From Digital Money Management to Style Comparison, Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone Startups Fill Your Back to School Tech Tool Kit

Newswise — TORONTO, July 22, 2011--- With the dog days of summer nearing the tipping point, it's time to start thinking about the "digital days" of back to school. Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone (DMZ) is home to many startups that offer cool tools to help you head back to school - and to keep you from being oh-so-analogue this school year.

Spenz: Track your spending www.spenz.com When you're first off to school and living on your own, managing all your own expenses may leave you wondering where all your money went. Spenz is a free web and mobile application designed to help users track where they spend their money, providing incentives and rewards to help them stay on track with their savings goals. More than a standard budgeting app, Spenz tracks purchasers’ spending frequency and patterns so it intuitively presents each user personalized frequent cost buttons that are even timely, keeping most entries to under three seconds. Spenz is also anonymous; it doesn’t require a credit card number, banking information or even a name. When you know where your money goes it’s easy to modify bad habits and know where and when to cut your spending.

WhatImWear.in: Compare your back to school style http://whatimwear.in Launching just in time for back to school, WhatImWear.in is a new free mobile fashion app that allows fashion lovers to share their style story instantly! Members can snap a photo of themselves, tag their clothing and let everyone know the story behind the look. They can share instantaneously with friends, family and international trendsetters through the WhatImWear.in social style app and on the website, as well as across multiple social networks including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. In addition to posting photos and sharing their personal style, members can check out other global tastemakers and follow their style evolution. It’s a great way to look for inspiration for your back to school wardrobe and to get opinions on that back-to-school outfit.

Shape Collage: Document your post-secondary experience www.shapecollage.com From day one, you’re going to take a lot of photos of you with your new friends at your new school and your new hangouts. Don’t let those photos get stuck being neglected on your desktop or iPhone. Share and display them with Shape Collage, the easy-to-use photo collage software. Available on the web or through an iPhone application, Shape Collage allows users to create personal photo collages from dozens of pictures on their desktops or iPhones in under 30 seconds by selecting the pics they want, picking a shape, and quickly posting wherever they like to share. You can save or print your collage to tell the story of your college or university experience. If your photos are really great, consider sharing them through fellow DMZ company 500px (http://500px.com), an online photo community.

TeamSave: Save your cash by getting more bang for your buck www.teamsave.com Every student knows the importance of stretching a dollar as far as it will go. One way to pay less and get more is to shop as a group. TeamSave is a social buying platform that harnesses the power of group buying through social media. Even students brand new to a city can purchase an amazing local deal based on the power of volume shopping. A quick subscription results in instant daily deal notifications through email. For 24 hours, great products and services can be purchased at a fraction of the cost. Then tomorrow it starts all over again with new daily deals. And with 16 cities in the company’s roster, local deals are certainly nearby.

Fanfare: Find part-time work www.fanfarejobs.com Most students need some sort of income while enrolled in post-secondary education. Fanfare is a niche job resource for the student labour market that creates employment relationships amongst undergraduate students seeking meaningful work experience, employers keen on attracting talented students and post-secondary schools wishing to provide great employment opportunities to their students. This employment network is designed to integrate with post-secondary schools across Canada to provide employers with centralized access to talented students.

 Opened in April 2010, Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone (DMZ) is a multidisciplinary workspace for young entrepreneurs infused with the energy and resources of downtown Toronto. Set atop Yonge-Dundas Square, this hub of digital media innovation, collaboration and commercialization is home to both entrepreneurial startups and industry solution-providers. With access to overhead and business services, students and alumni can fast-track their product launches, stimulating Canada’s emerging digital economy through spending and job creation. Since its launch the DMZ has helped more than 170 innovators to incubate and accelerate 29 startups and to launch 57 projects. For more information on the DMZ, visit www.ryerson.ca/dmz.

Ryerson University is Canada's leader in innovative, career-oriented education and a university clearly on the move. With a mission to serve societal need, and a long-standing commitment to engaging its community, Ryerson offers more than 100 undergraduate and graduate programs. Distinctly urban, culturally diverse and inclusive, the university is home to 28,000 students, including 2,000 master's and PhD students, nearly 2,700 faculty and staff, and more than 130,000 alumni worldwide. Research at Ryerson is on a trajectory of success and growth: externally funded research has doubled in the past four years. The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education is Canada's leading provider of university-based adult education. For more information, visit www.ryerson.ca

Note to Editors: For digitally-themed Back to School expert tips, see our Back to School page at www.ryerson.ca/dmz