As you’d expect from a web 2.0 start-up – the interface is clean and simple. Let’s look at it tab by tab and check out the functionality of each one.

Dashboard allows you to track:

• Overdue or upcoming assignments and exams.
• Lists your classes along with the current average for each.
• Recent notes or files that have been uploaded.

The Dashboard makes it extremely easy to stay on top of everything you have to do with a glance. Isn’t it better than your Sticky Notes?

• Next up we have the Assignments tab which only shows, you’ve guessed it, upcoming and completed assignments with grades attached.

• Exams tab let’s you set up detailed reminders, with both SMS and email support for notifications.
• The Notes tab contains a rudimentary word processor, more likely a text box. It is a big downside for those who are used to process their text to highlight ideas and important aspects. It has revisions which means you won’t lose any changes – if you’re not happy with the outcome – just revert to the previous edit.
• The text editor is Markdown enabled which means:

[…] a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML). –a Daring Fireball project.

• Calendar tab, let’s you see – in a manner similar to Google Calendar – your assignments and exams. It is iCal format compatible so you won’t have any problems importing your current calendar.
• The best part yet, the Files tab let’s you upload/download any kind of file you might want to use, PDF, Word, JPG, you name it.

TrackClass is completely free and available for everyone to use. If you want to organize your student life TrackClass is the way to do it, it is for normal people. Of course, if you’re a geek, you could always use the Google Apps suite to achieve the same result, it has more features – but you won’t get cohesion and a one stop shop for all of your needs.

As always, I look forward to your comments – what do you use, and what do you think about TrackClass.

Of course there are some limitations and annoyances with Ruckus, but considering it’s completely free and legal – two words that don’t play nice together – it’s worth it.

Selection

The Ruckus website boasts a large figure, over 3 millions songs and quite a lot of music videos – all encoded at a good bitrate. I haven’t counted all the songs in the store, but I’ve found a great rock selection, and albums that I wanted to have for a long time; and since there is no cost to downloading, it’s a great way to find new artists and discover their music.

You will find that the catalog is more inclined to the mainstream listeners, but there are some gems suitable for indie lovers.

Songs

Most albums are encoded at a decent bitrate, even by audiophile standards – 192kbps. With older songs, you might not be as lucky – just 128kbps. I’ve downloaded about 12 albums, and only one was encoded at the lower bitrate, so that’s not a big problem.

Now here comes the bad news; All songs are encoded in Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio (.wma) and protected by DRM. With the free plan, you will only be able to listen to the songs on your computer.

For 4.99$, you get the ability to sync the songs to a ‘PlaysForSure’ compatible device, such as the iriver players. By default, you won’t be able to play these songs on an iPod or a Zune, but I’ve found a workaround to fix that.

Not much of an issue these days, the software needs an internet connection to update the licenses for the songs, once a month.

I’ve also noticed that the filenames are not normalized and some metadata is missing on certain albums: details like genre, year, or composer. I didn’t see the album art when I imported the songs into Windows Media Player either. However that is easily fixed by following these steps:

Right-Click on Album Cover > Find Album Info > Save Media Information Changes

[Later Edit] Forgot to mention that you can’t preview the songs before downloading them on the website. I’ve also found that some more obscure bands have pulled down their albums and although they appear in the store, you can’t download them.

Ruckus Player

Once you login for the first time and try to download a song, you are presented with a dialog box requiring you to install the Ruckus Player – which has three big features:

• Downloads your songs to your specified folder
• Acquires and updates licenses for the songs
• Plays your songs and music videos
• Provides you with a recommendation service, similar to Genius.

Although it didn’t crash during our tests and downloaded all the songs successfully, I’m not terribly impressed with the Ruckus player. The developers didn’t take enough time to polish the interface – having to squint at the monitor to see the now playing song isn’t that appealing. You’re better off just importing the songs into Windows Media Player.

Ruckus is ad-supported, so unless you’re running AdBlock you’ll see some ads.

Conclusion

As a whole, the Ruckus experience can’t be compared with iTunes or Amazon: ugly, slow, restricted. But the situation changes dramatically when you work around those restrictions to get rid of the DRM: free music for your iPod, at a decent bitrate. If you’re a student with a little tech know-how and time, this is a deal you can’t miss.

The legality of these procedures can be debated – but it seems Microsoft is doing anything about it yet.  Without getting myself in trouble I can say that ‘FairUse4WM Mil0tis’ (about half way down the page) can be used to succesfully strip the DRM. Visit the link I provided, follow the instructions and you’ll be good to go in about 2 hours – from then on it’s just a simple process of downloading and clicking a button or two. To import the fresh DRM-free songs in iTunes, just drag and drop them into the window.

In theory, you won’t be in any trouble if you proceed with these instructions, nobody can know what you are doing with the songs after you download them. It’s a lot of overhead but this is a lot safer than using BitTorrent.

March 4 2009 EDIT: Ruckus shut down.