Crime Fiction: Download and Listen

in Audio Books | April 11th, 2009

Seth Har­wood is bring­ing crime writ­ing into the new world of Web 2.0. Since 2006, Har­wood has been pod­cast­ing his own crime fic­tion, includ­ing a book called Jack Wakes Up, which you can down­load (for free) via iTunes, RSS Feed, or MP3. (Ran­dom House will be releas­ing Jack Wakes Up in print next month for $10.25.) This expe­ri­ence got Seth think­ing about the pow­er of pod­casts, and he soon took the next log­i­cal step, launch­ing Crimewav.com, a web­site devot­ed to pod­cast­ing crime sto­ries (not just his own) to an audi­ence world­wide. On Crime­wav, you’ll find some gems, includ­ing Dashiell Ham­met­t’s first sto­ry (1923), “The Bar­ber and His Wife” (mp3). Plus, you’ll stum­ble upon a delet­ed chap­ter from Michael Con­nel­ly’s lat­est NYT best­seller, The Brass Ver­dict, read by Con­nel­ly him­self (mp3). Lots of good pieces to explore. And if this sort of fic­tion is your thing, then let me direct you to two oth­er good resources. First, an archive of Agatha Christie’s radio mys­ter­ies, and then the free works of best­selling hor­ror author, Scott Sigler. Enjoy.

A Closer Look at YouTube EDU

in Google, YouTube | March 31st, 2009

Art Inspired Poetry

in Art, Poetry | March 29th, 2009

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.

Extreme Sheepherding

in Random | March 20th, 2009

File this clip (now added to our YouTube Favorites) under Ran­dom. See you next week. 

via Alfred A. Knopf Twit­ter Feed (ours here)

Is GWB The Worst President Of The Past 50 Years?

in Current Affairs | March 19th, 2009

Stay with me con­ser­v­a­tives on this one. It’s not as bad as you think…

NPR’s Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) has a rather unique for­mat. It brings Oxford-style debates to Amer­i­ca, and it fea­tures lead­ing thinkers tak­ing dif­fer­ent posi­tions on hot-but­ton issues of our day. (Get more pre­cise details on the debate for­mat here.) Recent debates have cen­tered on the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Is Wash­ing­ton or Wall Street ulti­mate­ly to blame for the finan­cial cri­sis? Should we legal­ize the mar­ket for human organs?  Is the US final­ly win­ning the war in Iraq? And then, is George W. Bush the worst pres­i­dent of the last 50 years?

The GWB debate brings togeth­er a pret­ty sol­id pan­el. Argu­ing against the Bush lega­cy: Jacob Weis­berg (Edi­tor in Chief of Slate) and Simon Jenk­ins (colum­nist for the Guardian and the Sun­day Times). Then, for the Bush lega­cy: Karl Rove (the all impor­tant Bush strate­gist) and Bill Kris­tol (edi­tor of The Week­ly Stan­dard and for­mer colum­nist for The New York Times). As you’ll see, it’s a pret­ty spir­it­ed con­ver­sa­tion. Have a lis­ten and let us know where you come down: iTunes — Feed — Stream.

As a quick note, the Intel­li­gence Squared pod­cast can be per­ma­nent­ly found in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Stevie Wonder Performs “Sketches of a Life”

in Music | March 18th, 2009

“Ste­vie Won­der, the awardee of the sec­ond Library of Con­gress Gersh­win Prize for Pop­u­lar Song, pre­mieres “Sketch­es of a Life,” a sprawl­ing, hybrid pop-clas­si­cal con­cer­to, writ­ten between 1976 and 1994. The work was unveiled through a com­mis­sion for the Library of Con­gress in the Coolidge Audi­to­ri­um.” The per­for­mance was record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 23, and it runs 55 min­utes. You can watch it here.

Via The Library of Con­gress Twit­ter Feed (Get ours here)

Clay Shirky on the Demise of the Newspaper

in Media | March 15th, 2009

Clay Shirky, who does a lot of good think­ing (see his lat­est book) about the social and eco­nom­ic effects of inter­net tech­nolo­gies, has post­ed a new piece on the slow but steady demise of the news­pa­per. It’s an intel­li­gent, not entire­ly lengthy, piece. Here’s a quick quote to whet your appetite:

Round and round this [debate], with the peo­ple com­mit­ted to sav­ing news­pa­pers demand­ing to know “If the old mod­el is bro­ken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Noth­ing. Noth­ing will work. There is no gen­er­al mod­el for news­pa­pers to replace the one the inter­net just broke.

With the old eco­nom­ics destroyed, orga­ni­za­tion­al forms per­fect­ed for indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion have to be replaced with struc­tures opti­mized for dig­i­tal data. It makes increas­ing­ly less sense even to talk about a pub­lish­ing indus­try, because the core prob­lem pub­lish­ing solves — the incred­i­ble dif­fi­cul­ty, com­plex­i­ty, and expense of mak­ing some­thing avail­able to the pub­lic — has stopped being a prob­lem…

Soci­ety doesn’t need news­pa­pers. What we need is jour­nal­ism. For a cen­tu­ry, the imper­a­tives to strength­en jour­nal­ism and to strength­en news­pa­pers have been so tight­ly wound as to be indis­tin­guish­able. That’s been a fine acci­dent to have, but when that acci­dent stops, as it is stop­ping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of oth­er ways to strength­en jour­nal­ism instead.

When we shift our atten­tion from ’save news­pa­pers’ to ’save soci­ety’, the imper­a­tive changes from ‘pre­serve the cur­rent insti­tu­tions’ to ‘do what­ev­er works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

And while I’m on this top­ic, let me also direct your atten­tion to a piece pub­lished on Mash­able by a recent col­league of mine, Woody Lewis. It gives you a good look at the 10 Ways News­pa­pers are Using Social Media to Save the Indus­try (assum­ing that can be done).

via Clay Shirky’s Twit­ter Feed

Leonard Cohen, Live From The Beacon Theatre

in Music | March 12th, 2009

Leg­endary Cana­di­an musi­cian Leonard Cohen is now tour­ing the Unit­ed States for the first time in 15 years (get all of the details here). Fans who can’t catch a show will be pleased to know that NPR’s All Songs Con­sid­ered pro­vides free access to Cohen’s recent show at the Bea­con The­atre in NYC. (It was record­ed on or around Feb­ru­ary 19th.) The set should run about 1:14 and includes 12 songs. You can get it here:  Stream — RSS Feed — iTunes.

Colonial and Revolutionary America: A Free Course

in History | March 10th, 2009

Although the flow of open edu­ca­tion­al resources has been slow­ing down late­ly (anoth­er casu­al­ty of the reces­sion), the stream has not yet run dry.

Stan­ford has recent­ly added anoth­er free course to its iTunes col­lec­tion. Taught by Jack Rakove, a Pulitzer Prize-win­ning his­to­ri­an, Colo­nial and Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Amer­i­ca (iTune­sU —  Feed) cov­ers the ear­ly phase of the tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can his­to­ry sur­vey course. The major themes addressed here include “the char­ac­ter of colo­nial soci­ety; the ori­gins and con­se­quences of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, from the Stamp Act con­tro­ver­sy to the adop­tion of the Fed­er­al Con­sti­tu­tion; the impact of the Rev­o­lu­tion on the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion and cul­ture; and (implic­it­ly) the long-term sig­nif­i­cance of the social and polit­i­cal his­to­ry of this era for our con­cep­tions of Amer­i­can nation­hood, soci­ety and cit­i­zen­ship.” This course is being rolled out in week­ly install­ments. You’ll cur­rent­ly find sev­en lec­tures, but there will even­tu­al­ly be 30.

I’ve added the course to our big col­lec­tion of Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es, and it will be per­ma­nent­ly housed there. This page is loaded with links to thou­sands of hours of free lec­tures and cours­es from major uni­ver­si­ties. A great resource in gen­er­al, and par­tic­u­lar­ly for these lean times. Check it out, and please for­ward it to a friend (or men­tion it on your web site) if you have a chance. Thanks.