Penn State has a new "source" of information on the Web, as Boris Minkovich and Matt Bartow officially unveil their new student-friendly Web site, www.psusource.com.

"We really felt that the university needed a cohesive community where we could do things like ride boards, book exchanges and forums," Minkovich (junior-psychology) said. "The university is large, but there's no place for students to go [on the Web]."

Finding the university's official Web site, www.psu.edu, lacking in information and usability, Minkovich and Bartow (junior-information sciences and technology) first conceived of PSU Source as an alternative in February, building most of the site over spring break.

The new Web site features "useful links" for students, a calendar, current sports scores and continuously updated blog-style content.

"They can have a laugh; they can get some useful tips," Bartow said.

PSU Source joins the popular psu.dailyjolt.com as an alternate Web site for the university.

Established in 1999, the Penn State Daily Jolt features content similar to PSU Source's, but is run with the assistance of the national Daily Jolt organization, which services 95 other campuses.

Minkovich said that his site has already seen plenty of visitors, stacking nearly 800 page views during the day that it opened to viewers-- March 22.

Since then, the total amount of views has reached 4,300.

Minkovich said once he and Bartow are "done with all the bugs," they plan to update the site every day and may periodically feature a guest author.

"We're willing to take this wherever the students want to take it," he said. "We see it as sort of a student blog."

Alex Mathews (sophomore-computer science) said he'd welcome a user-friendly alternative to the "convoluted" official site and wouldn't be fazed by its nonaffiliation with the university.

"I'd prefer that students made it," he said. "At least then I'd know that someone who knew what they were doing was doing it."

Jeff Gesner (junior-aerospace engineering) disagreed, saying a student-run site would probably just add more clutter to his list of "Favorites."

"It's more of a pain in the ass to check two pages," he said. "I don't see why the regular page doesn't have that [content]."