Elizabeth Gilbert on Creative Genius

in Creativity, TED Talks | February 9th, 2009

Eliz­a­beth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, talked at last week’s TED Con­fer­ence about writ­ers, their “genius,” and the expec­ta­tions that we place on it. I know that Gilbert — or at least her last book — has a lot of fans. And that’s why I’m post­ing this here. Per­son­al­ly, I’m not so much a fan. She just does­n’t do it for me. But that’s just me … and so hope­ful­ly this work for you.

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Bill Gates on Changing the World

in Current Affairs | February 9th, 2009

The 2009 TED con­fer­ence, which fea­tured a long list of well-known speak­ers, wrapped up on Fri­day. And now you can watch two of the key pre­sen­ta­tions online. First, and fea­tured above, you’ll get Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and now major phil­an­thropist, talk­ing about how to change the world through edu­ca­tion and dis­ease pre­ven­tion. It’s a good 20 min­utes, and it will par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est any edu­ca­tors who read this blog. Next, Bill Gross, founder of Ide­al­ab, gives you 20 min­utes on the ground­break­ing work being done in solar ener­gy.

We’ve added the Gates talk to our list of YouTube Favorites. Also, you’ll find videos from TED on our list: YouTube Edu­ca­tion: 80 Intel­li­gent Video Col­lec­tions.

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Lincoln on Flickr

in History | February 8th, 2009

The Library of Con­gress has added a series of images to Flickr that will “let you see how Lin­coln looked over 20 years—from the ear­li­est known pho­to­graph­ic like­ness in 1846, through the U.S. pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of 1860, and the pres­sures of the Civ­il War years. Views from Lincoln’s funer­al in 1865 and por­traits of his imme­di­ate fam­i­ly are also includ­ed.”

via The Library of Con­gress Blog

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Extra Goodies on Twitter

in Uncategorized | February 7th, 2009

As I gath­er mate­r­i­al for the blog, I often come across con­tent that’s inter­est­ing, but not quite right for the blog. It seemed like Twit­ter might be a good place to add this bonus mate­r­i­al. So from here on out, I’ll casu­al­ly add some extra con­tent there. Today, I just men­tioned how you can get 50% off of some clas­sic Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture. Check out our Twit­ter feed here.

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John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Buddy Holly

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 6th, 2009

This week marks the 50th anniver­sary of “the day the music died.” That’s Don McLean’s way of talk­ing about the 1959 air­plane crash that cut short the bud­ding lives and careers of Bud­dy Hol­ly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bop­per” Richard­son. In ’59, Bud­dy Hol­ly’s musi­cal career was just get­ting start­ed, but his influ­ence was already being felt far and wide. Case in point, The Bea­t­les, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys all cov­ered Hol­ly songs dur­ing their ear­ly careers. Here you can watch the Stones sing Not Fade Away in 1964. And, above, you can watch rare footage of John Lennon mov­ing from a Lead Bel­ly tune (“Rock Island Line”) to a lit­tle Bud­dy Hol­ly med­ley that includes “Maybe Baby” and “Peg­gy Sue.” (The Bea­t­les’ take on “Words of Love” can be lis­tened to here as well.) Enjoy.

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Amazon: New Kindle and Free E‑Books

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | February 6th, 2009

Google announced yes­ter­day that it’s mak­ing a large num­ber of books avail­able via web-enabled mobile phones. Now, Ama­zon has said that it will unveil a new ver­sion of the Kin­dle next week and also make Kin­dle titles avail­able on a vari­ety of mobile phones. You can get more info here.

UPDATE: We have cre­at­ed a large col­lec­tion of Free eBooks, which includes ebooks pro­vid­ed by Google. Please vis­it this page to access free ebooks on your com­put­er, smart phone (includ­ing iphone), or kin­dle.

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Steve Jobs Demos the First Macintosh in 1984

in Apple | February 5th, 2009

We orig­i­nal­ly post­ed this video back in 2009, and it seems like the right time to bring it back. It cap­tures the first of many times that Steve Jobs thrilled audi­ences with the promise of what tech­nol­o­gy could deliv­er. The video takes you back to Jan­u­ary 1984, when Jobs demoed the first Mac­in­tosh. A young Jobs, sport­ing a bow tie and a fuller head of hair, could bare­ly hold back his smile and some tears, and the crowd sim­ply could­n’t con­tain its enthu­si­asm, giv­ing Jobs a five-minute stand­ing ova­tion. That’s where the video ends, fad­ing hap­pi­ly and suit­ably to black. We’ll miss you Steve.

For anoth­er great Steve Jobs moment, don’t miss his inspir­ing Stan­ford 2005 grad­u­a­tion talk where he dis­cussed his approach to liv­ing and urged the young grad­u­ates to “Stay Hun­gry, Stay Fool­ish.” So far as com­mence­ment speech­es go, it’s hard to beat this one.

 

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Google Puts Free Books on Your Mobile Phone

in Books, e-books, Literature | February 5th, 2009

Wow. Point your mobile web brows­er to books.google.com/m and you can read full books on your portable device. Accord­ing to The Globe and Mail, Google is mak­ing 500,000 books, most from the pub­lic domain, freely avail­able to you. And if you live in the US, the num­ber will reach 1.5 mil­lion. The col­lec­tion includes works by Charles Dick­ens, Jane Austen, Shake­speare, Mil­ton and more. (You can also find many sim­i­lar texts in our col­lec­tion of free audio books.) I test­ed Google’s mobile books on the iPhone, and it looks real­ly good. Hope­ful­ly things will work well on your mobile device as well.

via Maud New­ton’s Twit­ter Feed

get Open Cul­ture’s Twit­ter Feed here.

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