News

DormNoise Helps College Students Plan Events and Manage Calendars

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 03/17/09

DormNoise has released a free Web service that provides calendaring and event planning for college students and student groups in North America. The service, also named DormNoise, provides a central location on the Web for students to manage their personal, student group, and campus schedules. The program was developed by 20-year-old University of Pennsylvania sophomore Jay Rodrigues.

With DormNoise, users plan and organize events on three different levels--personal (person to person), by student group, and by campus. The program's calendars can communicate with one another as well as with third-party calendar applications and mobile devices. DormNoise can be used by students with a valid .edu e-mail account.

The utility has been running in limited beta since August 2008. Based on user feedback, the latest release incorporates a number of features and organizational tools to coordinate activities with friends and share events within the school community.

After a free registration, students have three different ways to keep themselves connected to friends and school events. First, a personal calendar allows the user to add events from his or her campus and student group calendars to a personal calendar. Events organized among friends are added to their personal calendars. "Reminders," such as assignments and course schedules are automatically pulled into the personal calendar views.

Second, student organizations can create "student groups," with each student group having access to a dedicated calendar. Student group leaders can add, delete, or edit events as necessary. Members add events from the student group calendar straight to their personal DormNoise calendars.

Third, each college or university can maintain its own calendar. Student group leaders add events on behalf of their student groups, and students add events from the campus calendar straight to their personal DormNoise calendars.

Users can sync events on their personal calendars to Microsoft Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, and Windows Calendar, as well as to their Blackberry, iPhone, and Google phones.

The program is expected to be funded through advertising, which also generates revenue, according to the company, for participating schools. One advertisement is hosted on each DormNoise page, and 50 percent of all advertising revenues are donated to each school's student government to use at their discretion.