FLC Presents: Food for Thought

Good afternoon Gators!

Finals are just around the corner, and we here at the UF understand that this can be a very stressful time for students. FLC is putting on another event tonight to give students the opportunity to get away from the textbooks, at least for a little while. Research has proven that those who take breaks while studying are able to perform better, anyways!

Come join us outside of Library West this Thursday from 8 to 10 p.m. for free food, refreshing drinks and to learn a few techniques about how to manage stress from different on-campus organizations. I have attended this in the past, and I can personally attest to how helpful it is.

Check out their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/events/1426668687550863/ to get more information about this awesome stress-releiving event. Good luck with finals!

2013 State of the Campus Address

Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 19th, I will be giving the annual State of the Campus Address. The address covers the status of Student Government and highlights new initiatives and projects undergone by all three branches of government. The event will be in the Reitz Union Grand Ballroom from 7 to 9 p.m. I strongly encourage all students who are available to attend this address, as it will be very informative and interesting. There will also be free food and giveaways along with the important updates about the exciting things that are happening here at UF. 

There are a plethora of people inside student government that have been doing extraordinary things during my administration that have helped us progress as a university. Many of the amazing on-campus organizations will be tabling during the event and giving out information about what they accomplish and why they are continuously looking for new members. As for me, I will be speaking about my administration and how I am striving to improve the amount of transparency that Student Government provides the student body, as we are a liaison between the students and the administration. 

Those of us who have chosen to be involved in SG spend our time trying to make the experience of everyone here as enjoyable as possible, and for that reason I recommend everyone comes out to listen and learn about how we are doing that. If you can't attend in person, the event will stream on Google plus under the SG Google plus account. For more information, please don't hesitate to visit our event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/231762563655546/. Thank you to all of you who make what I do possible, and I hope to see you all there tomorrow night! Here is an online invitation cordially inviting you to the event: http://www.evite.com/event/0312GNQ4SNVQRAYUGEPDIT4PEYLHR4. Have a great day and go Gators! 

Business Spotlight: Spin Chill

Everybody agrees that warm beer sucks. For this week's spotlight, I want to raise awareness about two UF students that hate warm beer so much that they decided to do something about it. Trevor Abbott, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, and Ty Parker, a mechanical engineer who graduated last year, are co-founders of a company called Spin Chill that has designed a product that has the ability to chill a canned beverage must faster than a fridge or a cooler of ice.

Putting a can in a fridge or cooler of ice can take between 10 and 30 minutes to cool to an enjoyable drinking temperature. By using the Spin Chill Chill Bit, a beer can go from room temperature to 32 degrees Fahrenheit in two to three minutes. How? By spinning the container in ice or ice water, convection is introduced to both the inside and outside of the container, thus increasing the rate of heat transfer and cooling the beverage down at a rate of at least 20 times faster than otherwise possible.

Trevor and Ty originally came up with the idea during the summer of 2013 when both traveled to Atlanta, GA for the AngelHack hackathon as a part of the HackerHouse accelerator program that both were involved with.

"Typically hackathons are software based, but Ty and I, having mechanical engineering backgrounds, didn't want to do coding. We were brainstorming ideas at a bar and couldn't come up with much, so we grabbed a case of beer and headed back to our hotel. The case of beer was warm, so we cooled it the quickest way we knew how: by spinning the cans by hand in a bucket of ice water. That's when we decided we were going to invent something that could do that for us. We ended up taking second place at the the Atlanta AngelHack hackathon with it," said Trevor Abbott.

After that weekend, the two came back to Gainesville and got to work on making their idea come to life. They just launched their newest product yesterday, the Beerouette, which is a fully self-contained beer chiller. It can spin cans and bottles and runs off of just four AA batteries. For more information about the awesome new product designed by two of our very own students, check out www.spinchill.com or find the Spin Chill page on Facebook, because everyone agrees that cold beer is the best beer.

Business Spotlight: MessageMe

Today I would like to share an app with you that represents the ever-changing and advancing world of social media and technology.

MessageMe is an app that launched in March of 2013 with an easy-to-use interface that further revolutionized messaging and group chatting.

Message me offers a way to personalize every message and picture you send with the doodle feature, where the user can draw directly on to a picture and then send out the finished product to their friends, all at the touch of a button.

The app also allows group chats that can easily keep an entire group of people connected. It has functions that allow for sending pictures, sending pinpoints on maps and sharing YouTube videos.

My personal favorite function of MessageMe is the Facebook and Twitter integration it has built in, which allows for anything through the app to be conveniently posted on these social media sites in merely seconds. The app also saves a great amount of hassle and effort by automatically integrating every contact in your phone with people who already have MessageMe.

In my opinion, this app is a must-download, simply based on how efficient and user-friendly it is. In today's busy world, the simpler and faster technology is, the easier our lives become. As college students, we often find ourselves simply running out of time in the day. Why not jump at the chance to simplify and expedite the way we connect with others? The app can be found at the Apple App Store. Give it a try, Gators!