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

The PEN Amer­i­can Cen­ter just wound up World Voic­es 2007, a con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing a slew of major authors, includ­ing Salman Rushdie, Don DeLil­lo, Neil Gaiman, and many more. One of the pan­els this year fea­tured some lit­er­ary heavy hit­ters read­ing works to raise aware­ness for envi­ron­men­tal issues: Bil­ly Collins, Jonathan Franzen, Moses Isegawa, Pico Iyer, Geert Mak, Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, Rox­ana Robin­son, Salman Rushdie, Gary Shteyn­gart, Janne Teller and Col­son White­head all par­tic­i­pat­ed (mp3).

The PEN orga­ni­za­tion works for lit­er­ary free­dom world­wide, and the con­fer­ence keynote (mp3) fea­tures Israeli author David Gross­man and Nobel Prize-win­ner Nadine Gordimer dis­cussing the “Free­dom to Write.” Con­sid­er­ing the news in Turkey these days, you may also want to give last year’s lec­ture with Orhan Pamuk and Mar­garet Atwood a lis­ten (mp3).

The Cen­ter also has an iTunes pod­cast series and an audio archive, but since the con­fer­ence just end­ed it will prob­a­bly take some time for them to process the lat­est audio. iTunes Feed Site

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Pod­cast Primer

These days, if you spend enough time on the web, you’ll inevitably hear talk about RSS feeds, feed read­ers, and sub­scrib­ing to feeds – talk that can seem fair­ly obscure and off-putting if you’re not already famil­iar with these terms.

If this has been your expe­ri­ence, then you should real­ly watch this short video below. This instruc­tive, even amus­ing, video uses sim­ple lan­guage and images to demon­strate how to use feeds and feed read­ers. In a mat­ter of min­utes, all of this will be demys­ti­fied, and you’ll dis­cov­er a much quick­er, more effi­cient and pow­er­ful way to access news and blog con­tent, includ­ing sto­ries from Open Cul­ture. You can sub­scribe to our feed here. And if you’re look­ing for a good feed read­er, def­i­nite­ly give Google Read­er a look.

Next Wednes­day, at 9 pm, respect­ed jour­nal­ist Bill Moy­ers will return to PBS and air a 90-minute pre­sen­ta­tion called Buy­ing the War. Along the way, he’ll look at how the main­stream Amer­i­can press wound up cheer­lead­ing for the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s dri­ve toward war in Iraq rather than doing their real job — ask­ing tough ques­tions and pro­vid­ing par­ti­san-free report­ing.

Below, you can find a video excerpt from next week’s show. To briefly set the stage, Bob Simon of of 60
Min­utes talks here about “the report­ing he
was see­ing and read­ing out of the belt­way, and John Wal­cott and War­ren
Stro­bel of Knight Rid­der news­pa­pers (now The McClatchy Com­pa­ny),
dis­cuss their work bur­row­ing deep into the intel­li­gence agen­cies to
deter­mine whether there was any evi­dence for the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion’s
case for war.” (Note: You can get more infor­ma­tion on the expose from this PBS page, and you can sub­scribe to feeds for Bill Moy­er’s pod­casts here.)

you did­n’t before Copen­hagen hit the stage in 1998 and dra­mat­i­cal­ly told the sto­ry of Niels Bohr’s shad­owy meet­ing with Wern­er Heisen­berg back in 1941. Since then, sci­ence plays have been going strong. Just take this for exam­ple: L.A. The­atre Works recent­ly launched its Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Series, a “month­ly broad­cast fea­tur­ing plays that explore the impact of sci­ence on indi­vid­u­als and soci­ety.” You can down­load the series as a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), and it so hap­pens that the series kicks off with a Tony and Pulitzer Prize-win­ning play called Proof, star­ring Anne Heche.

Writ­ten by David Auburn in 2001, Proof is not as aca­d­e­m­ic as it sounds. The New York Times called it “An exhil­a­rat­ing and assured new play … acces­si­ble and com­pelling as a detec­tive sto­ry.” And Hol­ly­wood turned the play into a film in 2005, with Gwyneth Pal­trow play­ing the lead. So you should­n’t have any reser­va­tions about immers­ing your­self in this dra­mat­ic work. Down­load it, sync it, and get ready to lis­ten to a tale of love and death, intel­lec­tu­al adven­ture and para­noia, and a sprin­kling of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture

Dig into Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions.

Some­what unex­pect­ed­ly, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of audio pod­casts has been a boon for book lovers and writ­ers. Look­ing around the dig­i­tal land­scape, you’ll dis­cov­er a num­ber of pod­casts that enhance the expe­ri­ence of read­ing good old fash­ioned books. Let’s quick­ly have a look at the lay of the land.

The New York Times now notably puts out a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that com­ple­ments its beloved Sun­day Book Review sec­tion. Host­ed by Sam Tanen­haus, the Book Review edi­tor, this pod­cast runs about 20 min­utes, and it gives Sam a chance to have sub­stan­tive chats with authors, edi­tors and crit­ics who fig­ure into
the week­ly print edi­tion. Along some­what sim­i­lar lines, NPR Books (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) brings togeth­er the net­work’s many book reviews and author inter­views in a nice audio col­lec­tion. C‑Span’s After Words (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) serves up inter­views with impor­tant authors of recent­ly pub­lished hard­back non-fic­tion, and Slate spon­sors an Audio Book Club (iTunes —  Feed — Web Site), although it unfor­tu­nate­ly updates the pod­cast rather irreg­u­lar­ly. Mean­while, over in the UK, The Guardian (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) pro­duces a quite robust pod­cast that fea­tures reg­u­lar talks with well-known authors, many of them British. The Times, anoth­er Eng­lish paper, does the same (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), but its col­lec­tion is not­i­ca­bly slim­mer, though good.

Quite smart­ly, pub­lish­ers and book­stores have also start­ed churn­ing out pod­casts for the literati, using the dig­i­tal medi­um as a mar­ket­ing tool for their paper goods. Simon & Schus­ter pro­duces Simon Says (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a week­ly pod­cast that fea­tures new books and audio books com­ing out of the New York pub­lish­ing house. Ran­dom House (iTunes — Web Site) sim­i­lar­ly lets lis­ten­ers check out excerpts from new releas­es. And then on the book­store front, Barnes & Noble presents Meet the Writ­ers  (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), a pod­cast that fea­tures authors dis­cussing their favorite books, influ­ences, and the rea­sons they write. And sim­i­lar­ly Ama­zon Book Clips (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) lets you keep tabs on both best­selling and up-and-com­ing authors. You can find oth­er Ama­zon pod­casts here.

Last­ly, the book lover always has access these days to a grow­ing list of free audio books. We’ve sift­ed through many of them and includ­ed the clas­sics in our Audio Book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. You can also find a broad­er, more exten­sive col­lec­tion over at Lib­rivox.