Smart Links

Over the past cou­ple weeks, our read­ers have sent some new links our way. Here’s some of the good stuff that they’ve had to offer:

• Ency­clopo­dia (Wikipedia on Your Ipod): If this works, it’s a great idea. Ency­clopo­dia is a free soft­ware project that brings Wikipedia to the Apple iPod. Ency­clopo­dia can be installed on iPod gen­er­a­tions 1 through 4, plus on iPod Min­is.

• Down­load Free Music Thanks to Peter Gabriel: You can can down­load songs free and legal­ly through a new ser­vice backed by Peter Gabriel. The new ven­ture, We7, pro­vides DRM-free music. And in exchange for it, lis­ten­ers agree to lis­ten to “per­son­al­ized mes­sages” (read ads) that are “graft­ed” onto the begin­ning of song tracks. Mean­while, anoth­er read­er sug­gests look­ing at Groove­shark, which is also offer­ing DRM-free music.

• Free Travelling/Touring Pod­casts: In our Mon­day piece that looked at 10 Unex­pect­ed Uses of the iPod, we men­tioned a prod­uct that let’s you take guid­ed tours of New York and Paris, and they hap­pen to run about $12. It turns out that you can get user-cre­at­ed city tours for free. Check out iToors, Podguides.net (where you can get user-gen­er­at­ed city guides), and also iaudioguide.com, which fea­tures audio guides for over 40 cities. Anoth­er one sug­gest­ed by a read­er is Tour­dio.

• Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts: As you may know, we keep a nice col­lec­tion of uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts, which include free lec­tures, cours­es, and speech­es by impor­tant thinkers. Here’s a cou­ple new ones that read­ers sent our way: one from the School of Visu­al Arts in NYC, and yet anoth­er from the Uni­ver­sité de Provence, where, if you speak French, you’ll find an eclec­tic col­lec­tion of pod­casts from the human­i­ties and sci­ences. And while we’re at it, you may want to check out a new pod­cast by The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion.

• More French Cul­ture Pod­casts: This is from John­nyB in Brook­lyn: “France Cul­ture (iTunes) has a vast col­lec­tion of pro­gram­ming avail­able for down­load, includ­ing dai­ly news updates and lots of cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming. One of my favorites is Repliques (iTunes), host­ed by Alain Finkelkraut. The tenet of the pro­gram is to invite two authors with either slight­ly or wide­ly diver­gent points of view on a sin­gle top­ic, and to let the dis­cus­sion roll. Some­times it’s won­der­ful, some­times vapid, and Finkelkraut often impress­es me as a one-note John­ny with his wail­ing about La Defaite de la Pensee, but I always find it bet­ter than lis­ten­ing to my neigh­bor’s hip-hop beats in the sub­way ride to work.”

• Lan­guage Learn­ing Pod­casts: Rox­anne sug­gests a cou­ple pod­casts that will teach you Kore­an: One is called Kim­chi­girls; the oth­er is called Core­an 4 Life, which despite the mis­spelling appears to be teach­ing Kore­an. Then Hank rec­om­mends Span­ish­Sense that will help you pick up some Span­ish, and Frank offers up a pod­cast for stu­dents learn­ing Khmer.

See Our Pod­cast Col­lec­tions — Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture   — Buy a New iPod & iPod Gear