Argument to Beethoven’s 5th

in Comedy, Music | August 20th, 2009

A lit­tle piece of clas­sic Amer­i­cana TV. We take you back to the 1950s and Sid Cae­sar’s com­ic work. It’s hard to imag­ine some­one work­ing Beethoven’s 5th into com­ic mate­r­i­al, but Cae­sar did it. In the mean­time, if you want some­thing a lit­tle more seri­ous, I give you this rare footage of Her­bert von Kara­jan con­duct­ing the same sym­pho­ny in 1966. An old gem. Last­ly, get lots of free clas­si­cal music from our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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Freud in One Yale Hour

in Psychology, Yale | August 20th, 2009

Freudi­an­ism may no longer be in vogue. But, even so, Sig­mund Freud remains one of the most enve­lope-push­ing thinkers of the past cen­tu­ry, some­one still worth get­ting to know. In this lec­ture, Yale psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Paul Bloom offers a primer on Freud and Freudi­an thought. The lec­ture is part of a larg­er free course (20 lec­tures in total) called “Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy.” You can access the course via the Yale Open Course web site, YouTube and iTune­sU.

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How to Get an Author to Sign Your Kindle

in Amazon Kindle | August 20th, 2009

Ok, so we’re back to giv­ing the Kin­dle a hard time. Thanks Scott for the tip!

via the Rumpus.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the Hugest Kin­dle Ever

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The Future of Content Delivery

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Books, Podcasts | August 18th, 2009

sigler2This pod­cast (get it here) presents the thoughts of Scott Sigler–media maven, NY Times Best­selling Author of INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS (both avail­able free as pod­casts), podi­o­book dynamo, and social net­work­ing mastermind–on none oth­er than “how will peo­ple read books in the near future?”

In this repod­cast of his keynote speech at this year’s Balti­con con­fer­ence, Scott talks about how he built a HUGE online fan base for his fic­tion, land­ed a major pub­lish­ing deal with Crown Books, reached NY Times best­seller sta­tus, and why he insists that giv­ing his fic­tion away for free is the best mar­ket­ing around.

He presents his thoughts on Big Pub­lish­ing, small pub­lish­ing, smart-phones vs. the Kin­dle, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, lays out the meth­ods by which he pre-sold 1,500 copies of his new, self-pub­lished nov­el THE ROOKIE this April via his own web­site, scottsigler.com. That’s right: For­get print-on-demand and its high­er cost-per-book. Scott breaks down how he pre-sold enough books to pay for an entire print run before THE ROOKIE ever went to press! It’s a mod­el so far ahead of every­one else that we’ve got to take notes!

If you’re a writer or aspir­ing author, you need to lis­ten to this. And don’t let the intro scare you off.

To down­load this file and lis­ten to it on your own time, on your iPod or sim­i­lar device, sim­ple right click this link: DOWNLOAD and choose “Save Link as…” on a Mac, or “Save File” on a PC.

Or lis­ten to it right here:

Seth Har­wood, the author of JACK WAKES UP, will be teach­ing an online course (The Grip­ping Read) with Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. And he’ll also be teach­ing an Author Boot­camp with Scott Sigler on Stan­ford’s cam­pus on Novem­ber 7 and 14. Each course only has a few slots still open.

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Reading Free Books on the Kindle

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Literature | August 17th, 2009

Even though we some­times give Ama­zon’s Kin­dle a hard time, the device is undoubt­ed­ly handy for read­ing e‑books. The Kin­dle lets you seam­less­ly down­load books straight from Ama­zon in a mat­ter of sec­onds. And, even bet­ter, you can load the Kin­dle with thou­sands of free e‑books from sources such as Project Guten­berg. (Few peo­ple know this.) This guide will show you how to down­load a free book from Project Guten­berg, and then read it on your Kin­dle. You can also find many free ebooks for the Kin­dle in our Free eBook col­lec­tion.

Step 1:

Go to http://www.gutenberg.org and search for a book you would like to read.

picture-4
Step 2:

Once you’ve found a book that you want to down­load, down­load it in MOBI for­mat if pos­si­ble. If no MOBI for­mat exists, then using plain text works as well.
downloadbook1
Step 3:
After your down­load is com­plete, plug in your Kin­dle to your com­put­er’s USB port. The Kin­dle will show up as a USB Dri­ve.
picture-6
Step 4:
Go to the Doc­u­ments direc­to­ry on your Kin­dle.
picture-7
Step 5:

Copy the e‑book file to the Doc­u­ments fold­er. You can option­al­ly rename the file to some­thing more mean­ing­ful if you’d like.
Step 6:

The sil­ver cur­sor on your Kin­dle will begin to spin. When it stops, the Kin­dle is fin­ished sync­ing. Now you can eject and unplug your Kin­dle and enjoy your free ebook!
Fred Hsu designed the handy Open Cul­ture app. Give it a spin. It’s free and it’s good for you.

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Woodstock Revisited in Three Minutes

in Music | August 17th, 2009

It was 40 years ago today — August 15 to August 18, 1969.

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Making the Web Work for Science

in Science | August 16th, 2009

httpv://vimeo.com/6087817

How can the web advance the progress of sci­ence? It’s a big ques­tion, obvi­ous­ly. And some smart folks have some­thing to say about it. Here we have Tim O’Reil­ly (founder of O’Reil­ly Media, one of the lead­ing tech pub­lish­ers), Jim­my Wales (Wikipedia Founder), Stephen Friend (founder of Roset­ta Inphar­mat­ics and for­mer EVP at Mer­ck Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries) and John Will­banks (VP and head of the Sci­ence Com­mons project at Cre­ative Com­mons) offer­ing their thoughts. The con­ver­sa­tion was held on July 28th at the The Com­mon­wealth Club of Cal­i­for­nia.

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Rod Blagojevich Sings Elvis with Fabio

in Music | August 14th, 2009

One month you’re the gov­er­nor of Illi­nois; the next you’re indict­ed and kicked out of office for try­ing to sell Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s Sen­ate seat; and sev­er­al months lat­er, you wind up imi­tat­ing Elvis at block par­ties. Oh how the mighty have fall­en. The mon­ey moment comes 50 sec­onds in. Have a good week­end. Back to seri­ous stuff next week.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.