(Via Robert Shedd, at PSU Startups) Dr. Robert Macy, professor of entrepreneurship in the Smeal College of Business, passed along information on a new course that he will be teaching this fall for the first time. The course will cover the business side of video games. Macy said, “There are classes across this and other campuses that cover art, programming and development; but I see a real gap from ...

IST students were sent an email recently announcing a new job posting system and the dismantling of ISTechTRAK. Despite the awkward name, ISTechTRAK worked fairly well and played an indirect role in landing each of my internships. It also had room for improvement, which I won't address here nor speculation on its replacement. My interest was piqued by the opaqueness of the message. The turnover of the system is ...

Umair Haque, a well noted new media 'thought leader,' wrote an interesting post a few days ago (which was going to be a speech) titled 'A Manifesto for the Next Industrial Revolution. Umair, a revolutionary at heart, calls for a 21st century revolution in the DNA of the way we do business. In an excerpt from his conclusion, it's clear Umair is passionate and has a few powerful things to ...

Ted Leonsis came to speak to a group of us in Washington, DC. He is an amazing storyteller, and has been successful from an early age, selling his company for a multi-million dollar deal at the age of 23, although he was raised in near-abject poverty. Ted is now the majority owner of the Washington Wizards, Capitals, Nationals, and Mystiqs, chairman of a few boards, and a big believer ...

(Note: This is a great piece for those interested in technology startups.) Haroon is the CEO of webs.com (formerly Freewebs) which also spun out the Social Gaming Network, SGN. He apparently has had the entrepreneurial spirit his whole life — lemonade stands and the like, and eventually went to the University of Maryland for his undergrad. While working with his brother doing web development, they asked the question: ‘How does this scale?’ It ...

BusinessWeek magazine published an intriguing article in the June 2, 2008 issue. Beyond Blogs updates outlooks and predictions they made back in 2005 about blogs, social media, and other bleeding-edge web technologies. Stephen Baker and Heather Green, two BusinessWeek writers, compare and contrast the tech trends from 2005 to 2008. Three years have radically changed the way the main stream media and companies view the power of ...

It's official. Startup Weekend is coming to State College if my beautifully intricate relatively simple URL hack is any indicator. See for yourself: http://statecollege.startupweekend.com Startup Weekend has not advertised State College as a "Future Weekend" yet, but the city vote results were hard to ignore.

A few days ago, I wrote a post that generated a bit of very insightful, relevant discussion to this ongoing push towards innovation, community, and entrpreneurship within IST and the greater Penn State area. I'd like to talk about what has been accomplished. 1. Several Penn State companies have launched within the past few years and are on their way to being successful. 2. In the last year, the formal entrepreneurial ...

There's an interesting discussion going on at Scout.com with insightful statements given by IST alumni. They talk about what an IST degree is worth, which is a mildly controversial topic among current students. I've heard playful phrases such as "You can't spell bullshit without IST" or "IST stands for I'm Self Taught." This forum thread takes this to the next level by offering real stories from our alumni. ...

Reports surfaced via Twitter that China has ordered "recreational" websites and services to be taken offline for three days of mourning the quake victims. It doesn't even stop there. Every Chinese channel will be running 24/7 Quake coverage, as well. Marc Chijs (co-founder Todou and CEO of China Spill Group), Frank Yu, Andrew Lih, and Robert Scoble have more inside information about this breaking story. While it ...