Free food is nice. But during the last week of classes, free alcohol can seem more appropriate.

Village Pourhouse to the rescue! This week the Amsterdam eatery will be sending out coupons for one free Bud Light. Here’s the twist – it’s via text message. An electronic coupon! How did we ever get trashed without technology? Have fun trying to redeem the thing by waving your tiny LCD screen around a crowded bar.

According to our tipster, you text “getcoupons pourhouse” to 41411 to receive a coupon. It’s unclear if they still send you the text if you space the words properly, so copy-edit at your own risk.

In related boozy news, the mysterious Haakon's Hall, purveyor of comfort food and fount of free wi-fi, has put up a sign announcing its grand opening next Tuesday. This is the place with the communal table and eggs all day long. Sure, they were still putting up Craigslist ads for pantry cooks as little as one week ago, but did you read them? All about the rotisserie flair and the cobblers? This has the potential to be excellent. And the restaurant has already promised to stay open twenty-four hours a day during finals. So throw caution to the wind and embrace the midnight meatloaf.

Photo via goinggreenmatters.com

Nothing stings quite as much as that whirrr-click-click-click sound when you try to boot up your newly-purchased laptop. Blank screens and corrupted data have sent many Columbians into hysterical fits. Do yourself a favor; spend an hour and earn permanent peace-of-mind.

Photo via Typepad

Backing up up your files is as essential to mainstream computing as oil-filter changes are for your (sorely missed) car. The truth is, far too many people forgo backup, usually because they assume that computers never crash.

If you own a computer, your hard drive will crash at some point in its life. You should be prepared. Today, Bwog presents five 100% free solutions for saving your life's work, online and on your own hard drives.

Online Backup
Mac & Windows: MozyHome Online Backup
Mozy is an online backup solution that has one huge advantage over local (i.e., on a separate hard drive next to your computer) backup: online backup preserves your data even in the result of catastrophe (waterfalls) or theft. The free version of Mozy allows you two gigabytes (roughly 100,000 Word documents) of online storage.

-Photo via masternewmedia.org

The J-School just got bitch-slapped by recent campus visitor/Entertainment Weekly founding editor Jeff Jarvis. For its new blog The Local, the New York Times decided to partner with the City University of New York, where Jarvis is head of interactive journalism, instead of Columbia. Oh snap!

As New York Magazine reported, the J-School has had a difficult time adapting to computers, trying to balance instruction in new media with silly things like objectivity.

On the first day of class, the head of Columbia's new media program Ari Goldman reportedly went as far as to say "F*ck new media." Yeah, screw all that linking to ridiculous videos and inappropriate post tagging...

-DJB

Welcome back to SocketHop, a newish, occasional feature in which we seek to help you with your technology. This week, we take Gmail and make it even better.

A horrifying example of an outdated electronic mail message client.

Just say no. To drugs, unless it's Adderol; to sex, unless you paid for it; to Cubmail, unless Gmail is down. And even then it's a tough decision to make.

We at Bwog recieve hundreds of emails every week and we would drown if it weren't for the geniuses in Mountain View.

If you haven't already, fetch all your Columbia email through Gmail. It's quite easy to do; here's a nifty tutorial. Benefits include threaded conversations, simple and powerful organization, and the constant distraction of Gchat.

Using the incredible tools found in Gmail Labs, we're going to show you some ways to make Gmail even more powerful and effective for managing all those emails from the CCE. Offline emailing, multiple inboxes, and automated organization after the jump.

Welcome to SocketHop, in which we bring you free (but useful) mini-apps and major (but relevant) headlines from the world of technology, hopefully demystifying the subject along the way. Flood our inbox (bwog@columbia.edu) and tell us what you think and what you want to see. Be not afraid of technology!

Snazz Up Your Desktop: Exposé for Windows
Columbia is an Apple-happy campus. Mac OS X (pronounced "oh ess ten", Apple's operating system) dominates in lecture and in lab, but let us not forget those of us who have stuck with Windows.

One of Mac's spiffier features is Exposé. Exposé presents miniaturized versions of all your open windows at once, allowing you to click on the one you want. If you're like Bwog and have twenty applications open at any given time, this saves you a lot of cycling through windows searching for your thesis draft. A video of all Exposé features in action is on Youtube (skip to 1:15 for the "show all windows" feature).

Exposé on OS X

Windows' most similar feature is in Vista (but not XP), called Windows Flip3D (Microsoft once again displaying its naming prowess). It doesn't simultaneously show you all open windows, but it allows you to visually cycle through them- not a good option if you have too many open.

A quick fix, after the jump.

While the site was broken for much of yesterday (Bwoga maxima culpa!), many of you had emailed a link to Lee C. Bollinger's Twitter page.

Now, you can follow the minute-by-minute goings on of "President Bollinger" with this Twitter thing. Just yesterday he asked if "ne1" wanted to go to HamDel with him. We bet you would have wanted to, hm? Never miss another PrezBo epiphany or outing again.

Three pieces of Columbia-related real-world news: first, some dude named Barack Obama has been chosen as TIME Magazine's Person of the Year. The most interesting part of the feature are "previously unpublished photos" of a very cool lookin' Obama, taken while he was at Occidental, a year before arriving at Columbia. One of the photos (at right) has a cigarette that looks enough like a blunt that Matt Drudge has it up on his front page already.

In endowment news, Yale estimates that its endowment has fallen 25% since the end of June, further adding that it expects no growth until fiscal 2011. As a result, Yale will be cutting expenses by slowing salary growth and delaying construction of several new buildings.

Finally, a Columbia University tech start-up has won a national award. Hey, if this is a good time to found a bank, maybe tech start-ups can work as well.

The perennial Carsplit enthusiasts have resurfaced! And they've asked that we post a link to this thing in hopes of securing cheaper airport-bound cab rides for everyone.

So sure, here's Carsplit. We know it's hard to see past your last final, but if you're headed to JFK, LaGuardia, or Newark by taxi in the coming days, use this thing to find new friends who are doing the same, thus saving everyone money.

With a mere half-day left of classes left, popular lecture activity GChat is tragically broken.

Despair not, Columbia: This'll all be over tomorrow. Except the GChat being broken thing, which could very well continue into Reading Week.

Could you even imagine?

Here is their mothership and its adjoining, exploratory cruiser, which is a trusty gray van named "Microwave Satellite Technologies Inc."

Both satellite and van were abandoned, so the reasons for their visit are unknown.

Maybe Bollinger just wanted to get a really good picture for Pacquiao vs. De La Hoya.

Newly minted SSOL enthusiast Adam Weiss reminded Bwog of some important and welcome changes to your Student Services Online.

For one, a search will not only bring up classes, but their registration statuses. Oh, and search now also brings up the course description when the call number is entered.

Now there are fewer things to be disappointed about and inconvenienced by on registration day!

Maven reporter Lydia DePillis contacted Bwog just moments ago with this alarming and amazing tip: "Chicken and rice stand on 116th--with a tv!" Any guesses on what the Chef is watching? Josh Brolin on SNL tonight, must-see-TV perhaps?

Fu Foundation Bureau Chief Sean Zimmermann attended tonight's ESC meeting. Exciting changes to your Internet are afoot!

The ESC meeting this week was dominated by two website presentations. CUIT previewed the "Next Gen CourseWorks" named Sakai, while two sophomores previewed their new website ColumbiaClasses.com, which aims to be a replacement for CULPA and Columbia's own course information pages.

Bwog was particularly impressed with Sakai, the arrival of which has been in the works since May. The site looks easier to navigate than CourseWorks and fixes some of the more archaic parts of CourseWorks system, for example file management. Here are some of the key features:

• Over 100 other schools use Sakai, including Yale, Hopkins, Stanford, and MIT.
• Has large focus on collaboration (wikis, blogs, podcasts, calendars, document sharing)
  
  (Read more...)

Why is Google so biased against the Columbia University College Republicans?

A furtive, anonymous tipster, known only as "Dispose Me," just informed Bwog of some foul play at work within the liberal search engine.

"The Columbia Republicans site appears to have been plagued with viagra ads. And penis elargments. It's also quite visible when you google search for 'columbia college republicans'. For the lazy."

Also, according to well-places sources, this very Viagara-riddled website ceased to be the official online home of the CUGOP when Kulawik graduated. Apparently he didn't leave the new board instructions on how to access and edit the site. (Note how he's still listed as President). The new site, for those who want to keep their student group bookmarks updated, is here.

Bwog's all about tech-entrepreneurs these days: yesterday we posted on Buzzable (Columbia's answer to Twitter), and today, it's CampusPlaybook that's struck our fancy.

The all-encompassing campus calendar is the brainchild of Dan Gendler and Daniel Heyman, both CC '09. It looks clean and professional, and it's easy to browse and register. Each campus group that signs up receives its own page, plus, users can browse events by type, date, etc. Also, there's a function that filters specifically for events with free food, because how else are you supposed to decide whether to go or not?

According to the Dans, over 40 groups have signed up already.