Chris Anderson @ Google

in Audio Books, Books, Google | August 4th, 2009

Chris Ander­son, the author of Free: The Future of a Rad­i­cal Price (down­load a free audio file of the book here) is mak­ing the rounds, pro­mot­ing his new book. Of course, it was only nat­ur­al that Ander­son (also the author of The Long Tail and edi­tor-in-chief of Wired) should pay a vis­it to Google, a com­pa­ny that gen­er­ates bil­lions of dol­lars by serv­ing free con­tent and ser­vices. With the talk above, you get an intro­duc­tion to Ander­son­’s take on “free” and some good Q&A. The pre­sen­ta­tion runs about 53 min­utes in total.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

John Hodgman@Google

in Comedy, Google | May 31st, 2009

He appears in the well-known Mac v. PC com­mer­cials, on The Dai­ly Show and occa­sion­al­ly on This Amer­i­can Life. John Hodg­man is kind of every­where these days, and now, pro­mot­ing his new book, More Infor­ma­tion Than You Require, he hits the stage at Google and gives the crowd an off­beat hour talk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Slant on the Mac v Pc Ads

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How the E‑Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Google | April 27th, 2009

Accord­ing to Steven John­son’s piece in The Wall Street Jour­nal, the “break­through suc­cess of Ama­zon’s Kin­dle e‑book read­er, and the mat­u­ra­tion of the Google Book Search ser­vice”  could “make 2009 the most sig­nif­i­cant year in the evo­lu­tion of the book since Guten­berg ham­mered out his orig­i­nal Bible.” John­son goes on to explain why e‑book read­ers (like the Kin­dle) will stim­u­late book sales (nev­er a bad thing for a bat­tered indus­try), and why it will also trans­form the way we find, read, talk and write about books. Def­i­nite­ly worth a quick read. And if you have more thoughts on what the dig­i­tal book uni­verse will look like, add them to the com­ments below.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

A Closer Look at YouTube EDU

in Google, YouTube | March 31st, 2009

On Thurs­day, we announced the launch of YouTube EDU. Now, as promised, it’s time to give you some more details about the new uni­ver­si­ty video hub.

I had a chance to chat with Oba­di­ah Green­berg, a key Googler behind the launch. And he gave me some insight into the gen­e­sis of the project. As you can imag­ine, YouTube EDU was­n’t built overnight. It took about a year to move from con­cept to launch. The work was dri­ven along by a team of five, and they did it using Google’s famous 20% time pol­i­cy. That is, they each com­mit­ted essen­tial­ly one day per week to bring­ing this project to fruition.

What you’re see­ing now is essen­tial­ly ver­sion 1.0. Oba­di­ah expects YouTube EDU to evolve over time, espe­cial­ly as his team gath­ers data and feed­back that will inform future iter­a­tions. But, make no mis­take, this ini­tial prod­uct has accom­plished quite a bit. It cen­tral­izes the video col­lec­tions from over 100 universities/colleges. This amounts to over 20,000 indi­vid­ual videos and 200 com­plete cours­es. It also makes these col­lec­tions much eas­i­er for new users to dis­cov­er and sift through. Back in ear­ly 2007, before YouTube real­ly start­ed work­ing with uni­ver­si­ties, I kvetched in a pub­lic radio inter­view that GooTube could do more to orga­nize the world of intel­lec­tu­al video, and now I cer­tain­ly have a lot less to com­plain about (although I do still see some impor­tant tweaks that could be made here and there).

The uni­ver­si­ties par­tic­i­pat­ing in YouTube EDU have also had an upbeat response. Both Scott Stock­er (Direc­tor of Web Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Stan­ford) and Genevieve Haines (Direc­tor of Inte­grat­ed Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at UCLA) wel­comed the idea that many new vis­i­tors will encounter their video col­lec­tions. As Genevieve put it, it’s nev­er a bad thing when the world’s top video shar­ing site makes a big com­mit­ment to uni­ver­si­ty con­tent. This move opens up many long range pos­si­bil­i­ties for edu­ca­tors and stu­dents, she says. But, over the short term, it guar­an­tees that schools will learn more about how the wider pub­lic engages with their videos. By look­ing at traf­fic pat­terns and user com­ments left on YouTube, the uni­ver­si­ty teams will find out whether there’s a real mar­ket for seri­ous lec­tures and cours­es, or whether users pre­fer lighter fare, or some com­bi­na­tion of the two. With this knowl­edge in hand, media strate­gies will be revised.

For Ben Hub­bard, who man­ages the web­cast­ing ini­tia­tive at UC Berke­ley, YouTube EDU offers anoth­er perk. He told me: “There are a lot of uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er cen­ters for learn­ing engaged with their local com­mu­ni­ties on YouTube, but it has­n’t always been very easy to find them. YouTube EDU makes it much eas­i­er for us to locate our peer insti­tu­tions, con­nect around com­mon inter­ests, and per­haps even engage with one anoth­er in a more mean­ing­ful and pro­duc­tive way to cre­ate (or make more rich) a com­mu­ni­ty of best prac­tices.”

But per­haps the biggest plus is reserved for you and me.  The Google team antic­i­pates that the vis­i­bil­i­ty of this project will open the flood­gates, bring­ing many more uni­ver­si­ties to YouTube EDU in the com­ing months. This means that many more free lec­tures and cours­es will be com­ing online. A big plus for any read­er of this blog. We’ll mon­i­tor all of this, and keep you post­ed as things move along …

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Introducing YouTube EDU!

in Google, YouTube | March 26th, 2009

Here’s a lit­tle break­ing news: Today, Google has launched YouTube EDU, which cen­tral­izes the con­tent from over 100 uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges (get list here).  This robust col­lec­tion gives you access to lec­tures by pro­fes­sors and world-renowned thought lead­ers, new research and cam­pus tours. At the moment, you can access over 200 full cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing MIT, Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, UCLA, Yale and  IIT/IISc.  And it’s all search­able with­in YouTube EDU.

I plan to fol­low up with a more exten­sive piece soon. But I just want­ed to get the word out and let you start check­ing it out. If you have any first impres­sions, please let us know what you think in the com­ments. Nice work Youtube!

Last­ly, if you want to down­load hun­dreds of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es (most­ly in audio) to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er, check out our col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es here.

Fol­low us on Twit­ter at @openculture or sign up for our rss feed here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 13 ) |

Ancient Rome in 3D on Google Earth

in Google, History | March 17th, 2009

In Novem­ber, Google launched  a 3D tour of Ancient Rome, cir­ca 320 AD. The tour, pro­duced with the help of the Rome Reborn project at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, fea­tures over 6,000 build­ings, some ren­dered in fine detail, and it includes some inte­ri­ors as well. The Colos­se­um, the Roman Forum, the Basil­i­ca Julia, the Tem­ple of Ves­ta — they’re all there. The video above intro­duces you to the tour, and shows you how to access it on Google Earth. (The soft­ware can be down­loaded here). I should note that Google just held a com­pe­ti­tion that let edu­ca­tors devel­op his­to­ry lessons (aimed at high school stu­dents) using ele­ments of the 3D Tour. The win­ners and their lessons can be found here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Watch Educational Videos Offline with YouTube

in Google, YouTube | February 12th, 2009

It’s anoth­er good day for the open edu­ca­tion move­ment. As part of an exper­i­ment, YouTube has part­nered with a select num­ber of uni­ver­si­ties (Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, Duke, and UCLA) to make lec­tures, cours­es and oth­er videos avail­able for free down­load. This gives edu­ca­tors and life­long learn­ers the free­dom to watch edu­ca­tion­al videos offline, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they want, includ­ing air­planes or class­rooms with lim­it­ed con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The videos (all high-res­o­lu­tion mp4s) can be watched on any com­put­er loaded with Quick­Time and also on many portable devices, includ­ing new­er iPods. When I spoke with the YouTube team today, they flagged anoth­er perk: the videos are being dis­trib­uted under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, which means that you can reuse them under cer­tain non-com­mer­cial con­di­tions.

For some­one who has helped devel­op cours­es appear­ing in Stan­ford’s YouTube col­lec­tion, today’s news was cer­tain­ly wel­come. These cours­es are not cheap to devel­op, and we do it as a pub­lic ser­vice. So we’re always hap­py when we encounter new ways of get­ting the edu­ca­tion­al con­tent to a broad­er audi­ence. This new down­load capa­bil­i­ty does just that. It extends our reach just a lit­tle more, and it’s hard to quib­ble with that.

As a prac­ti­cal note, if you’re won­der­ing how to down­load the YouTube videos men­tioned above, here’s what to do. Find a video from Stan­ford, UC Berke­ley, Duke, or UCLA, look at the low­er left-hand cor­ner of the video, click the “Down­load this video” link, and you should be good to go.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

  • To quick­ly find intel­li­gent video col­lec­tions appear­ing on YouTube, vis­it this page.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Google Maps the Oceans, Mars and Time

in Google | February 3rd, 2009

Giv­en that water cov­ers rough­ly 70% of our plan­et, it makes sense that Google Earth should take the oceans into account. Thanks to a part­ner­ship with the Cal­i­for­nia Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, Google Earth now offers, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny blog, detailed maps of the ocean floor “so you can actu­al­ly drop below the sur­face and explore the nooks and cran­nies of the seafloor in 3D.” You’ll also get “thou­sands of data points includ­ing videos and images of ocean life, details on the best surf spots, logs of real ocean expe­di­tions, and much more.”

In this lat­est release of Google Earth, you’ll also find detailed maps of the plan­et Mars, plus (rather amaz­ing­ly) some func­tion­al­i­ty that lets you see how land­scapes have changed over time. How does San Fran­cis­co look today as com­pared to 50 years ago? You should now be able to find out.

You can get more infor­ma­tion on these new addi­tions here on Google’s Blog. Also, you can see a video report from The Wall Street Jour­nal that gives you a visu­al taste of Google Earth 5.0.

Also, as a quick reminder, you can now fol­low us on Twit­ter!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast