Busy students with little time to hop from website to website in search of basic necessities like take out menus or cable listings have a new resource: one-stop shopping sites designed to make lives a little easier.
Campuslive.com is one such website. Students at colleges across the country can find anything from phone numbers for pizza delivery to a link for an investment planning company, according to the company's website.
Those schools selected, including Northeastern, have their own personalized site. Students using it can receive Facebook updates directly; access links to widely used university resources, like the Athletics Department, and find listings of all the local taxi cab companies.
The website started when 23-year-old cofounder and former University of Massachusetts Amherst student Jared Stenquist decided he was tired of having to go to various websites for information that should be able to be accessed from the same place, he said. Campuslive.com became a reality in 2006. Two years and three staff additions later, CampusLIVE is its own company.
"We have people from all over the country calling us wanting to get involved," said Sasha Grossman, director of operations for CampusLIVE. "That's a good problem to have."
Part of the popularity has come from a recent article in Business Week, calling the founders among the top 25 entrepreneurs under 25.
"We thought it was a joke at first," Grossman said. "It gave everyone a breath of fresh air. It makes us all more enthusiastic."
Another student-oriented website, Campusdailyguide.com, powered by mtvU and Zvent, offers similar resources.
Dan Lindquist, Northeastern's campus representative for the site, said it launched with 25 schools this year and plans to launch another 25 next year.
He said the biggest advantage in using Campus Daily Guide is that students find on-campus events far in advance, rather than passing a poster a few days before the event is happening. It goes a long way in planning, he said, and in getting all students involved with campus life.
Although the university has not become involved directly with either website, Grossman said he hopes CampusLIVE becomes a platform for students to use in all aspects of their lives, including academics, athletics and Greek life.
"We want to utilize the space and interaction that the Internet can offer. We want to take your campus and we want to solve problems that you can't solve in person," Grossman said.
If CampusLIVE is successful in creating this platform, sports teams, fraternities, arts clubs and any other student organization could create blogs, speak with teams at other schools or organize events more efficiently, Grossman said.
Amy Kondo, a middler international affairs major and former captain of the girls club tennis team at Northeastern, said these opportunities could solve obstacles in team planning.
"It's hard to get information out to everyone on the team all the time," Kondo said. "I could send out an e-mail or a Facebook message, but not every teammate is checking those things everyday expecting a tennis meeting update. This way we could communicate with one another or with other teams if something unexpected happened with traveling to a match."
Lindquist said making the site more relevant to each campus is one area that Campus Daily Guide can improve in.
"I'd like to see more student resources, more Northeastern-specific information," Lindquist said.
Although he gives feedback to mtvU, he said he is not as directly involved in the changes made on the site, and is unaware of how Northeastern students view the site.
Because these sites are so new, many students said they haven't yet been able to take full advantage of them. Taylor Obey, a middler physical therapy major, recently reviewed the sites.
"I think I like CampusLIVE better," Obey said. "I wish I would've known about it before. The site's really easy to navigate and brings you to other sites that you frequently use. Instead of trying to find a website through the Northeastern website, the links are right on the same page for what you need."
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