This post is part of Mashable’s Startup Review series, which highlights great unsung startups. The series is made possible by Sun Startup Essentials.

Company Name

GroupTable

20-Word Description

GroupTable is Web-based collaboration software created to help student group projects and study groups improve their document management, communication and project planning.

CEO’s Pitch

Student enrollment at higher learning institutions are increasing. Due to the economy students are staying in school longer and many students are going back to school. Group work is a part of any student’s life. Study groups are proven to improve students grades and group projects are often required in classes. But students have busy lives and meeting in their groups can be extremely challenging.

GroupTable was created by several students who were frustrated with the stress caused by group work and the lack of tools available to meet their needs. GroupTable solves this problem and enables students to manage their study groups and group projects anytime and anywhere.

Mashable’s Take

Though it’s hardly a stereotype worth repeating in a world in which controlled workspace chaos in academic and corporate situations is tolerated and sometimes even encouraged, students in need of organization are often required to brave certain circumstances their own unique way, whether the subject be course-related or extracurricular. So for those groups of students who feel the need to keep things tidy, neat and collaborative, particularly when not gathered in person, GroupTable may well come handy.

The entire makeup of the service is quite impressive. From its primary group management role to the data sharing feature present within the Binder element, things seem well thought out. Powerful but not overwhelming, is how we would phrase it.

As you can see, the paint work is appreciable, too. Quite a lot of software today is heavy on utility and light on sparkle, and while the latter focus isn’t so very important compared to the first, it does get noticed by a portion of users. The fact that GroupTable’s creators went that extra mile is not lost on us, and deserves its share of commendation.

Getting back to the utilitarian track, we sense there is little that GroupTable doesn’t address that a collection of students would have to see in such an application. Apart from full-on social network interconnectedness with the likes of MySpace and Facebook, everything from the group dashboard to the file storage component to timekeeping to comment threads is clearly designed to bridge users together on important matters without completely overshadowing real-world engagement.

Of course, there’s a strong chance that users of GroupTable - which, as an open beta, has registered just over 1,000 users to this day - will have GroupTable at hand whether they crash inside their respective dorm rooms or as one collective somewhere on the campus commons. But it is not the be-all and end-all of group organization. And that’s just how it should be. It’s the classic value-add mantra executed in modern-day fashion.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

Company Name

Soshiku

20-Word Description

Soshiku is a powerful tool that manages your school assignments. It can even notify you via email and SMS.

CEO’s Pitch

Aimed primarily at high school and college students, Soshiku is a simple but powerful tool that manages schoolwork. You can add assignments directly from email or your phone via text messaging, and you can also receive due date notifications via email or text messaging. For assignments that require partners, Soshiku also lets you add partners to your account so you can collaborate on notes, assign tasks, and share important documents. Having Soshiku available to students can have a serious impact on students’ grades and performance by always keeping them up-to-date on schoolwork.

Mashable’s Take

Soshiku was launched recently by Definitialize and its 17-year old founder, Andrew Schaper. The idea was born out of frustration with not being able to keep track of all of his school work assignments. He couldn’t find a service that addressed this common dilemma, so he decided to create it himself.

Even though the service is geared towards high school and college students, there’s no reason younger students and their parents couldn’t use it as well. The ability to add courses and homework assignments with mobile devices via text messaging and email is extremely useful. However, receiving reminders and notifications of upcoming due dates on your cell phone is the most important part of this service.

The other impressive thing about Soshiku is the feature that lets you collaborate with others on assignments. Many school projects and assignments require students to work with others as teams, so being able to invite others as partners on your account is very useful. Students working on the same assignment can then share notes, tasks and documents related to the project, all centralized online and updated in real-time.

I was surprised that such a simple and useful idea like tracking homework assignments wasn’t already a service. Yes, there are countless sites that allow you to track tasks and appointments but none of them are dedicated to school work assignments and students. It’s no surprise that it manages everything so well considering the fact that its creator probably uses it himself on a daily basis. He graduates from High School soon so we’ll see if he continues to use it at college. In the meantime, students can stop using that old excuse about the dog eating their homework. This service will make sure they don’t miss anymore deadlines.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

Company Name:

Unigo

20-word Description:

Unigo is a free online platform for college students to share their opinions, photos, videos and documents.

CEO’s Pitch:

Jordan Goldman, Unigo’s founder/CEO, is 26 years old.  At 17, Goldman was featured in a New York Times article on the college admissions process.  As a college freshman, Goldman aimed to improve the college search process by creating a series of accurate, honest and 100% student-written guidebooks.  Goldman’s Students’ Guide to Colleges went on to be published by Penguin Books in 2005 and was featured in Forbes, US News and Time Magazine. In starting Unigo, Jordan took the idea of student-created content online, sharing it with the world, free of charge.

Mashable’s Take:

It wasn’t too long ago that I gave a college review site a critique of its own. Yollege was the name. It’s still around. It was also featured in this Startup Review series. Still, as is generally the case, there is always room for new options. Particularly good ones. Which Unigo happens to be.

At the moment, the site happens to be performing unusually slowly, so you’ll have to excuse the load times you’ll encounter. But if things are better by the time you read this, you’ll probably enjoy what Unigo offers. The reason being that both in design and in features, it proves itself able to deliver on things today’s Web users would find themselves interested in. Reviews are essential, after all. Networking is also nearly as important. And the ability to browse and share media in the form of photos, videos and documents brings it full-circle.

Granted, its youth is noticeable. Facebook, this is not. It will be long before it attains any great measure of fame. But the foundation is there to assist its users in making the most of such a service. It counts hundreds of colleges and universities to its database. It catalogues some reading material for anyone interested. And the components which add a social dimension to the website are, again, really very useful, especially given the chance to share content. If you’re a student, an alumnus, or prospective registrant, media can really make or break a startup of this sort. A run of the mill review site isn’t particularly appealing, and there are more trafficked places on the Web to serve such information. The community is where Unigo is able to excel. “Able,” of course, being the key word.

If you’re seeking a place that presents college material that looks to be as thorough in its coverage of institutions everywhere as it is in its attention to user-submitted visuals, Unigo is quite appealing. Be sure to let us know your experience with it. When all’s said and done, its members make it what it is.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials

Company Name

Fidj.it

20-Word description

Fidj.it is a free service that lets you share posts, links and more with your friends, family and co-workers.

CEO’s Pitch

It’s a micro-blogging site where users can share posts of an unlimited length, links to websites and files. Users have a 200MB sandbox which is accessible by both users and applications.

So far, so Pownce. However, where we really differ is that we will be offering SMS updates and support for uploading files from your mobile. We are also building an advanced API that will allow applications developed on it to be run from inside Fidj.it (similar to Facebook) as well as outside.

Mashable’s Take

Fidj.it is a micro-blogging service that’s like a Twitter and Pownce mashup. There isn’t a 140-character limit as members can post messages of unlimited length. Also, you can share links and files that you upload ala Pownce style. The size limit for files is 50 MB. The limit for maximum number of people that you can follow is a meager 1,000 at this time as they continue to develop their new service and plan to increase that limit as soon as they can.

Behind the scenes, Fidj.it has some rather ambitious plans for the near future. They plan to differentiate themselves from Pownce and others by providing SMS access and file uploading from mobile devices. They are also working on providing a rich API for developers who want to build applications that can actually work from within Fidjit much like applications work within Facebook. By default, every member gets a 200 MB sandbox to store files and applications which could make this a very useful service for the mobile crowd, especially iPhone users.

I was disappointed to see that the links you share on Fidj.it are not handled the same way they are on some other services such as Plurk or Rejaw. For example, when you share a link to a YouTube video on those micro-blogging platforms the actual video is displayed within the message itself so members can view it there and don’t have to go to YouTube to watch it. Plurk does the same thing with links to photos from sites such as from Flickr (Rejaw doesn’t). On Fidj.it when you share similar items they are displayed as a link.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if Fidjit can actually establish a new platform for storing files and hosting micro-blogging apps for mobile users.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

Source:Mashable!

Today marks the launch of a new aggregator and collaboration tool for college students - Wiggio. Wiggio is designed to take the scattered aspects of a student’s life and pull it all into one place. It does many of the same things that existing Web 2.0 tools can already do, but it claims to be easier to use, with a shorter learning curve.

Wiggio takes things like listservs, text messages, voice mail, conference calls, online document sharing, calendars of events and meetings, group chats, polling and more, and aggregates it all into one place. The most practical use for this I see is in group projects. No matter what you study in college, everyone eventually has to do some kind of group project. These are usually torture as everyone in the group has different majors, class loads, jobs, schedules, interest levels in the subject, and other obstacles to a successful project.

If Wiggio does what it says, this eliminates the need to have everyone physically present and allows for better group collaboration remotely, freeing everyone to keep their usual schedule intact. That feature is in itself something that makes giving Wiggio a shot worth your time. I would be interested to hear from students farther into the semester who successfully complete a group project using Wiggio to see if it truly works as advertised over time.

Wiggio is not the first social media application to try and tap into the education market. There are Facebook applications geared towards students that come and go with varying degrees of success. Google Apps has a whole education edition that has seen adoption by several colleges, including The University of North Carolina Greensboro, Clemson University, University of Texas San Antonio, Kennesaw State University and Arkansas State University, to name a few.

Sites like HotChalk offer a way for students, parents and teachers to interact and all be involved in the education process, similar to a site called WizIQ. ScLiPo offers webcam-based online tutoring. Yahoo! Teachers offers a place for teachers to interact and compare notes on what works best for their students. CampusBug offers a place for students to have a more comprehensive experience online, from writing papers online to getting help and doing research, a kind of Facebook for education with a terrible interface.

Probably the closest in concept to Wiggio out of the myriad of tools for education online is CampusBug, but Wiggio seems to offer a more useful service. Wiggio definitely has a better user interface than CampusBug, that’s for sure. Facebook also comes close but requires installation of several applications, which many are leery of since several apps were discovered to be invading user privacy.

If Wiggio works like it should, it could be very helpful to the busy college students of today. It may not be the first time someone has tried the concept, but if it is easier to learn and use, it will win.

CaptainU, the online recruiting network dedicated to soccer players and athletes, is officially launching this week with a few notable new features, most of which provide more attention to end users as a way to further differentiate itself from other online recruiting tools like Takkle and BeRecruited.

For starters, a new piece of software from CaptainU provides online guidance to help players with a useful checklist/schedule for the recruiting process, with tips for things like finding the right school and getting a coach to see you play.

Another way CaptainU is hoping to make its players feel special is a new one-on-one counseling option, where users can have sessions with former NCAA coaches. As I learned from my initial review of CaptainU, NCAA standards are rather important to the site’s CEO Avi Stopper, who is also a former NCAA coach. The entire recruiting platform is NCAA-compliant, offering all users a standardized platform they can be comfortable using.

One feature that private beta users requested was a dynamic player profile option, which enables athletes to more easily link between their CaptainU profile and other sites, such as a team site, as well as to easily provide a useful “front page” to send to coaches, as an athlete can upload their image and video content to their CaptainU profile.

With an online platform for something as life-altering as recruiting, it’s necessary for CaptainU to find ways in which it can provide more individually-oriented features that will help each user feel more special while offering additional value towards the overall CaptainU experience. This will hopefully be scalable and valuable features that help CaptainU stand apart from the crowd, as CaptainU has also informed me of its plans to expand its recruiting platform beyond soccer to all sports.

I asked CaptainU how it plans to scale its counseling feature with the upcoming expansion. The site’s Director of Business Development Michael Farb said “the one-on-one counseling will scale because we already have a network of ex-NCAA coaches in place across all sports that are recruiting experts and are ready to set up time with athletes.” As CaptainU hopes to become more competitive with the other established online recruiting sites, such differentiating features are important.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:CaptainU Gets Soccer Players RecruitedPrepChamps Raises $1.2M to Recruit High School JocksiPhone Arrives in the UK and Germany TodaySpock Serving 400 Pageviews Per Second at LaunchBlyk Still Not Ready to Launch Free Mobile ServiceStreakr Exchanging Clothes for Beta TestersMore Details on Gphone Emerge

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Medical Association, using a program like SugarStats will reduce the complications associated with diabetes by as much as 40%.

Volcano, Hawaii - Marston Alfred, founder and chief architect of SugarStats.com, himself a diabetic since he was 9 years old, has developed a web based self-management application in which users can track, manage and monitor the most essential and important of their diabetic information online. Through a user-friendly web interface using the latest in web and information technology, SugarStats.com also enables the Diabetic to selectively provide friends, family, educators and health care professionals ‘read only’ access to their statistics. Primary elements affecting blood sugar levels including medication, food intake and physical activity are addressed in a manner that is not overly complex or too feature rich, enabling the end user to expediently self-manage via the Internet and Internet-enabled mobile devices. The core of this system will be available free to the public.

20.8 million people, approximately 7.0% of the U.S. population, have diabetes. Diabetes was the sixth leading cause of death listed on U.S. death certificates in 2002. The prevalence of diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate, as are the associated personal and societal costs, including long-term complications such as blindness, kidney damage, cardiovascular disease and lower-limb amputations. Further studies show diabetes and its complications cause substantial loss in quality of life, are the fourth most frequent reason for ambulatory physician visits, and incur $132 billion dollars in U.S. health care expenditures, directly and indirectly annually. There is now abundant evidence that complications of diabetes are preventable.

According to Dr. IM Stratton, Al Adler, HA Neil, et al, management of glycemia in diabetes is crucially important to the prevention of both acute and long-term complications. In general, every percentage point drop in A1C blood test results (e.g., from 8.0% to 7.0%) reduces the risk of micro-vascular complications (eye, kidney, and nerve diseases) by 40%. When programs like SugarStats were used regularly by the diabetic, they showed an average of a 1 point drop in the A1C levels.

Web-based tools have been emerging as effective methods for lowering HbA1C levels and several other key health markers in diabetics such as blood pressure however, to date, none have been available to the public. SugarStats.com provides a proven means to substantially lower these important health markers while also supporting the important opportunity to shift the focus of diabetes management toward patient self-management.

Alfred was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes as a child. He always felt dissatisfied and uninspired with the various ways to monitor and track his blood sugar levels and trends, finding them either over complicated and involved, or pedantic and & ‘boring’. Now 24 years old, Alfred’s professional expertise in the field of computers, networking and Internet technology/programming provided the foundation from which he developed for himself an engaging, informative, time saving and means to effectively address his diabetic management needs. From his personal quest, SugarStats.com has now emerged to support Internet-accessible diabetics the world over an alternative means to effectively address, control and ultimately improve their health.

Alternate Contact: Daerick Lanakila at dlanakila [@] sugarstats.com SugarStats POB 909 Volcano, HI 96785

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Need a screenshot of what a diabetic would see on their personal SugarStats page along with more info regarding SugarStats is available at http://www.sugarstats.com/tour

CONTACT: Marston Alfred at 619-573-4071
SugarStats
PO Box 909
Volcano, HI 96785
http://www.sugarstats.com

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University of Sydney Union has partnered with studentface.com.au, Australia’s largest online student community, to launch a new service for undergraduate students and high school leavers.

Australia’s skills shortage has created record demand for graduates; however, high school students find it hard to enter university because they don’t know any university students who can encourage them to enter tertiary education.

“This partnership is significant because it helps high school leavers log onto studentface.com.au, locate University students who are studying their desired degree, ask them questions and then enter university with greater confidence about what they are studying”, explained Jahangir Shagaev from studentface.com.au.

Studentface is Australia’s largest online community for students with representation at over 25 Australian universities where students form study groups, share photos, videos, make fri