Category: Personal Thoughts

Alright, this is my personal blog, believe it or not. I try not to get too in your face personal, but today I’m going to. I’m a Penn Stater. A 2007 graduate of a branch campus in Erie, Pennsylvania: The Behrend College. I am a Delta Chi fraternity brother, I bleed Blue and White.

When Joe Paterno lost his position at Penn State, after 61 years with the team, it was no doubt a shock. The man had been coaching at Penn State longer than I’d known what a university even was. When I was learning how to potty like a big boy, Joe Pa was taking Penn State to back-to-back undefeated regular seasons. Too many people used the cliched “evil triumphs when good men do nothing” tag-line in the weeks following the Penn State scandal. While I in no way wish to belittle what happened and what has come forth about Sandusky, but I have been livid since Joe Paterno was dismissed. Penn State asked him to step down from his position in 2004 amid poor performance, and Joe Paterno refused. To be ousted like this? Shameful.

Mike McQueary allegedly witnesses Jerry Sandusky in the locker room with a young man. McQueary tells Paterno. Paterno tells his supervisors. Paterno loses his spot with the team before McQueary. Even if Paterno had gone to the police with what he had been told, at that point, it’s hearsay, inadmissable in court. Paterno had so little to do with the overall case – if and when this whole thing goes to court, Paterno would likely not even be able to be called as a witness! Yet there he was, the man literally bronzed into Penn State’s community, tossed from his position as Head Coach in the middle of the night. With nothing left to fight for or live for, Coach Paterno died from complications due to lung cancer a matter of weeks later.

As a Penn Stater, it hurts. As a Penn Stater, I know a lot of oter Penn Staters. I have snipped just a few comments from friends’ social netorking pages, just to share with you how we feel. After all… We Are… Penn State.

“No one deserves a million dollars just to coach a football team” -Joe Paterno after turning down a coaching offer from the New England Patriots in 1972. Mourning the loss of JoePa has nothing to do with being a Penn State fan, its about celebrating the life of a man that didn’t have a selfish bone in his body. Rest in peace coach, the world has lost a true gentleman.
-Steve S.

Wore my white long sleeve “400 wins” T all day and a PSU ball cap (thanks to the rain)…. while at the grocery store, almost everyone I made eye contact with gave me this look that simply said “I’m sorry” – complete strangers… the cashier asked me some details on his death and shared his sorrow and anger over how his career and life had to end. Joe just brings people together: Penn Staters and Non-Penn Staters alike.
-Heather B.

Penn State Behrend’s flag was at half mass today in honor of Coach.
-Shantel M.

We are a student body. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many football games we won, or how many students we have. We could have the best program out there, but without the support and pride of our student body, we are no better than any other school. Joe Paterno knew this and strived to make all Penn State students know this, because without us, Penn State becomes just an average state school. I know I speak for Joe Paterno when I say “Fight on State, Fight on.”
RIP Joe Paterno
#PennStatePride
-Derek K.

“‘His life is Penn State through and through,’ Scott Paterno said, speaking of his father in the present tense. ‘He understood that and it never once occurred to him to be bitter toward Penn State.'”
-Adam W., quoting an article featuring Scott Paterno’s words.

Not perfect by any means…but who is? Hopefully his legacy will be remembered more for the good he did than for what he did not do. His debt is paid. May he R.I.P and his family be given the comfort, privacy and respect they need and deserve at this time…
-Eden R.

I don’t want to talk about it. And if you’re from Penn State, you already know what I mean.
-Me, minutes after official sources broke the news of Paterno’s passing.

So, the other day, I imported the WinBreak.com Better Know a Gamer archives. During this process I may have forgotten to disable my twitter updates which caused abut 30 articles to publish to my twitter and facebook streams in a matter of seconds. Sorry about that. But the good news is, you can read all about more gamers, and some of their best stories!

Better Know a Gamer is back, and you can Nominate a Gamer whenever you want, even yourself! There’s no shame in it, some come on and get famous!

From my old site, WinBreak, I had one very succesful run of content: Better Know a Gamer. You could nominate yourself or anyone you know, and easily be featured in an issue of Better Know a Gamer. Interviews, getting to know community members. After we were thirty-plus posts in, thats when the site started to slow down a bit. I will be importing all of the old BKAG articles and picking up where I left off, in the thirties – you’ll be able to select the BKAG category and go back through all of the old interviews, as well. Keep an eye out for it soon!

This site will soon have implimented the same “nominate a gamer” feature that WinBreak.com had, where you can enter an email address and have the questions automatically fired off to the recipient. So be sure to check back – sign yourself up and several of your friends!

 

 

You’re doing it wrong.  This has been an internet meme for a while, and applies directly to the problem with paid apps, in particular, those in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.  I’m hoping they don’t continue down this exact path when Windows 8 launches with its embedded app store.

 

The problem isn’t that the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has a larger ratio of “paid apps” to “free apps” than iTunes or the Android Market – the problems is what those apps are.  I don’t mind paying for apps, good apps in particular.  Use a pro version instead of a lite version, pay for the developer’s time.  Just imagine if they developed that app just for you, would you only feel compelled to give them a $1.99?  No!  It’s worth way more than that! You’re the one getting the bargain, so why not pay?  Particularly, when the app is “worth it.”

 

What makes an App “worth it” is subjective.  Very subjective.  But I can tell you one of the things that, I feel, is not worth it, which is what I’m seeing a lot of in Windows Phone 7.  RSS Feeds.  If I want news from one of my favorite websites, I can go to that website and read it all day long.  As we all know, the overwhelming majority of sites on the internet are not behind pay walls.  This is the reality for content producers, and they’ve been struggling with ways to make money ever since.  With the new ecosystem of Windows Phone 7, came the chance to lay down the corrective law and start turning a profit for the hard work developing apps. But the problem isn’t going to be solved by charging a dollar for your app, which has the same content as your website.

 

True, not every website is optimized for mobile browsing, and an app would be nice.  But let’s be frank, why would you spend a dollar to read something you have been and will continue to read for free?  There needs to be a proven value in your application, that goes above and beyond.  Exclusive articles are hard to sell, people get touchy and will leave your website because they think you’re holding out on them – even though they’re not paying a dime.  Still, perhaps the best solution might be offering some form of exclusive benefit, like industry interviews with people in your field, things that are going above and beyond that typical news articles.  If you can get those interviews.

 

I don’t have the perfect solution, but I do have good news.  From what I’ve seen, again, in particular on the WP7 Marketplace, it looks like a lot of the people trying to charge for what is little more than an RSS feed, are just people trying to make a buck off of others’ hard work.  The developer is usually not affiliated with the actual website at all, and just popped and RSS feed reading app together with the RSS feed of a popular website, and is trying to pass it off as an app.  I imagine many people are not getting suckered and I hope few are being sold, especially in cases like this.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see developers actually concentrate on making better decisions when they do decide to put their content on a mobile platform.  Ad-Supported apps don’t bother me a bit, but when I do pay for an app, I expect at least something out of it, more than just saving me the time of typing a URL – and the good news is, I think the people managing their own brands and websites know that.