David’s Diary: The New David Sedaris App for Apple & Android

A lit­tle David Sedaris on your mobile device? Yes, please!

Last week, Hachette Dig­i­tal released David’s Dairy, a new app that brings six ani­mat­ed short films inspired by David Sedaris’ diary to your Apple and Android devices. The films are short — most run about 45 sec­onds. They’re char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly quirky and art­ful­ly designed. And the com­plete app costs runs only $1.99. But, at min­i­mum, you get the longest video in the col­lec­tion here for free and then this:

Bonus Mate­r­i­al: In our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books, you will find two read­ings by David Sedaris. Here they go:

  • “The Mouse and the Snake” from Squir­rel Seeks Chip­munk: A Mod­est Bes­tiary â€” Free MP3
  • “Solu­tion to Saturday’s Puz­zle” from When You Are Engulfed in Flames - Free MP3

And, you can always down­load a com­plete David Sedaris book (in audio) by tak­ing advan­tage of Audible.com’s Free Tri­al offer.

Atlas Shrugged Released as an iPad App

William F. Buck­ley famous­ly said that he flogged him­self to get through Atlas Shrugged, and now you can too in grand style. This week, Pen­guin released Ayn Rand’s polit­i­cal­ly-influ­en­tial nov­el as an iPad app. It will run you $14.99, but it brings togeth­er “the clas­sic, unabridged text and a trea­sury of rarely-seen archival mate­ri­als,” includ­ing orig­i­nal man­u­script pages, video of Rand’s talks, audio lec­tures elu­ci­dat­ing the book, a pho­to gallery, and the rest. And, oh hap­py day, the app lets you share quotes from Atlas Shrugged on Face­book and Twit­ter too.

If Atlas Shrugged isn’t your cup of tea, if you’re look­ing for a dif­fer­ent kind of med­i­ta­tion on free­dom, then Pen­guin might have some­thing else for you — the bible of the counter cul­ture, Jack Ker­ouac’s On the Road, is now avail­able as an “ampli­fied” iPad app as well.

Final­ly, if you’re look­ing for a free angle here, you can always down­load these nov­els as free audio­books if you start a no-strings-attached free tri­al with Audible.com.

H/T Media Bistro

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mike Wal­lace Inter­views Ayn Rand (1959)

Ayn Rand Talks Athe­ism with Phil Don­ahue

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

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SnagFilms: Free Documentaries on the iPad (and Web)

The online doc­u­men­tary web site Snag­Films recent­ly unveiled a new ver­sion of its iPad app, which makes 80 great doc­u­men­taries avail­able on yet anoth­er media plat­form. You can already watch the (gen­er­al­ly high qual­i­ty) films on Snag Films’ web site for free, though in this case “free” does entail being forced to watch a brief but soul-drain­ing adver­tise­ment tout­ing the social wel­fare ini­tia­tives of Gold­man Sachs.

For bal­ance — and per­haps some unin­ten­tion­al irony — Snag­Films adds the dis­claimer “the views and opin­ions expressed in this film do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect those of Gold­man Sachs,” and the col­lec­tion fea­tures doc­u­men­taries like the Nation­al Resource Defense Coun­cil’s Hunt­ing for Oil, Mor­gan Spur­lock­’s Super Size Me and the anti-cap­i­tal­ist Nao­mi Wolf doc­u­men­tary The End of Amer­i­ca. But, of course, many of the oth­er films go well beyond pol­i­tics. Some of our favorites include Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown and episodes of Carl Sagan’s Cos­mos.

Also worth check­ing out: The Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da offers a sim­i­lar iPad app for down­load­ing and watch­ing its excel­lent online col­lec­tion. It hous­es over 1,ooo films and includes clas­sics like Claude Jutra’s My Uncle Antoine (1971) and the love­ly 1965 doc­u­men­tary Ladies and Gen­tle­man, Mr. Leonard Cohen, plus new­er gems like Ryan, an Oscar-win­ning ani­mat­ed short from 2004. NFB makes its films avail­able in sev­er­al oth­er for­mats as well, includ­ing iPhoneAndroid, and Box­ee.

Last­ly don’t for­get our col­lec­tion of 200 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly

Developing Apps for iPhone & iPad: A Free Stanford Course

Look­ing to design apps for the iPhone or iPad? Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty now has a course online that will help you do just that.

Sim­ply called Devel­op­ing Apps for iOS, the course fea­tures 20 video lec­tures (the last install­ment was uploaded just this week) and, some­what fit­ting­ly, they’re all avail­able on Apple’s iTune­sU.

Paul Hegar­ty teach­es the course, and he assumes that you have expe­ri­ence pro­gram­ming in C, and some famil­iar­i­ty with UNIX, object-ori­ent­ed pro­gram­ming and graph­i­cal toolk­its.

You can find Devel­op­ing Apps for iOS in the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, along with two pre­vi­ous Stan­ford app devel­op­ment cours­es, both called iPhone Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment.

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MoMA Puts Pollock, Rothko & de Kooning on Your iPad

Through next April, you can vis­it “Abstract Expres­sion­ist New York,” – an exhib­it at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (NYC) that looks back at the work of Jack­son Pol­lock, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Willem de Koon­ing and many oth­ers. If you can’t make the trip, then you can do the next best thing. Fire up your iPad, down­load the free app cre­at­ed by MoMA, and start watch­ing a slideshow of 60 paint­ings cur­rent­ly on dis­play in “AB EX NY.” All images are pre­sent­ed in high res­o­lu­tion, and the app also fea­tures 20 videos cre­at­ed by the cura­tors, each of which con­cen­trates on indi­vid­ual painters and their tech­niques. And did I men­tion that the app is free? (via Arts Beat)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Hockney’s iPad Art Goes on Dis­play

Vis­it 890 UNESCO World Her­itage Sites with Free iPhone/iPad App

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Jason Schwartzman Introduces New Yorker iPad App

The New York­er iPad app. It’s final­ly out, and they have actor Jason Schwartz­man tak­ing the wraps off in a wit­ty video. Give The New York­er points for cre­ativ­i­ty.

Now the big ques­tion. Will read­ers pay $4.99 to have the plea­sure of read­ing each week­ly issue on the iPad? That’s $234 over a year. Or will you be stick­ing with the print sub­scrip­tion that runs a cool­er $1.00 per week? You’ll find me in the lat­ter camp until they work out a more sen­si­ble annu­al pric­ing scheme — some­thing that, accord­ing to recent reports, may be right around the bend.

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Visit 890 UNESCO World Heritage Sites with Free iPhone/iPad App

The new Foto­pe­dia Her­itage app for the iPhone and iPad lets the world come to you. (Down­load here.) Draw­ing on 20,000 curat­ed pho­tos tak­en by thou­sands of pho­tog­ra­phers from the Foto­pe­dia com­mu­ni­ty, this FREE app lets you vis­it (at least vir­tu­al­ly) 890 UNESCO World Her­itage sites. In a mat­ter of min­utes, you can move from Notre Dame in Paris, to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, to Machu Pic­chu in Peru, to the Great Pyra­mid of Giza in Egypt. You get the pic­ture. And speak­ing of pic­tures, it’s worth not­ing that all pho­tos are released under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. A very nice touch. Let me final­ly men­tion that the app has some smart mashup fea­tures, includ­ing maps show­ing the loca­tion of each site, plus Wikipedia entries offer­ing back­ground infor­ma­tion on each loca­tion. You can start down­load­ing the app right here. (Many thanks to Jane for call­ing this out.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

National Film Board of Canada Launches Free iPad App

A quick heads up: Today the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da released a free iPad app (down­load it here), pro­vid­ing users free access to thou­sands of doc­u­men­taries, ani­mat­ed films and trail­ers. All films (includ­ing some in 3‑D) can be streamed over Wi-Fi and 3G wire­less net­works. And you can even down­load and watch a film offline for up to 48 hours. If you don’t have an iPad, nev­er fear.  The NFB also makes these films avail­able via a free iPhone app and, of course, its web site too.

For more free films, see our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online…

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.