Tracking Wikipedia’s Manipulations

in Web/Tech | August 14th, 2007

In 2006, we learned that staff mem­bers on Capi­tol Hill logged into Wikipedia and gave a par­ti­san air-brush­ing to the biogra­phies of var­i­ous Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors. Mean­while, in 2005, 15 para­graphs were mys­te­ri­ous­ly delet­ed from a Wikipedia entry on Diebold, the major Amer­i­can vot­ing machine ven­dor that has found itself at the cen­ter of recent elec­tion con­tro­ver­sies. And soon enough, these edits were traced back to a Diebold IP address.

All of this raised the ques­tion: Just how often is Wikipedia the vic­tim of biased edit­ing? And to what extent can cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal entries be trust­ed? Accord­ing to Wired, some of these ques­tions may be soon put to rest. A new web site called Wikipedia Scan­ner pro­vides a “search­able data­base that ties mil­lions of anony­mous Wikipedia edits to orga­ni­za­tions where those edits appar­ent­ly orig­i­nat­ed…” Much more eas­i­ly, users can now get a bead on just how preva­lent these spin jobs are, and, more impor­tant­ly, they can help keep these par­ti­san edits under bet­ter con­trol. Will Wikipedia Scan­ner (and pro­gram like it) help save Web 2.0? Per­haps so.

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Relat­ed con­tent:

• Wikipedi­a’s (Some­times Dirty) Lit­tle Secret
• Col­lege Bans Wikipedia
• How Web 2.0 Will Trans­form the Human­i­ties

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in Uncategorized | June 16th, 2007

Most Popular

April 30, 2007

10 Unexpected Uses of the iPod

New tech­nolo­gies often have unin­tend­ed uses. Take the Ipod as a case in point. It was devel­oped with the inten­tion of play­ing music (and lat­er videos), but its appli­ca­tions now go well beyond that. Here are 10 rather unfore­seen, even sur­pris­ing, uses:

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

1. Train Doc­tors to Save Lives: A new study pre­sent­ed at the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Car­di­ol­o­gy indi­cates that iPods can dou­ble interns’ abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy heart sounds that are indica­tive of seri­ous heart prob­lems (i.e., aor­tic or mitral steno­sis). By using the iPod to repeat­ed­ly lis­ten to record­ings of nor­mal and abnor­mal heart beat pat­terns, interns can effec­tive­ly hear when some­thing is going awry.

Or how about this for anoth­er med­ical appli­ca­tion: Will Gilbert, who heads up the bioin­for­mat­ics group in the Hub­bard Cen­ter for Genome Stud­ies, stores the entire human genome on his iPod. As you can read in Wired, he has found that the iPod is a great way to store the gene sequence, all 3 bil­lion chem­i­cal let­ters of it, and, com­pared to using a net­work, he can access data more quick­ly with the lit­tle Apple gad­get. [Thanks to one of our read­ers for point­ing this one out.]

2. Bring Crim­i­nals to Jus­tice: On an exper­i­men­tal basis, a Unit­ed States fed­er­al dis­trict court has start­ed using iPods to hold copies of wire­tap trans­mis­sions in a large drug-con­spir­a­cy case. Why? Because it’s eas­i­er than stor­ing the record­ings on cas­sette tapes or CDRoms; the defen­dants and attor­neys can access and work through the record­ings with ease; and it can all be done in a secure envi­ron­ment.

3. Get Your­self Into Seri­ous Shape: Many jog­gers love how their iPods can pro­vide enter­tain­ment that will spice up a monot­o­nous rou­tine. But prob­a­bly few know that you can use the iPod to plan train­ing routes for their runs. Trail­Run­ner lets run­ners do pre­cise­ly that. This free pro­gram helps you plan your route and then loads your iPod with maps, dis­tances, and time goals.

4. Tour Around Great Cities: iSub­wayMaps lets you down­load sub­way maps from 24 major cities across the globe. They range from New York City, Paris and Berlin to Moscow, Tokyo and Hong Kong. (Get the full list here.) To take advan­tage of these maps, your iPod will need to sup­port pho­tos, but that should­n’t be a prob­lem for most recent iPods.

We’ve also talked recent­ly about a ven­ture called Sound­walk that pro­vides engag­ing, some­what off­beat audio tours of New York and Paris (plus Varanasi in India). In New York, they offer indi­vid­ual tours of Lit­tle Italy, the Low­er East Side, Times Square and the Meat Pack­ing Dis­trict, among oth­er places. In Paris, they take you through the Marais, St. Ger­main, Pigalle, Belleville, and the Palais Roy­al. Each audio tour is nar­rat­ed by a celebri­ty of sorts and can be down­loaded for about $12.

5. Cal­cu­late the Right Tip: If you’re a lit­tle math chal­lenged, you can use your iPod when you’re out to din­ner to cal­cu­late the cor­rect tip. Tip­Kalc helps you fig­ure out both the tip and the grand total on your bill, and it even lets you split your check up to five dif­fer­ent ways.

6. Record Flight data: Accord­ing to a report in Flight Glob­al, a com­pa­ny called LoPresti Speed Mer­chants has announced plans to use iPods as flight data recorders in light air­craft. The lit­tle white box will serve as the “black box” with­in the air­planes and will have the abil­i­ty to record over 500 hours of flight time data. Does this mean that iPods can sur­vive plane crash­es? Who would have thunk it.

7. Throw a Mean­er Curve­ball: Jason Jen­nings, a pitch­er for the Hous­ton Astros, start­ed using a video iPod last year to review his pitch­ing frame by frame and to improve his over­all tech­nique. He also reviews video of all oppos­ing bat­ters before each game. Since incor­po­rat­ing the iPod into his train­ing, he has since seen his ERA go down, and oth­er teams — notably the Mar­lins and Mariners — have looked into using the iPod in sim­i­lar ways.

8. Learn For­eign Lan­guages: iPods are becom­ing more com­mon­place in uni­ver­si­ty class­rooms, with stu­dents using them to record lec­tures, take notes, and even cre­ate elec­tron­ic flash cards. (See in depth arti­cle here.) The gad­gets are also being used to help stu­dents for­mal­ly study music and learn for­eign lan­guages. Now, if you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you’ll know that you don’t need to be a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent to learn for­eign lan­guages with the help of an iPod. With the help of our pod­casts col­lec­tion, you can pick up most any lan­guage on your own.

9. Learn to Love and Buy Wine: Here’s a nov­el way to get intro­duced to wine. For $35, you can down­load an audio file called Mark Phillips Wine Guide onto your iPod. This primer will, among oth­er things, teach you how to describe, taste, and buy wine, and you’ll come away with a cer­tain je ne sais quoi.

10. Test Cheat­ing: Yes, unfor­tu­nate­ly tech­nol­o­gy can be used for bad as well as good. It was wide­ly report­ed just this past week that stu­dents are appar­ent­ly using the iPod to cheat on exams. Dur­ing tests, they’ll appar­ent­ly sneak ear­buds into their ears and tap into valu­able for­mu­las, class notes, voic­es record­ings, etc. Oth­ers will even write out crib notes and enmesh them with­in song lyrics.

Bonus: The iPod as Flash­light: Dur­ing the major black­out in 2003, many New York­ers impro­vised after night­fall and used the light gen­er­at­ed by their iPods to get around their apart­ments. It was a makeshift way of doing things. But now there is a more for­mal way of using your iPod to light your way. For about $13, you can pur­chase Griffin’s iBeam, an attach­ment that will quick­ly turn your iPod into a com­bo flash­light and laser point­er. As they say, be pre­pared.

10 Unexpected Uses of the iPod

in Apple, Most Popular, Technology | April 30th, 2007

New tech­nolo­gies often have unin­tend­ed uses. Take the Ipod as a case in point. It was devel­oped with the inten­tion of play­ing music (and lat­er videos), but its appli­ca­tions now go well beyond that. Here are 10 rather unfore­seen, even sur­pris­ing, uses:

1. Train Doc­tors to Save Lives: A new study pre­sent­ed at the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Car­di­ol­o­gy indi­cates that iPods can dou­ble interns’ abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy heart sounds that are indica­tive of seri­ous heart prob­lems (i.e., aor­tic or mitral steno­sis). By using the iPod to repeat­ed­ly lis­ten to record­ings of nor­mal and abnor­mal heart beat pat­terns, interns can effec­tive­ly hear when some­thing is going awry.

Or how about this for anoth­er med­ical appli­ca­tion: Will Gilbert, who heads up the bioin­for­mat­ics group in the Hub­bard Cen­ter for Genome Stud­ies, stores the entire human genome on his iPod. As you can read in Wired, he has found that the iPod is a great way to store the gene sequence, all 3 bil­lion chem­i­cal let­ters of it, and, com­pared to using a net­work, he can access data more quick­ly with the lit­tle Apple gad­get. [Thanks to one of our read­ers for point­ing this one out.]

2. Bring Crim­i­nals to Jus­tice: On an exper­i­men­tal basis, a Unit­ed States fed­er­al dis­trict court has start­ed using iPods to hold copies of wire­tap trans­mis­sions in a large drug-con­spir­a­cy case. Why? Because it’s eas­i­er than stor­ing the record­ings on cas­sette tapes or CDRoms; the defen­dants and attor­neys can access and work through the record­ings with ease; and it can all be done in a secure envi­ron­ment.

3. Get Your­self Into Seri­ous Shape: Many jog­gers love how their iPods can pro­vide enter­tain­ment that will spice up a monot­o­nous rou­tine. But prob­a­bly few know that you can use the iPod to plan train­ing routes for their runs. Trail­Run­ner lets run­ners do pre­cise­ly that. This free pro­gram helps you plan your route and then loads your iPod with maps, dis­tances, and time goals.

4. Tour Around Great Cities: iSub­wayMaps lets you down­load sub­way maps from 24 major cities across the globe. They range from New York City, Paris and Berlin to Moscow, Tokyo and Hong Kong. (Get the full list here.) To take advan­tage of these maps, your iPod will need to sup­port pho­tos, but that should­n’t be a prob­lem for most recent iPods.

We’ve also talked recent­ly about a ven­ture called Sound­walk that pro­vides engag­ing, some­what off­beat audio tours of New York and Paris (plus Varanasi in India). In New York, they offer indi­vid­ual tours of Lit­tle Italy, the Low­er East Side, Times Square and the Meat Pack­ing Dis­trict, among oth­er places. In Paris, they take you through the Marais, St. Ger­main, Pigalle, Belleville, and the Palais Roy­al. Each audio tour is nar­rat­ed by a celebri­ty of sorts and can be down­loaded for about $12.
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5. Cal­cu­late the Right Tip: If you’re a lit­tle math chal­lenged, you can use your iPod when you’re out to din­ner to cal­cu­late the cor­rect tip. Tip­Kalc helps you fig­ure out both the tip and the grand total on your bill, and it even lets you split your check up to five dif­fer­ent ways.

6. Record Flight data: Accord­ing to a report in Flight Glob­al, a com­pa­ny called LoPresti Speed Mer­chants has announced plans to use iPods as flight data recorders in light air­craft. The lit­tle white box will serve as the “black box” with­in the air­planes and will have the abil­i­ty to record over 500 hours of flight time data. Does this mean that iPods can sur­vive plane crash­es? Who would have thunk it.

7. Throw a Mean­er Curve­ball: Jason Jen­nings, a pitch­er for the Hous­ton Astros, start­ed using a video iPod last year to review his pitch­ing frame by frame and to improve his over­all tech­nique. He also reviews video of all oppos­ing bat­ters before each game. Since incor­po­rat­ing the iPod into his train­ing, he has since seen his ERA go down, and oth­er teams — notably the Mar­lins and Mariners — have looked into using the iPod in sim­i­lar ways.

8. Learn For­eign Lan­guages: iPods are becom­ing more com­mon­place in uni­ver­si­ty class­rooms, with stu­dents using them to record lec­tures, take notes, and even cre­ate elec­tron­ic flash cards. (See in depth arti­cle here.) The gad­gets are also being used to help stu­dents for­mal­ly study music and learn for­eign lan­guages. Now, if you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you’ll know that you don’t need to be a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent to learn for­eign lan­guages with the help of an iPod. With the help of our pod­casts col­lec­tion, you can pick up most any lan­guage on your own.

9. Learn to Love and Buy Wine: Here’s a nov­el way to get intro­duced to wine. For $35, you can down­load an audio file called Mark Phillips Wine Guide onto your iPod. This primer will, among oth­er things, teach you how to describe, taste, and buy wine, and you’ll come away with a cer­tain je ne sais quoi.

10. Test Cheat­ing: Yes, unfor­tu­nate­ly tech­nol­o­gy can be used for bad as well as good. It was wide­ly report­ed just this past week that stu­dents are appar­ent­ly using the iPod to cheat on exams. Dur­ing tests, they’ll appar­ent­ly sneak ear­buds into their ears and tap into valu­able for­mu­las, class notes, voic­es record­ings, etc. Oth­ers will even write out crib notes and enmesh them with­in song lyrics.

Bonus: The iPod as Flash­light: Dur­ing the major black­out in 2003, many New York­ers impro­vised after night­fall and used the light gen­er­at­ed by their iPods to get around their apart­ments. It was a makeshift way of doing things. But now there is a more for­mal way of using your iPod to light your way. For about $13, you can pur­chase Griffin’s iBeam, an attach­ment that will quick­ly turn your iPod into a com­bo flash­light and laser point­er. As they say, be pre­pared.

E‑learning Programs from Top American Universities

in Online Courses | April 10th, 2007

Podcasts from Top American Law Schools

in Law | March 19th, 2007

• Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty — Wash­ing­ton Col­lege of Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • An eclec­tic col­lec­tion of legal pod­casts.

• Duke Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Lec­tures, pan­els, con­fer­ences, etc.

• George­town Uni­ver­si­ty — George­town Law iTunes Feed Web Site
  • One of the rich­er col­lec­tions.

• George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty
  • The Law and Eco­nom­ics Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pro­duced by the Jour­nal of Law, Eco­nom­ics, and Pol­i­cy.
• Har­vard Law School
  • Medi­a­Berk­man by The Berk­man Cen­ter for Inter­net & Soci­ety iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Medi­a­Berk­man “fea­tures con­ver­sa­tions with and talks by lead­ing cyber-schol­ars, entre­pre­neurs, activists, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers as they explore top­ics such as the fac­tors that influ­ence knowl­edge cre­ation and dis­sem­i­na­tion in the dig­i­tal age; the char­ac­ter of pow­er as the worlds of gov­er­nance, busi­ness, cit­i­zen­ship and the media meet the inter­net; and the oppor­tu­ni­ties, role and lim­i­ta­tions of new tech­nolo­gies in learn­ing.”

• Lewis & Clarke Law School Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Pod­casts of speak­ers and events.

• Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Law School
  • Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety iTunes Web Site
    • These tech­nol­o­gy-focused lec­tures are giv­en by a diverse group of fac­ul­ty, many from uni­ver­si­ties oth­er than Stan­ford.
  • Pro­gram in Law, Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy iTunes Web Site
    • This pro­gram focus­es on the role that sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy play in the nation­al and glob­al are­nas. The issues dis­cussed in these pod­casts will inter­est stu­dents, legal pro­fes­sion­als, busi­ness­peo­ple, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and the pub­lic at large.
  • The Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety for Law and Pol­i­cy iTunes Feed Web Site
    • The Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety for Law and Pol­i­cy is a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of lawyers, law stu­dents, schol­ars, judges, pol­i­cy­mak­ers, and oth­er con­cerned indi­vid­u­als work­ing to ensure that fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human dig­ni­ty, indi­vid­ual rights and lib­er­ties, gen­uine equal­i­ty, and access to jus­tice enjoy their right­ful, cen­tral place in Amer­i­can law.
• Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Law School Fac­ul­ty iTunes Feed Web Site
  • A lit­tle bit of legal brain can­dy pre­sent­ed by the U Chica­go law fac­ul­ty.

• Yale Law School Feed Web Site
  • Pod­casts from one of Amer­i­ca’s finest law schools. Often fea­tures speech­es by vis­it­ing speak­ers.

Stay tuned — this page will be under con­tin­u­al and active devel­op­ment. It will grow as more law schools devel­op new pod­casts.

Yale’s 15 Lectures on Democracy

in Yale | January 5th, 2007

As part of its 300th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty gath­ered togeth­er some of its fore­most fac­ul­ty and offered an extend­ed series of lec­tures on the state of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Col­lec­tive­ly enti­tled “Demo­c­ra­t­ic Vis­tas,” this wide-rang­ing series explores Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy in his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary terms and looks at how it mesh­es with oth­er fix­tures of our social life — reli­gion, fam­i­ly, eco­nom­ic mar­kets, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, etc. From this page, you can access all of the illu­mi­nat­ing pre­sen­ta­tions in audio and video, includ­ing those by Yale’s Pres­i­dent Richard Levin and Richard Brod­head, the for­mer Dean of Yale Col­lege and now Pres­i­dent of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty.

The one caveat worth men­tion­ing is that these talks were record­ed not long before 9/11. And, in some respects, this may give the lec­tures an out-dat­ed feel. Can we real­ly have a valu­able dis­cus­sion about Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy with­out address­ing 9/11, the war on ter­ror, and the war in Iraq? In some ways no, but in many ways yes. Amer­i­ca is still large­ly Amer­i­ca, the same coun­try it was six years ago, and, for the most part, these dis­cern­ing lec­tures remain high­ly rel­e­vant today. Indeed, Yale has already uploaded some of them to its new pod­cast col­lec­tion on iTunes.

iTunes — Podcasts from 25 Leading Universities

in Uncategorized | November 22nd, 2006

Uni­ver­si­ties pump out knowl­edge every day, and thank­ful­ly, many of the best uni­ver­si­ties and col­leges are now start­ing to tape impor­tant lec­tures, if not full cours­es, and make them avail­able as pod­casts. We’ve spent the past few weeks find­ing the best pod­cast col­lec­tions, both on iTunes and off. If you vis­it the Uni­ver­si­ty iTunes/Podcasts Col­lec­tion (which can always be found in the Free Learn­ing Por­tal on the right side of the page), you’ll find sets of pod­casts from 25 lead­ing edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions, most in the US, but some out­side. As the uni­verse of edu­ca­tion­al pod­casts grows, so will our list. So pay us a vis­it here and there, and keep your iPod poised to add new con­tent.

Cultural & Educational Video

in | October 20th, 2006

Watch Free Movies Online
Dis­cov­er 30 web sites where you can watch free movies online. Clas­sics, inter­na­tion­al, film noir, doc­u­men­taries, indies — they’re all here, wait­ing to be watched.

Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites
Look­ing for great cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al video? Then you’ve come to the right place. Here, we have com­piled a list of 35 sites that fea­ture intel­li­gent videos.

Intel­li­gent YouTube: 80 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions
This col­lec­tion gives you quick access to some of the most enlight­en­ing video col­lec­tions on YouTube. The video col­lec­tions come from impor­tant media out­lets, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, uni­ver­si­ties and non-prof­its.

Open Cul­ture’s  YouTube Favorites
We reg­u­lar­ly high­light indi­vid­ual YouTube videos in our dai­ly blog posts. This page (host­ed on YouTube) brings all of the fea­tured videos togeth­er. You can sub­scribe to the col­lec­tion and watch the clips at any time.

Uni­ver­si­ty Videos
Dis­cov­er enrich­ing video col­lec­tions from America’s lead­ing col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. Take a look around, and you’ll be sure to find some­thing that speaks to your per­son­al pas­sions and inter­ests.