MSDN Student Flash

theSpoke.net sucks. it is the most disorganized, not-up-to-date site there is. the interface sucks, navigation sucks, content sucks. i hope they revamp it because as of now, students don't have a solid student resource for .net

Good (and straightforward :)) feedback! We are working hard to update theSpoke with new features, more content, and a better user experience. In the meantime though, what types of things would you want on a student .NET site? What could we put together that would make the site unique enough for students to stand out from MSDN and other developer sites?
Keep the feedback coming...

Kevin

Haha. Here goes...

1) a clear location for a gigantic library of tutorials (webcasts or webtutorials). most of the tutorials should be focused on beginner concepts since there are many comp sci majors that are not hobbyists.

2) the message boards are too specific at the moment. there are some catagories with 0-3 posts! i say group them into a SMALL set of catagories and then expand on them as they get too big. http://www.asp.net/Forums/default.aspx?tabindex=1&tabid=39 is an example of this. They split into larger catagories as threads get bigger rather than splitting in the beginning. it's always nice to see stats like when something was last posted, by who...etc. keeping track of "top posters" keeps forums active as well because of our natural competitive nature.

3)collective student blog improvements- weblogs.asp.net is such an example. it allows you to use an rss aggregator. it allows you to read the latests posts without clicking...weblogs.asp.net has me clicking refresh every 15 minutes! there are so many people posting that there's always news! BETTER YET...let us have our own blogs anywhere we want to host it and have some collective aggregator site get our entries from our RSS feeds!

4) since we're students, we're looking for jobs and internships. maybe there can be a section of the site dedicated to helping students find internships and stuff.

its late. maybe i should go to bed. last thing. maybe its just the user interface that sucks. maybe there is a vast amount of resources available to me on theSpoke but i just can't find it without trying more than i'd want to.

cool - i'll pass that along to theSpoke team.