Make This Cheat Sheet Before Applying for Scholarships

Every college scholarship application seems to ask the same questions, or at least variations on the same themes. Why do you deserve this honor? What obstacles have you overcome? What’s your birthdate?

Remembering your birthday is easy enough, but when you sit down to fill these things out and the stakes are high, it can be hard to remember everything you want to convey, and harder to restate it over and over again. So you should make an application cheat sheet to make sure you don’t leave anything out.

Start by opening a new text document and making two lists: one of your best qualities/accomplishments, and another of what you hope to accomplish in the future. Then, sort both lists into subcategories—if the former indicates that you’ve overcome a particular hardship or that you volunteer a lot, turn those into subheadings. If the latter indicates that you want to get your degree so you can work to help others, that’ another subheading.

From there, draft a few sentences about each characteristic on your revised lists. Devote a paragraph to the story of adversity you overcame or work you accomplished that helped you discover your direction in life. By writing all this out before application crunch time, you’ll have more time to think and brainstorm. One idea will remind you of another. Get them all down in paragraph form.

Above each paragraph, type a string of words related to the content: VOLUNTEERING, COMMUNITY, PRIOR EXPERIENCE, etc. Think of these like tags that you can later use CTRL+F to search for when you need to cite that exact passage in an application.

Filling out multiple applications can be tedious. Fortunately, that’s because they all tend to ask the same things over and over, which is where your cheat sheet comes in. Pierce College and The Scholarship System have collected examples of what the people controlling the pursestrings are usually looking for, and with their advice in mind, here’s a shortlist of what you should prepare in advance, since the chances are good every application will be looking for it:

Some scholarship applications ask you to input one paragraph at a time, and others want a fully-formed essay, but having the bones of the material written out in advance will help you breeze through customizing the final product to each committee or organization’s specifications.

Also, you should create your cheat sheet in advance, but it should be a living document. Add to it any time you think of a new example or encounter a surprising question on an application.

Cheat Sheets For AI Information Overload

With the overload of AI information flooding our digital lives, help is needed to sort through the ... [+] waves of information.

AI has become the tech industry's buzzword of late. Every day some tech company or even a mainstream company states that they have joined the AI revolution and will be using or applying AI to their technology-related roadmap.

There is now a firehose stream of AI-related information published each day, and it is getting harder to keep up with what's happening in AI. And since APIs have been created for AI engines like ChatGPT, Google's Bard, etc., hundreds of new AI apps are created daily.

A reporter recently asked me how I stay current on news and trends in AI. My answer was that I had collected a group of "cheat sheets" I get daily informing me of AI news and new AI apps.

The first cheat sheet I subscribe to is Ben's Bites. This daily newsletter delivers a dose of what's going on in AI. Besides the short news updates, it also has a list of new AI apps describing what they do. One of the best free daily newsletters in the genre of daily AI news.

The second cheat sheet I get daily is called Superhuman. This website and this free newsletter has updated AI news, information about new AI apps, and even tutorials.

The third one is The Neuron. This free daily newsletter provides short reads and sometimes humorous updates on the AI world. It is well organized, with edgy writing.

I also subscribe to Louis Bouchard's AI Weekly Digest. This newsletter provides a deeper look into AI's technical and ethical aspects. What I like about this free weekly newsletter is he only tackles one topic a week, shows a video explaining the topic, writes a dedicated article on the subject, and includes AI ethics segments with experts.

Fortune Magazine has many newsletters, but I subscribe to their Eye On AI newsletter by Jeremy Kahn. It provides a deeper look into the AI industry and the implications of tools like ChatGPT. It provides a connection between the real-time news feed of Twitter and more traditional media outlets.

There are dozens of other AI newsletters, but the ones mentioned above are, to date, the most helpful in my quest to stay informed and up-to-date on the role and impact of AI on all of us.

There is one other AI subscription I get daily that is more educational than newsy. One of the essential skills someone needs to use AI chatbots is how to write useful prompts to get the best answer to an AI query. To that end, each day, I get an email from Copy.AI that gives me examples of prompts to get the best result from an AI Chat.

For example, the prompt suggestion I got today was-

"Write a sales script for a cold call that describes [product/service URL] to [prospect] and encourages them to schedule a demo."

One prompt I got recently was consumer focused-

"I've recently enjoyed watching [shows or movies]; what are some lesser-known shows or movies that are similar in style."

One of the side benefits of Copy.AI is that each day you learn to speak AI query language that can help a person become more proficient in creating their own AI prompts.

As a tech analyst, covering tech and new tech areas is my job. So getting so many dedicated newsletters is important to my work. However, AI touches every aspect of humanity, and people's lives, and many people are very curious about AI.

This short list of AI newsletters is helpful to those interested in how AI will evolve and impact them today and in the future.

iOS 17 cheat sheet: Release date, supported devices and more

While Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on Monday showcased the buzzworthy Vision Pro augmented reality headset, the announcement of iOS 17 should not be overlooked. This update to Apple’s latest mobile operating system offers iPhone users great new productivity tools, apps and system features that focus on improving communication, sharing content and inputting data more effectively.

Let’s explore everything you need to know about iOS 17 including features, release date and how to get the beta release.

Jump to:

iOS 17 is the seventeenth iteration of the mobile operating system Apple releases for distribution on iPhone models. This new version of iOS includes features for business users, enterprise customers, developers and consumers; examples include the ability to better manage contacts, FaceTime features, AirPlay and content-sharing features, and privacy-related features.

iOS 17 was announced on June 5, 2023, during the Apple WWDC keynote address.

SEE: Previous iterations of iOS in these TechRepublic cheat sheets: iOS 16, iOS 15, iOS 14, iOS 13.

The exact release date for iOS 17 is not publicly known, though the full release is slated for Fall 2023. If tradition holds, we should expect iOS 17 to be released in approximately September 2023, perhaps coinciding with the release of new iPhone hardware.

Apple released a developer beta of iOS 17 for registered developers on June 5, 2023. Developers can download the iOS 17 beta from the Apple Developer website.

A public beta of iOS 17 for non-developers will be made available through AppleSeed in July 2023 for installation on non-developer devices.

As of June 5, 2023, only registered Apple developers may download and install iOS 17 on their devices.

iOS 17 should only be installed on development-specific hardware because features may not be fully implemented at this time, and bugs are common in beta releases. Using this beta on production accounts and devices may result in data loss.

Registered developers should follow these steps to download and install the iOS 17 beta on development devices. Note: Apple requires that any device the beta is installed on is part of the Apple Developer Program.

iOS 17 will be compatible with the following iPhone models:

Devices not listed here will not receive feature updates contained in iOS 17 and will only receive select updates for security for older iOS versions. Most notably, iOS 17 will not be compatible with the iPhone 8, which is a long-time enterprise-issued device.

Since the inception of the iPhone’s Phone app, it has remained relatively unchanged. In iOS 17, it includes a lot of new features, such as the ability to set a profile picture and customize it for what shows up on other devices when you call them (Figure A).

Figure A

In addition, you can screen callers with the Live Voicemail feature, allowing you to see on the screen a dictation of what the caller says during the voicemail recording and letting you pick up and take the call while the caller is recording their voicemail.

For many iPhone users, Messages is the most used app on their device. New features in this app (Figure B) allow you to more seamlessly use iMessage apps to integrate with messages, search with filters that let you refine searches to a particular contact and context, or catch up more effectively in a group chat by jumping to the last unread message.

Figure B

In addition, if you prefer to use voice messages inside of the iMessage feature, these voice messages will now be transcribed inline, allowing for better searchability and the ability to read a voice message instead of needing to listen to it.

FaceTime is receiving a big overhaul in iOS 17. In FaceTime, you will get the option to leave a video voicemail for a user when they’re unavailable. Also, while on a FaceTime call, you will be able to perform hand gestures as well as react with 3D effects in the video. This is great when you want to give a quick thumbs-up and have it called out more prominently during a meeting.

Apple has updated widgets in iOS 17, so they are interactive. Plus, you will be able to tap items in the widget to interact with the apps they’re connected to without opening the app; this will make interactivity with widgets much better and increase their usefulness for many apps.

Apple introduced a new way to use your iPhone while it’s charging or just sitting on your desk with a new feature called Standby (Figure C). This feature lets you rotate your iPhone while it’s charging to see an interactive view of your calendar, widgets, clock and more.

Figure C

Standby can turn your iPhone into a smart home-style screen for free and add a lot of useful features when it would otherwise just be charging and not in use, making for great glanceable interfaces while working, driving or at night while charging your device.

AirDrop received a major update after several changes to this system over the course of the previous year. AirDrop in iOS 17 will enable users to share data between iPhones or Apple Watches with ease by simply tapping their devices together (Figure D).

Figure D

A new feature called NameDrop will enable two users to easily share their contact information (or a subset of contact data chosen by each user) by simply tapping their iPhones together. In addition, AirDrop will allow users to start a transfer, then leave AirDrop range and still continue transferring data between devices over the internet securely and privately.

SEE: How to limit AirDrop spam in iOS 16.2

Apple notes that iOS 17 has substantial keyboard improvements that make for a better typing experience for iPhone users.

Autocorrect is more effective at finding and replacing misspelled words and being more intentional about which words to correct. Autocorrected words will appear with an underline, allowing you to tap the word to revert to the non-autocorrected word instead.

In addition, new predictive typing will suggest words as you type, and pressing the spacebar will accept the word or phrase suggestion and insert it automatically as you type, making for much faster typing while on the go on iPhone and iOS 17.

AirPlay’s update in iOS 17 will allow the system to automatically recommend content to be AirPlayed over time (Figure E). This feature, coupled with the ability for Apple TV to display a QR code to connect easily, means that sharing content via AirPlay for conferences and presentations will be easier than ever.

Figure E

Apple is baking new PDF editing capabilities into iOS 17, making it easier to fill out PDFs that you’ve received by email or message or scanned in through Notes. PDFs will be scanned by built-in machine learning technology to find areas that need to be filled out, allowing you to easily tab through a document and type in data that needs to be inputted. Then, you can sign and date documents using your saved signatures from iPad using Apple Pencil or macOS.

In iOS 17, Apple has updated the following privacy and security features, continuing to make it one of the most secure mobile operating systems in the world:

Last year, Apple introduced passkeys as a way to reduce the need for passwords and make securing your online accounts more seamless and digitally secure. This year, Apple has added the ability to share your passwords and passkeys with other iCloud users right from the Settings app.

Select Settings | Passwords, and then, tap a password you’d like to share. This presents an option to share the password or passkey with others.

You can also create groups of passwords to share with trusted contacts, and when these passwords change or update, they’ll all receive the updated password. This is great for company or family password sharing for websites and accounts that are accessed by multiple people through a single account.