shelby7vdy: Free Making Money

Earlier today the students of Citrus College in Glendora, California published an open letter ("Governor Elect Jerry Brown: We need your help") concerning the institution's financial health. And if the letter's economic illiteracy and intellectual bankruptcy are indicative of California in general, I recommend flushing twice and starting over.

Dear Gov.-Elect Jerry Brown,

...as the generation who is currently feeling the brunt of the state's financial hardships, we are asking for your help because we do care and changes need to be made.

-- Education is our priority. Please invest in it.

...College enrollment has gone down inpart because students cannot afford tuition costs, putting more weight on our already-impacted local community colleges.

The UC and Cal State systems have continuously imposed tuition increases while still making class cute , in reality, making students pay more for less... We as students are not only handling with the pressures of succeeding in our studies, but also dealing with the stress of getting, seemingly unattainable, classes and trying to afford tuition...

Could someone interpret those last few sentences for me?

In order to pay for the ever-rising tuition, we also need to find work.

We need you to create jobs and offer tax incentives to keep jobs in California.

In short: we, the students of Citrus College, demand that you raise taxes to help increase the quality of education while simultaneously lowering taxes to keep jobs in California so we can find jobs.

According to the Los Angeles Times, California is ranked as having the third highest unemployment rate...

Next cuts and tax increases must be made in appropriate areas to bring back balance to this state's finances.

I'm sooo confused, students! Tax incentives, mentioned in the prior paragraph, are the opposite of tax increases.

One thing is certain, California needs to keep a closer eye on who is receiving public services like welfare and WIC...

The government should be run just like any other business and reduce the wasteful spending that they so often spend on overtime and unrealistic government pensions.

There should also be an increase in taxes... Alcohol and cigarettes should be more heavily taxed as well as the uncommonly thought of, junk food... For example, reconsider the soda tax.

Say, I wonder if heavy taxation of "junk food", "soda" and sundry other taxes will hurt entry-level jobs like those in grocery and convenience stores, mom-and-pop retailers and the like?

This is your second time as California's governor and our votes have shown we trust in your experience.

Please, do not let us down.

Sincerely, the students of the Citrus College Clarion.

Jerry Brown's first two terms as governor led to many of the problems you're facing now, kids. In fact, during the campaign, he was forced to admit to a series of screwups and Statist social engineering policies that helped bankrupt the state.

What color is the sky on your planet, Citrus College students?

Sorry, children, but you're about to find out for yourselves just how screwed up the the modern Democrat Party is. There are no unicorns, there are no free lunches, and your new governor is just like the old Jerry Brown: dumber than ever and owned lock, stock and barrel by the public sector unions.

Welcome to the Tea Party.

About a third of the top grossing apps in the Apple App Store are now making their money through the sale of virtual goods within the application after being free to download, according to research done by tech blog GigaOm.

The free-to-play model has so far served as a good way to entice users with free apps and then make money off the sale of virtual goods. Apple finally caved to developers and created a system to allow iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users to make purchases from within apps last fall. The design allows developers to create a free app and then get the user to purchase a very cheap virtual good, such as a better weapon in a game. It then becomes much easier to convert a non-paying user into a paying one.

Freemium applications are making a good bit of money. In January, mobile analytics firm Flurry said that the freemium games it tracked generated revenues of $9 per user per year, on average. In June, that number had risen to $14.66 per user per year. Previously, these games were generating around 99 cents to $1.99 per user per year. 34 of the top 100 apps are free, but make their money through in-app purchases of mostly virtual currencies as well as other premium features, according to GigaOm’s report.

Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all purchases made within applications. That’s the same amount that Facebook, another large host of social games (including Zynga’s Farmville), charges its game partners.

Apple’s App Store now has around 300,000 apps for sale and for free download. And the App Store is growing by around 1,000 apps every day. The Android marketplace, which has applications for phones running on Google’s Android operating system, only has around 113,000 applications according to some metrics.

Score another one for social games developer Zynga, which first brought the freemium model to the forefront as a significant source of revenue for games and other applications. Its games have become insanely popular, and the company is now worth as much as Electronic Arts — one of the largest publishers in the world — by some metrics from its virtual good sales alone.

Next Story: Microsoft and Cisco throw down the gauntlet for living room teleconferencing Previous Story: Nintendo: the gaming landscape has changed forever, but console’s are doing just fine

eric seiger do

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

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