Ellington

I'm partial to mobile phones with QWERTY keyboards—and the fuller the keyboard the better. (That's why, although I've recently said I was switching from a Blackberry to a Treo, I've still got the Blackberry activated; I've got the Treo on my desk—I pick it up and fondle it occasionally—but I'm just not a fan of its keyboard.) The most important reason for having a full keyboard on your phone is because it makes you look more businesslike than typing using that look-ahead stuff on a typical numbered keypad. And looking busy can be extremely important for college students, dontcha know.

The Nokia 9300 gets razzed a bit for its size and lack of WiFi support (because, you know, it ain't a phone without WiFi support, er, right?), but I think it's worth a look for college students in particular. The 9300 (sold by Cingular) is a candy-bar clamshell phone that opens up to reveal an LCD screen and full keyboard. It offers a full range of PDA-like capabilities, including scheduling, contacts, IM and so on, plus the ability to edit Microsoft Office documents and support for EDGE high-speed data connections. Perhaps most handy—if you're caught in class with it, you can easily have a Word document open that makes it clear you were using it to take notes. (You were using it to take notes, right?) Oddly, no camera—but maybe that's further evidence that you're not using it to goof around in class.

If you're looking for a phone that offers a QWERTY keyboard that will not be taken seriously by your professors, try the Kyocera Strobe offered by Alltel (http://www.alltel.com). This one also folds open to reveal screen and keyboard, and it's designed essentially for IM and texting, but no doubt it's nice for those applications.

Cool Tool (The Backpack)

If you're heading back to school, you've gotta remember your BackPack (http://www.backpackit.com). I use this service every day to track lists, ToDo lists, jot down notes from conversations and keep important data at my fingertips. The coolest thing about the service (aside from the fact that you don't actually have to pay for it) is that it uses a "wiki"-style interface that lets you edit documents right within your Web browser, while offering all that Ajax, active-page stuff for creating check lists, notes and other items without refreshing the page.

Also very nice is the Reminders feature, which will send you an e-mail or SMS message. Need more? How about the fact that you can make pages public or private—and individual private pages can be shared with specific people, so that you can keep group info, reminders and notes in the same place? Or, how about the fact that each page has a unique e-mail address, and you can update the page simply by sending e-mail to that address? Or how about … it's free (for the first five pages and 10 active reminders).