodmusicallday.com