1. Should I file a tax return at all? If you earned any income in 2011, you should consider filing your taxes. If your income is higher than a certain threshold, which varies by depending on your filing status and age, you may not have a choice. Check here to find out if you are required to file a tax return. But even if you don’t have to, it’s a good idea to file a return anyways. “Workers who are not required to file a tax return because their income is below their filing threshold should file a return to get a refund of all taxes withheld and/or to claim other tax benefits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit,” said Elaine Smith, master tax adviser with H&R Block.

2. What’s the difference between a W-4 and a W-2? Your employer is the one who fills out a W-2 form for you and will either mail or send it to you online. A W-2 reports your wages and the taxes withheld from them, and you need information from the W-2 to fill out your returns. A W-4 form, on the other hand, is filled out by the employee. It determines how much federal income tax is withheld from your paychecks. You’ll be asked to decide on the number of “withholding allowances” you want to claim. You’ll usually give this to your employer whenever you start a new job.

To see the last two tips, head over to this post on Block Talk, H&R Block’s blog.

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user 401K. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.]

• MacBundler is offering a bundle of 9 popular Mac Apps worth $330 for $39. The bundle includes SnapFlow ($129), FX Photo Studio PRO ($40), Koku ($30), Sidekick ($29), DVD Creator ($49), Nottingham ($20), Mac DVD Ripper Pro ($20), App Delete ($8), and Elmedia Player Pro ($19.95) and can be purchased through Feb 21.

• BeatPad for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad is on sale for $0.99 for a limited time, normally $6.99.

• Meta Notebook for iPad is free for a limited time, normally $0.99.

• Front Camera Zoom for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is free for a limited time, normally $0.99.

• Newegg has Corel Paintshop Pro X4 on sale for just $24.99 with free shipping after a $10 discount and a $45 mail-in rebate. Originally $79.99. Rebate offer available through 2/15.

• Download Them All for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is free for a limited time, normally $1.99.

• Notification Bubbles Pro for Android is on sale for $0.99 for a limited time, normally $1.99.

• Take 20% off your purchase sitewide at Tommy Hilgifer with code: THFEB20 through Feb 29.

• Get 30% off your order sitewide at photo-printing company Snapfish with code: ROCK131 through Mar 3.

• Fatheads is offering 25% off any NFL product (Go Giants!) after code: 25NFL through Feb 7.

Right now, Dropbox is offering up to 5GB of free space to all users who test the new feature of automatic photo and video uploading. To take advantage of this great offer, all you have to do is download the latest beta version of the Dropbox desktop client for your operating system, and then use the auto-upload feature to upload pictures and movies to your Dropbox. For every 500 MB uploaded, Dropbox will grant you an additional 500 MB in storage space, up to 5GB!

One important note is that you don’t actually have to upload your photos and videos to Dropbox; All you have to do is make sure the files import to your desktop’s Dropbox folder. Once you hit 500 MB imported, you should receive a notification that your space has been increased.  Finally, I’ve included useful links to make it even easier for readers to get more free Dropbox space. These links allow you to download the latest Dropbox beta (version 1.3.13) for your respective OS that grants you the free extra space.

Windows: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/Dr…1.3.13.exe
Mac OS X: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/Dr…1.3.13.dmg
Linux x86_64: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/dr….13.tar.gz
Linux x86: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/dr….13.tar.gz

Enjoy the free space everybody!

What are your recommendations to get more free Dropbox space? Let us know in the comments!

Like most college students, two adjectives that describe me very well are cheap and lazy. And that’s exactly why I love buying in bulk at warehouse stores like Costco – not only do you save money buy buying wholesale, but you can also be super lazy by just buying food and supplies to last the entire month! Unfortunately, Costco requires a membership just to get in, let alone to buy anything. Fortunately, I’ve figured out a clever way to shop at Costco without a membership! If you know that you’re not going to shop at Costco that often (maybe once a month or less), save yourself $55 with this trick.

First, find a friend or relative who owns a Costco membership, and have them buy you a Costco gift card – any denomination will do. When you walk into Costco, flash your gift card to gain entry. Then when you checkout, your gift card will also function like membership. The cashier will have to pull over a supervisor for special authorization, but it’s worked every single time I’ve done this. If you have a remaining balance left over, remember that Costco only accepts cash and American Express cards, so if you don’t have an AmEx, stop at an ATM before you go.

If possible, ask the cashier to only charge a penny off your gift card so you can use it again. As long as you have a balance remaining on your gift card, you can enter Costco again and buy whatever you want – just pay off the remaining bill with cash or your AmEx. Now that you’re armed with this knowledge, you can go out and buy that four-pound bag of chips you’ve always wanted!

Do you know of any other hacks like this for other wholesale clubs? Let us know in the comments!

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user greenwenvy08. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.]

Over the next few days, as people draft their New Year’s Resolutions and 2012 predictions, I’ll be providing tools to help you Achieve Your Resolution – valuable webapps and web sites that I’ve found in the past year that help achieve popular New Year’s Resolutions.

I’ll never forget my middle school PE coach. “Congratulations, son,” he uttered, as I finally finished my mile behind the rest of my other classmates. “You just broke the All Souls record for slowest mile.”

I’ve never enjoyed running, even as I had to continue doing it in high school for the JV sports I played: baseball, football, wrestling. It was just a necessary evil. As barefoot running started becoming trendy, more friends started doing it for both the health benefits and performance enhancement. I preferred to run on the treadmill if I had to.

Then, running became technological. There was Nike+, but it required a financial commitment I wasn’t willing to make for running about once a month. Then came RunKeeper.

Like all things fitness, RunKeeper relies on tracking. You get your runs tracked, via GPS in your mobile phone , or you can add your runs after the fact. There’s a social element: through Street Teams, you can add friends, and you can compare your friends’ popular routes to join them on their next runs.

For those who want to get out and learn how to run more, RunKeeper is the perfect app to track your progress. You’ve just gotta get out there and run.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Magnus D. Licensed under CC BY-2.0]

Linkedin might seem like a service geared to those who already have professional experience, but it’s definitely proved it’s usefulness to college students as well. Students can use Linkedin to network with potential future employers and establish a professional online presence, an increasingly important consideration for job recruitment in the 2.0 age. If you’re not on Linkedin yet, you should be! And if you are, make sure you are getting the maximum potential from the site by doing these four things:

1. Showcase your academic accomplishments – Employers understand that a college student probably will not have an impressive work experience section on their resume. Being a student is your “profession”, so focus your bragging on that! You have the option to include sections for your projects, honors and awards, organizations, test scores and courses on your Linkedin profile. Filling these sections out is a great way to make your profile more impressive and memorable to recruiters and other users.

2. Explore your career options – Linkedin’s Career Explorer takes you through and lets you compare different potential career paths. You build a career path by telling Career Explorer what your major is, what type of degree you are working towards and what field you plan to go into. Based on your background, Career Explorer presents you with job titles you might be interested in and helps you connect with relevant people and companies.

3. Simplify resume creating and updating – Previously mentioned Linkedin Resume Builder takes the information from your Linkedin Profile and formats it into an attractive, neat PDF resume. This is a great time-saver because you don’t need to worry about consistently updating both your Linkedin Profile and your resume.

4. Network and make connections – If there is a company you’re interested in, visit their Linkedin page and search their employee database. Find somebody who has a position you’re interested in and send them a Linkedin message. Introduce yourself, express your interest, maybe ask about internship opportunities… You’ll find most people are more than happy to help out college students, and even if they can’t help you, ask if they can direct you to someone who can.

Do you have any other Linkedin tips for students? Let us know in the comments!

We’ve all been there. The lecture on myosis continues to drag. Your Social Security-eligible professor drones on, reading the slides off his PowerPoint and you stare endlessly at Facebook waiting for your double-block to end.

Some lectures are straight up unbearable. My friend Jeff Young at The Chronicle of Higher Education understands this, and he’s trying to help.

Submit your bad lecture experiences to Lecture Fail at the Chronicle of Higher Education and help Jeff craft his SXSW talk (which we’ll be featuring) on how college lectures can suck less.

[Lecture Fail. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Daniel Morris. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.]

Kno is a multi-platform digital textbook reading application full of features to improve the textbook reading and studying experience. It is available as a free iPad version, on the Web, and as a Facebook app. Currently, only around 150,000 titles are offered in the Kno Bookstore, yet it looks like Kno is already getting the thumbs up from student users: A pilot study was conducted with 400 students in California Community Colleges who used Kno to read a digitally enhanced version of Collaborative Statistics by Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean throughout Fall 2011. 95% of the students found the Kno app very useful and said they will use it again, and 3 out of 4 respondents said that “reading, annotating and search were all better on Kno than using a physical book.”

Kno’s textbook enhancements include 3D images and animations, highlighting and annotating options, videos, links to interactive content, and an interactive homework section. Additionally, the iPad app lets you create smart links to connect images and video to formulas and concepts in your book, keep a digital “journal” by clipping images and text from your textbook, and write directly onto the pages of your Textbook.

The textbook prices in the Kno Bookstore are 30-50% off the hard copy prices. Semester e-textbook rentals are also available. And even if you don’t purchase your textbooks from Kno, with the iPad app, you can import PDF files into your Kno Library through Dropbox. The Kno iPad App PDF reader has the capability to perform almost all of the features that the App provides for purchased books, and it lets you use the “Course Manager” dashboard to organize your textbook and PDF collection by course and term.

Kno makes a strong e-textbook app choice particularly because of its organizational tools and features that are specifically geared towards students. If you’re looking for a better, cheaper way to read your class materials on a computer or iPad, Kno is definitely worth a try. Download or learn more about Kno here.

[The Course Manager in the Kno for Facebook app. Photo from kno.com]

Sometimes in lecture, my professors will put up huge diagrams that span the entire length of the whiteboard. Oftentimes, it can be difficult and time consuming to try to copy everything down onto your notebook. Instead, here’s a much easier solution: just take a picture of the diagram with your camera.

After class is done and before your professor erases everything, get as close as you need to in order to actually have the diagram be legible and snap away! Most likely, you’ll have to take multiple pictures to actually have everything readable when you look at it later. Also set your camera to take pictures at the largest resolution possible, so you can clearly zoom in on details when you view the snaps on your computer later. Finally, be sure the pictures don’t come out blurry before you leave the room – you probably can’t take another picture later!

This is a great trick to not only save you from having to meticulously copy the diagram, but also give you room to just listen and follow along to your professor’s lecture instead of vigorously taking notes. This same picture-taking trick also works great if you don’t have a scanner, but you need to email documents to someone. So next time, just remember how powerful and versatile your smartphone’s camera can really be!

Do you have any other tips on how to take legible pictures of diagrams? Let us know in the comments!

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user Blitzen the Demoralizer. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.]

• Protaskinote for iPad is free for a limited time in the iTunes App Store, normally $2.99.

• Super Note: Voice Recorder and Notes for  iPhone, iPod and iPad is free for a limited time, normally $1.99.

• Rockmate for iPad is $0.99 until Jan 27 in the iTunes App Store, normally $2.99.

• xScope for Mac is $19.99 in the Mac App Store for a limited time. That’s 30% off the normal price of $29.99.

• PocketCloud Explore for Android is having a launch special. Download it for $0.99 in the Android Market for a limited time, normally $4.99.

• PRO Zoom Camera 5X for Android is $1.99 in the Android Market for a limited time. That’s 33% off the normal price of $2.99.

• Groupon has the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home Edition, Version 11 for Windows for $39.00 plus $6.00 for shipping.

• Walgreen’s is offering 50 4×6 prints for $5.00 with coupon code: 4X6PRNT through Jan 28.

• Macy’s offers an additional 15% off your entire order with coupon code: SUPER through Jan 25.

• Gamestop will give you $15 off when you buy 2 New in-stock Games over $59.99 total with coupon code: TEBO. Good through Jan 31.

• Today only: Get $10.00 of Kindle e-textbook credit through this link. Click on the “Enter Your Code” button and use code: ETXTBOOK.