With spring semester registration well underway, many are dreading the arduous task of picking, arranging and coordinating their class schedules. Many sleepless nights will be spent by Binghamton University students fearing class lockouts, surprise restrictions or — worst of all — a schedule filled with 8:30s.

Luckily, a crop of new Web sites have emerged in recent years to help students through this painful process. Currently, there are three sites available for use by BU students.

The oldest, MyBing.com, was created by transfer student Uri Foox and became available to students in January of 2004.

“I was a transfer student who was horrified at the prospect of having to schedule through BUSI and built an easier interface that I used to sketch out how to best schedule my classes,” Foox said.

Foox took the original BUSI format and built on it, creating a program that allowed users to save schedules, move classes around more easily and create a printer friendly version of schedules.

Foox has increased the capability of the Web site, adding additional features such as comments on classes and professors directly in the class descriptions and adding a DARS analyzer that turns existing DARS reports into a more user-friendly format. MyBing now boasts 4,310 “live” users, with 473 new users added just in November.

The site is continually being updated, and new features are constantly being added, he said.

“One of the features that is almost ready to launch is a class waiting-list system where you can sign up for a class that is full and get a text message or e-mail when a spot opens up,” Foox said.

In March of 2005, BUSIPlus.jemts.com was created by two current BU seniors.

Computer science major Matthew Manela and computer science and engineering major Saugata Ghose created the site after seeing what Foox had done with the MyBing site.

“Our model site was MyBing. They just used an interface like BUSI,” Manela and Ghose said. “We felt that the way BUSI displays classes was cumbersome, and so we sat down and completely reconfigured how it looks.”

On BUSIPlus, students are able to save multiple schedules per semester and view all possible schedule combinations for their classes. According to the pair, the site has been very successful thus far.

“Out of the 1,600 users we currently have, only three have asked to be removed,” they said. “On top of that, a lot of advisers and administrators are giving us praise and are very keen on showing the program to students across campus.”

Manela and Ghose are currently working on a BUSIPlus version 2.0 that they expect to have out in the next few months.

The newest site to reach campus is Schedulizer.com. Created for use at Cornell during the fall 2004 semester, the site now has over 14,000 users registered at eight campuses.

The site allows students to enter their classes and then automatically generates every possible schedule combination and orders them according to user preference.

Regardless of differing features, the creators have all been students themselves and understand the stress associated with registration.

“From freshman trying to figure out what to take to seniors trying to finish their degree, it is a hassle to sit there with a pen and paper and draw out variations of your schedule,” Foox said. “I realized it made my life easier, and therefore I could only assume that this would make others’ easier as well.”