Dr. Santoro's IST 440W section this semester sounds very interesting as it's based on web development and entrepreneurship. I just read Rob Shedd's post about it on the PSU Startups blog. There have been 440W sections focused on entrepreneurship in past semesters, but the new approach that Dr. Santoro is taking will be to have the students plan and develop a Web 2.0 service. I see this as useful, ...

Registration for Startup Weekend at State College is now open! As you'll see below, there is a niche for everyone. Even to cook! These are the positions available to be filled: Sys admin Backend dev Architect Frontend dev PR User experience Designer Legal Business Development Project Manager Cook When: Friday, October 24, 2008 at 06:00 PM to Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 09:00 PM Where: 104 IST Building Price: $39.99 Startup Weekend is, as the name suggests, a weekend-long event for web application ...

Update: Heekya has been TechCrunched and featured on popular social application news blog Mashable. Congrats! We have 25 Heekya beta invites for our readers. They will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis, so, if you want to be one of the first to check out Heekya, email me at daehee@istbuilding.com. Also, Heekya has a demo video freshly released just today: Sample story #1: http://www.heekya.net/stories/read/20/ Sample story #2: http://www.heekya.net/stories/view/58/ Now, some words from ...

Another Penn State entrepreneur is gunning for the $10k prize on ideablob. David Adewumi's startup Heekya is presenting a revolutionary new platform for sharing content on the web. David calls it a "Wikipedia for Stories" on his ideablob entry, but it's much more than that. Think of it as a way to aggregate people's life experiences through all forms of media, while weaving similar entries together with the Heekya algorithm ...

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 ...

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 ...

Breaking News -- Matt Allison (Senior, Economics) is the winner of April's IdeaBlob competition, winning $10k to develop a portable touch screen device that syncs with a fitness-based social networking website. We're on a roll here. PSU's Mashavu team won back in February. Apparently, IdeaBlob is the easiest way to win $10k for your business idea. All it takes is a general description of your idea and you leave ...

(Update: Go here, to download Xobni Insight) It's not every day a Penn State co-founded start-up is mentioned by Bill Gates. Now, that same company, Xobni (zob-nee) founded by PSU '03 Electrical Engineering (and Schreyers) alumnus Matt Brezina, whose email capabilities Gates called "the future of social networking", is featured in one of the top publications in the United States -- the New York Times. Xobni is featured in today's ...

The Social Media Meets E-Ship, which was originally advertised as a BBQ, took place at the Indian Pavilion in downtown State College this evening. Our staff meteorologist, Daehee Park, had predicted a thunderstorm earlier this week and moved the BBQ indoors (it was actually quite nice outside throughout our entire dinner). Although the event was moved inside, the food was absolutely delicious, and the company ...