Bigger Words, Inc.

Ah, the smell of erasers and chalk dust is in the air, which can mean only one thing: it’s back to school time in many parts of the world. While I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was happy my school days are behind me, I am a bit jealous that students heading back to school now have a plethora of great web and mobile applications to help them tackle the tasks involved with obtaining an education. I would have killed for some of the great applications available to students today — almost all of which are cooler (and more useful) than the Tetris app I used to play on my graphing calculator. In this list we’ve assembled ten of the must-have iPhone applications for students heading back to school. These apps will help you stay organized, take notes, and study better. What other iPhone applications are helpful to you at school? Please add your favorites in the comments. BigWords is a very handy iPhone application that lets users search the BigWords.com textbook price comparison search engine while on-the-go. That’s helpful for checking out whether you can get a better deal online while shopping for books at your college’s campus bookstore. Other textbook apps to check out are CourseSmart’s eTextbooks (Free), which lets users access over 7,000 digitized textbooks from the iPhone, and the Stanza (Free) eBook reader from Amazon-owned Lexcycle, on which users can access over 50,000 free books (including many classics taught in high schools and colleges). iStudiez Pro is a beautiful, if oddly spelled, application that keeps track of your entire class schedule and assignments. From detailed, color-coded class schedules (the color coding makes the whole thing very easy to scan) to the ability to attach assignments to each course that shows up on the calendar and when they’re due, iStudiez Pro is a must-have companion to busy students. Also check out My Schedule ($0.99), a slightly cheaper but less feature-filled alternative that allows students to make iCal-style, color-coded class schedules and attach notes to each class. If you plan at all on using your iPhone for taking notes in class, you’ll want to utilize Evernote. The free application supports text, photo, and voice notes, and syncs to an online account, as well as Mac and PC versions of the app so you can have access to your notes anywhere. Evernote has some really nifty features, such Read More

By Rene Ritchie, Tuesday, Aug 18, 2009 | Bigwords [Free - iTunes link] is the iPhone and iPod touch front-end for the Bigwords.com website and it aims to help students (and their parents!) find the best deals on text books. How good is it at that task? Um… I don’t know. College and I got mutual restraining orders against each other over a decade ago, so I can’t go within 100 meters of this app without getting a major case of the wiggins. Bigwords tells us “at least 50%”, so if you’re headed back to school and you want to save a few (or a lot) of bucks on your way, give this a try and let us know how it works for you! Read More

As a parent of two adult children, with one just having left school and the other finishing a Master's degree, I know that buying textbooks at their staggeringly high prices adds insult to the injury of tuition, housing and living expenses. Over the last few years, the market has made historic my remembrances of going to the bookstore and paying whatever was marked on the shelf while often vainly trying to find used titles of popular books. Things have changed: Bigwords.com and its little friend the Bigwords.com app [iTunes Link] are welcome additions to the quest of buying books and still having enough left over for food. The Bigwords.com app tries to find the cheapest way to buy textbooks. Whether it's one book, or a long reading list, you will save money using this app. You can also make money by using it to sell unwanted books, but being a teacher, I have a problem with that, having never re-sold or thrown away a textbook. Of course,that's just me. A good way to explain Bigwords is to take you through the process. The Bigwords.com app lets you set a bunch of preferences, each one reducing your options a bit. You can choose books that are new only, new or used, high quality new or used, set shipping preferences, consider eBooks or rentals (along with rental terms) and whether you require a guaranteed buyback from the vendor. You further customize it by telling it if you are a member of B&N.com, Booksamillion, ECampus.com, whether you have used Half.com, and whether you are an Amazon Prime member. Amazon Prime is a service where for a yearly fee, most everything you buy comes with free 2nd-day shipping. The answers to all of these questions help determine your final price. Using a sample reading list (I called my daughter), I got to work and tried to determine pricing. In the spirit of full disclosure, here's the list: Using the Bigwords.com app, with options set for no eBooks, no rentals, no guaranteed buyback, standard shipping, having Amazon Prime, and looking for the cheapest new or used volumes, the best price was $98.16-a savings of $45.95 over the bookstore or $30.72 less than Amazon Prime. The results suggested two books from Textbooks.com, one book from Half.com, one from Amazon and one from Abebooks. Three books were used and two were new. If it is too much trouble Read More