On the Blogging and Cultural Virtues of Twitter

in Web/Tech | February 18th, 2009

Ear­li­er in the month, we made the leap into the world of Twit­ter, prompt­ed part­ly by Makeuseof.com, which men­tioned our site in a Twit­ter-relat­ed arti­cle. (Thanks Mark for that.)

When we first cre­at­ed our Twit­ter feed, my hopes weren’t espe­cial­ly high. And while I’m still not com­plete­ly sold on the per­son­al uses of Twit­ter, I’m def­i­nite­ly lik­ing the way that it works for a blog­ger. For starters, Twit­ter has giv­en us insight into who actu­al­ly reads Open Cul­ture. Since we start­ed things in Octo­ber 2006, I haven’t known much about who vis­its the site. I’ve been fly­ing in the dark, to be hon­est. But now Twit­ter gives us a snap­shot of our reg­u­lar read­ers. Because you can see who sub­scribes to your Twit­ter feed (some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen with RSS feeds), you can get a feel for read­ers’ geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion, their gen­er­al age range, and most impor­tant­ly their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al inter­ests — all of which helps us tai­lor the blog’s con­tent a bit bet­ter.  

Still more perks come from our sub­scribers. Twit­ter gives you the abil­i­ty to see who your “fol­low­ers” also fol­low. And that inevitably means that your sub­scribers, shar­ing sim­i­lar tastes, will turn you on to new and dif­fer­ent sources of information/inspiration. Essen­tial­ly, your sub­scribers help you devel­op intel­lec­tu­al affin­i­ty groups that pro­vide good grist for the mill. In addi­tion, our read­ers also do their own microblog­ging on Twit­ter, and, here again, their short, pithy 140 word “posts” have sur­faced inter­est­ing con­tent that we bring back to you … with prop­er attri­bu­tion, of course.

Based on our brief time with Twit­ter, we’ve put togeth­er an ini­tial list of cul­tur­al­ly-redeem­ing Twit­ter feeds. Have a look, and feel free to let us know if we’re miss­ing some good ones. Of course, this list will grow over time.

Last­ly, if you’re not on Twit­ter, it’s time to get on and see if it works for you. Join here. And if you want to sub­scribe to our feed, click here and then click “Fol­low.”

Swapping Your Way to Enlightenment: A Recession Special

in Books | February 16th, 2009

Here’s a handy way to weath­er the reces­sion with your intel­lect and pock­et book intact…

In this very down econ­o­my, you can keep feed­ing your read­ing habit by book swap­ping. Yes, that’s right, book swap­ping. What goes on here is fair­ly straight­for­ward. You give away books that you’ve already read. In exchange, you get books that you want to read. And the cost (aside from ship­ping fees) is zero. Plus you’ll save more than a few trees.

On the web, you’ll find two major online book swap­ping ser­vices. The first is PaperBackSwap.com. The sec­ond is Book­Mooch. You can learn more about each ser­vice (respec­tive­ly) here and here.

The Odds on America’s Collapse

in Current Affairs, Economics, History | February 13th, 2009

Jared Dia­mond became a house­hold name with his Pulitzer Prize-win­ning book Guns, Germs & Steel (2003). Lat­er, the UCLA geo­g­ra­ph­er climbed the charts again with Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed (2005). Now, based on this last book, he’s putting odds on whether the Unit­ed States will sur­vive this cri­sis, and he’s putting them only at 51–49. Not too great. And he goes on to say that our best chance of sur­viv­ing is if Amer­i­ca’s wealthy elite suf­fers far more than it already has. For more, lis­ten here.

via Big Think’s Twit­ter Feed. Get our Twit­ter Feed here.

Culture on Twitter

in | February 10th, 2009

• Open Cul­ture: The best cul­tur­al & edu­ca­tion­al media on the web.… if we can humbly say so.
• BBC: Offi­cial BBC Twit­ter Account
• Big Think: A glob­al forum con­nect­ing peo­ple and ideas.
• Boing Boing: A direc­to­ry of won­der­ful things, includ­ing some great cul­tur­al bits.
• ccLearn: Access to qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion for every­one, every­where, at any time. A divi­sion of Cre­ative Com­mons.
• Com­posers’ Forum: For clas­si­cal music fans, a feed that con­nects com­posers and com­mu­ni­ties.
• ForaTV: Bril­liant Ideas for Dis­course and Debate.
• Freako­nom­ics: The book Freako­nom­ics has sold 3 mil­lion copies world­wide. This blog, begun in 2005, is meant to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going.
• FSG Books: Every­thing com­ing out of Far­rar, Straus, and Giroux Books.
• Futur­iz­ing Books:  What book pub­lish­ers are doing–and not doing–to stick around.
• Harper­Stu­dio: an exper­i­men­tal imprint at Harper­Collins hop­ing to change the future of pub­lish­ing.
• Harpers: An Amer­i­can gen­er­al inter­est mag­a­zine pub­lished from 1850.
• Har­vard Press: Pub­lish­es non­fic­tion in the human­i­ties, social sci­ences, and sci­ences.
• Inter­net Archive: A non-prof­it found­ed to build an Inter­net library, offer­ing per­ma­nent access to his­tor­i­cal col­lec­tions exist­ing in dig­i­tal for­mat.
• Kottke.org: From the weblog about the lib­er­al arts 2.0 edit­ed by Jason Kot­tke since March 1998.
• LA Times Books: Lit­er­ary news & reviews from the Los Ange­les Times Jack­et Copy blog & Books sec­tion.
• Large­Heart­ed­Boy: From the excel­lent music blog the fea­tures lots of free mp3s.
• Lib­rivox: Free pub­lic domain audio­books
• Maud New­ton: Occa­sion­al lit­er­ary links, amuse­ments, pol­i­tics and rants.
• Met­Mu­se­um: The big art muse­um in NYC.
• MoMA: anoth­er big one in NYC.
• PBS Media Shift: Tracks how new media—from weblogs to pod­casts to cit­i­zen journalism—are chang­ing soci­ety and cul­ture.
• Neil Gaiman: Writer of Star­dust, Good Omens, Amer­i­can Gods, Anan­si Boys, etc.
• New York Times Arts: Arts and Enter­tain­ment News from NYTimes.com/Arts
• New York Times Books: Recent Crit­ics’ Picks, News and Author Inter­views by the Writ­ers and Blog­gers of NYTimes.com/Books
• PBS Media Shift: Track how new media—from weblogs to pod­casts to cit­i­zen journalism—are chang­ing soci­ety and cul­ture.
• Ready Steady Book: An inde­pen­dent book review web­site devot­ed to review­ing the very best books in lit­er­ary fic­tion, poet­ry, his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy.
• Research Channel: Remark­able speak­ers, researchers and schol­ars present rev­o­lu­tion­ary thoughts and dis­cov­er­ies on ResearchChan­nel.
• Sun­dance: This is the offi­cial feed from the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, hit­ting Park City, Utah each Jan­u­ary.
• Tate: A fam­i­ly of four art gal­leries in the UK: Tate Britain, Tate Mod­ern, Tate Liv­er­pool and Tate St Ives.
• TED Talks: The offi­cial feed of TEDTalks: Ideas worth spread­ing — new TEDTalks and news.
• The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion: The lead­ing news source for high­er edu­ca­tion.
• The Econ­o­mist: Offi­cial Twit­ter site for The Econ­o­mist. Fol­low for new arti­cle and event post­ings, debate updates, inter­views and web­site devel­op­ments.
• The Library of Con­gress: The largest library in the world, with mil­lions of books, record­ings, pho­tographs, maps and man­u­scripts in our col­lec­tions.
• The New York­er: The New York­er is a week­ly mag­a­zine with a mix of report­ing of pol­i­tics and cul­ture, humor and car­toons, fic­tion and poet­ry, and reviews and crit­i­cism.
• The New York Review of Books: The pre­mier lit­er­ary-intel­lec­tu­al mag­a­zine in the Eng­lish lan­guage.
• The Sci­ence Chan­nel: Offers updates, net­work exclu­sives & break­ing sci­ence & tech news.
• This Amer­i­can Life: Fol­low the great NPR radio show.
• UChica­go Press: Pub­lish­ing fine books and jour­nals since 1891.
• Utne Read­er: The best of the alter­na­tive press.
• Wired: Cov­er­age of cur­rent and future trends in tech­nol­o­gy, and how they are shap­ing busi­ness, enter­tain­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, sci­ence, pol­i­tics…

Extra Goodies on Twitter

in Uncategorized | February 7th, 2009

As I gath­er mate­r­i­al for the blog, I often come across con­tent that’s inter­est­ing, but not quite right for the blog. It seemed like Twit­ter might be a good place to add this bonus mate­r­i­al. So from here on out, I’ll casu­al­ly add some extra con­tent there. Today, I just men­tioned how you can get 50% off of some clas­sic Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture. Check out our Twit­ter feed here.

Google Puts Free Books on Your Mobile Phone

in Books, e-books, Literature | February 5th, 2009

Wow. Point your mobile web brows­er to books.google.com/m and you can read full books on your portable device. Accord­ing to The Globe and Mail, Google is mak­ing 500,000 books, most from the pub­lic domain, freely avail­able to you. And if you live in the US, the num­ber will reach 1.5 mil­lion. The col­lec­tion includes works by Charles Dick­ens, Jane Austen, Shake­speare, Mil­ton and more. (You can also find many sim­i­lar texts in our col­lec­tion of free audio books.) I test­ed Google’s mobile books on the iPhone, and it looks real­ly good. Hope­ful­ly things will work well on your mobile device as well.

via Maud New­ton’s Twit­ter Feed

get Open Cul­ture’s Twit­ter Feed here.

Japan’s Lost Decade and What It Means for the US

in Current Affairs, Economics | February 3rd, 2009

NPR’s Plan­et Mon­ey pod­cast has done an excel­lent job of track­ing the ongo­ing glob­al finan­cial cri­sis. In its lat­est install­ment (Stream — iTunes — Rss Feed), they get down to an impor­tant ques­tion: Does his­to­ry offer solu­tions to the cur­rent cri­sis? And if so, does it make sense to look back at the Depres­sion of the 1930s? Or does 1990s Japan offer a bet­ter exam­ple?

One of Plan­et Mon­ey’s guests, econ­o­mist Adam Posen, argues that we should keep our eyes on Japan. Dur­ing the 1980s, Japan­ese banks and investors exploit­ed loose mort­gage lend­ing and gen­er­at­ed a sub­stan­tial real estate bub­ble, which popped in the ear­ly 90s once Japan’s gov­ern­ment start­ed tight­en­ing cred­it. From there, all oth­er assets and mar­kets fell apart, and a long reces­sion began. Sound famil­iar?

For Posen, the actions of the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment help illus­trate which anti-reces­sion poli­cies worked, and which did­n’t. The upshot is that Japan’s cri­sis could have been lim­it­ed to three years. But it went on for a decade instead. And that’s because Japan nev­er passed a major stim­u­lus pack­age until the very end, and because the gov­ern­ment nev­er forced the banks to change their prac­tices. This all sug­gests that Amer­i­can pol­i­cy can make a dif­fer­ence. The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has a big stim­u­lus pack­age com­ing. But will it get the banks under con­trol? I’m less than san­guine about that, and it could make the dif­fer­ence between a short, sharp reces­sion and anoth­er lost decade.

PS The con­ver­sa­tion men­tioned above starts about 3 and 1/2 min­utes into the pod­cast.

Salvador Dali on “What’s My Line?”

in Television, Video - Arts & Culture | January 22nd, 2009

What’s My Line? aired on CBS from 1950 to 1967, mak­ing it the longest-run­ning game show in Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion his­to­ry. Dur­ing its eigh­teen sea­sons, the show fea­tured hun­dreds of celebri­ties & VIPs. Above, you can watch Sal­vador Dali in action. You can also rewind the video tape and check out Alfred Hitch­cock, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Grou­cho Marx, Carl Sand­burg, among oth­ers. For more oldies and good­ies, check out Orson Welles Vin­tage Radio & The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation.

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The Story Behind the Iconic Obama Campaign Poster

in Art, Current Affairs | January 22nd, 2009

The sto­ry behind the art­work that defined the Oba­ma cam­paign is a fas­ci­nat­ing one. Shep­ard Fairey’s posters achieved promi­nence much in the same way that Oba­ma did. They rose from the ground up. Every­day peo­ple sup­port­ed and pro­mot­ed his imag­i­na­tive posters on the web, until they became some­thing of a pub­lic phe­nom­e­non. And they turned the sta­tus quo — in this case, the tra­di­tion polit­i­cal poster — into some­thing fresh and new. In this inter­view (iTunes — Feed — Stream), Fairey, once a self-pro­claimed “out­law street artist,” talks about how got start­ed with his Oba­ma pieces, and how his most cel­e­brat­ed work end­ed up in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion at the U.S. Nation­al Por­trait Gallery.

P.S. As you’ll see, we’re in the midst of launch­ing a new design. Things are going rather smooth­ly. But if you encounter any prob­lems, please be patient and please let us know. We’ll be mak­ing small tweaks here and there. Thanks!

For MLK on His Birthday

in Current Affairs, History, Video - Politics/Society | January 18th, 2009

The full “I Have a Dream” speech. The place: The Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al. The Date:  August 28, 1963. The Why: To bring about many small changes in Amer­i­can soci­ety, which even­tu­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly bring us to Tues­day. Take it away Mar­tin:

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