EPIC GuideOnline Services
There are many websites, apps, and tools that can make your life easier; here is a selection.
Swiss Post
If you register an account on the Swiss Post website, you can confirm your address by receiving a letter with a code you will input online. After that, you will be notified of all parcels and letters with signature as they are sent to you, with tracking and services such as delaying reception.
The PostCard Creator lets you send one postcard for free every day. There’s a small advertisement at the back. You can even send the postcard to yourself as a free way to print photos.
News
If you want to keep up with what’s going in Switzerland, swissinfo provides news in ten languages including English so that you don’t have to wait to be fluent in one of the Swiss languages to learn what’s going on.
Maps and weather
If you want to enjoy the outdoors like a large part of the Swiss population does, SwissTopo is a free app provided by the Swiss government with high quality maps of even the most remote places in Switzerland.
Combined with the highly accurate forecasts provided SwissMeteo, you’re ready to get out there and enjoy Switzerland!
Communication
Join the EPFL IC PhDs Slack to ask any question, organize events, keep up to date with EPIC, and so on if you haven’t already!
There is also an official EPFL IC Slack which is more work-focused, you can use it to create a project channel to collaborate on a semester project.
Signing in with your EPFL account via SSO on Zoom gives you access to the paid features.
Writing
To write papers, your thesis, or even your personal documents, there are plenty of useful tools. Software such as Matlab, Mathematica, Adobe Create Cloud, and so on can be obtained at EPFL from Distrilog. Check with your lab in general, as EPFL has licenses for some online services and your lab may also have licenses for others.
Using Git with GitHub is good for version control; EPFL also has a hosted GitLab instance.
To design pictures, you can use PowerPoint, Inkscape, Adobe Illustrator, geogebra, tikz…
To write, beyond MS Word there is LaTeX which comes in many distributions, including Overleaf which is convenient to work with multiple authors.
To manage your bibliography, Zotero is a good solution.
To manage your notes, you could use notion or obsidian.
Politics
If you want to get stuck into the details of Swiss politics, VoteInfo is a fascinating app that informs Swiss voters about the texts of upcoming referendums. It’s a great way to discover what interesting societal questions Switzerland is currently debating about.