Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (and Other Classic Films Online)

in Film | May 1st, 2008

It’s not exact­ly the same as watch­ing a film on the sil­ver screen. But you get what you pay for. Below, we have Frank Capra’s 1939 clas­sic, Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton, star­ring Jim­my Stew­art and Claude Rains. For those who cling to the hope that democ­ra­cies can rid them­selves of cor­rup­tion and spe­cial inter­ests, this film is for you, and it also appears in our col­lec­tion of free online movies.

Get a high­er qual­i­ty copy of Capra’s clas­sic on DVD here.

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How to Turn Your iPod Into Anything (75+ Tutorials)

in Apple, Podcasts | May 1st, 2008

Ear­li­er this week, Trav­el Hack­er post­ed this col­lec­tion of tuto­ri­als explain­ing how to max­i­mize the use of your iPod. And it hap­pens to include one of our ear­li­er posts: Turn Your iPod into a Trav­el Guide: 20 Trav­el Pod­casts.

Trav­el Hack­er could have just as eas­i­ly includ­ed some of our oth­er pop­u­lar pieces. Take for exam­ple:

• 10 Ways to Make Your iPod a Bet­ter Learn­ing Gad­get
• 10 Unex­pect­ed Uses of the iPod
• 200+ Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es on Your iPod

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One Day, One World, United by Film

in Film | April 30th, 2008

In 2006, doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Jehane Nou­jaim (Con­trol Room) made a wish at the TED con­fer­ence (see below) — for world peace. For Nou­jaim, peace starts with cul­tur­al exchange, with get­ting to know one anoth­er. And since we all can’t trav­el, anoth­er way to achieve this is through film and its abil­i­ty to “take you into new worlds” and “across bor­ders.”

Two years lat­er, Nou­jaim’s wish may come true, and the uni­fy­ing pow­er of film will be put to the test. May 10 marks Pangea Day, a day when peo­ple from around the world (from Mum­bai and Cairo to Kigali, Rio and LA) will come togeth­er and watch the same films made by var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al film­mak­ers. “Watch par­ties” will be held world­wide, and the event will be broad­cast via web­cast and mobile phone. Below, we’ve also post­ed a movie trail­er intro­duc­ing the con­cept of Pangea Day. For more infor­ma­tion, click here. (Thanks Natasha for the heads up.)

Nou­jaim at TED

Pangea Day Trail­er

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Teaching on YouTube Goes Viral

in YouTube | April 30th, 2008

Last week, Alexan­dra Juhasz con­tributed a guest piece review­ing her exper­i­men­tal efforts to make YouTube an effec­tive teach­ing tool. And it did­n’t take long for the web to take notice. Soon after we post­ed her review, The Wired Cam­pus (Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) took an angle on the piece. Next, the ven­er­a­ble Ars Tech­ni­ca used the post as a spring­board for its own sum­ma­ry. And final­ly, that sto­ry soon reached the home­page of Digg.com, which inevitably meant that Alexan­dra’s piece got picked up by umpteen small­er blogs. It’s always fun to watch the rip­ple effects of the web go through their motions.

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Body of War: Paralyzed in Iraq and the Long Road Back

in Current Affairs, Film | April 27th, 2008

On the Amer­i­can home front, the Iraq war has entered its apa­thet­ic phase. The war con­tin­ues to grind on, but the mis­sion gets far less news ink than before, and the debate over the war’s mer­its and tac­tics rarely gets hashed back through. That’s per­haps because many have decid­ed to men­tal­ly park the issue until a new admin­is­tra­tion takes over next year. Or because declin­ing home prices and ris­ing food and gas costs have elbowed the Iraq issue aside. Unde­terred, Phil Don­ahue and Ellen Spiro have co-direct­ed a new doc­u­men­tary called Body of War. Being released in US the­aters this month, the doc­u­men­tary (fea­tur­ing music arranged by Eddie Ved­der) tracks the dai­ly life of Tomas Young, a sol­dier shot and par­a­lyzed dur­ing his first week of fight­ing in Iraq, and it gives you a rare glimpse into the dif­fi­cult road that Young and oth­ers have had to trav­el. All of this makes tan­gi­ble some­thing that the cor­po­ra­tized media has­n’t cov­ered much — the real human costs of this war. To date, 4,361 Amer­i­can sol­diers have died in Iraq; over 30,000 have been injured in hos­tile action; and sui­cides of return­ing vets have report­ed­ly risen to alarm­ing rates. Below, we have post­ed the trail­er for the film. In addi­tion, I’d point you to this recent pod­cast by Bill Moy­ers (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which intro­duces you to Tomas Young, Phil Dono­hue, Ellen Spiro and the film they made.

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The Story Behind Ansel Adams’ Famous Yosemite Shots

in Art | April 26th, 2008

The New York Times is run­ning an inter­ac­tive fea­ture that will give you the back­sto­ry behind Ansel Adams’ icon­ic pho­tos tak­en at Yosemite Nation­al Park. Just click on the indi­vid­ual images on this page, and you’ll get a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. (Also see the Times’ accom­pa­ny­ing piece: What Adams Saw Through His Lens.)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Learn the Art of Pho­tog­ra­phy: The Nikon Way

How Cam­era Lens­es are Made

The Best Pho­to­blogs of 2007

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Grateful Dead Donates Archive to UC Santa Cruz

in Music | April 26th, 2008

Sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the Grate­ful Dead announced Thurs­day that they will be donat­ing their archives to UC San­ta Cruz. This pod­cast (Feed — Web Site), fea­tur­ing Bob Weir and Mick­ey Hart (among oth­ers), gives you insight into the think­ing behind this move…

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Scott Sigler’s Infected: Free via Podcast, $16.47 on Amazon

in Audio Books | April 24th, 2008

Hor­ror/s­ci-fi fans, here you go… Scott Sigler’s new and very well-reviewed thriller, Infect­ed, can be down­loaded for free via pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web site). Or you can get it in hard­back for $16.47, which I’m not dis­cour­ag­ing you from doing.

With the links above, you can down­load more free books from Sigler. But, I warn you that the books con­tain a good dose of graph­ic lan­guage.

Check out our exten­sive col­lec­tion of Free Audio­books here.

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Thomas Friedman (While Not Dodging Eco-Pies) Argues “Green is the New Red, White & Blue”

in Current Affairs, Stanford | April 23rd, 2008

Speak­ing at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty ear­li­er this week, Thomas Fried­man had to deal with some unfor­tu­nate extra-cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties. As he took the stage, two stu­dents call­ing them­selves the “Green­wash Gueril­las” launched pies (video here) at Fried­man and large­ly missed. But they did leave behind some pam­phlets spelling out their motives. Accord­ing to The Brown Dai­ly Her­ald, the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist for The New York Times deserved this dis­rup­tion because of “his sick­en­ing­ly cheery applaud for free mar­ket cap­i­tal­is­m’s con­quest of the plan­et” and “for help­ing turn envi­ron­men­tal­ism into a fake plas­tic con­sumer prod­uct for the priv­i­leged.” Some­where the giants of rev­o­lu­tion­ary rhetoric are gri­mac­ing and won­der­ing what hap­pened to their once well prac­ticed art.

Now that I’ve got your atten­tion, I want to point you to a talk that Fried­man gave last year at Stan­ford — Green is the New Red, White and Blue (iTunes). The talk takes you into the heart of Fried­man’s com­plex think­ing about the envi­ron­ment (and all that the Green Gueril­las odd­ly take issue with). And it’s pre­sent­ed with the same intel­li­gence that you’ll find on dis­play in the sec­ond most down­loaded pod­cast on iTunes U: The World is Flat. (This sec­ond talk was pre­sent­ed at MIT, and it’s only exceed­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty by Randy Pausch’s soul­ful lec­ture, “Real­ly Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams,” which we fea­tured on Mon­day.) Fried­man’s think­ing in the Stan­ford pod­cast (give it a lis­ten, you’ll be bet­ter for it) lays the foun­da­tion for his new book due out in August — Hot, Flat, and Crowd­ed: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew Amer­i­ca.

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Lifehack for Learning Foreign Languages

in Language Lessons | April 22nd, 2008

Here is a quick “life­hack” for you. You can now learn for­eign lan­guages and stay cur­rent on pol­i­tics all at once. How so? By tak­ing advan­tage of a smart pod­cast con­cept being used by French and Ger­man broad­cast­ers. Radio France Inter­na­tionale (RFI) issues a dai­ly pro­gram called Le Jour­nal en français facile (iTunes — feed — web site), which deliv­ers the night­ly inter­na­tion­al news in slow and easy-to-under­stand French. Along the same lines, the Ger­man media com­pa­ny Deutsche Welle (which puts out many great lan­guage and music pro­grams) also has its own night­ly news pro­gram — Langsam gesproch­ene Nachricht­en (iTunes — feed — web site). It’s essen­tial­ly the same con­cept: infor­ma­tive news pre­sent­ed in very sim­ple Ger­man, and, in this case, it’s spo­ken very slow­ly.

Now, what’s very nice about these pro­grams is that they also pro­vide a writ­ten tran­script of the spo­ken word. So you can read along as you lis­ten and make sure that you’re real­ly com­pre­hend­ing. (See tran­scripts in French and Ger­man). Even cool­er, with the Ger­man ver­sion, if you have a video iPod, you can read the tran­script on your lit­tle portable screen. (See direc­tions).

Final­ly, check out this off­beat sug­ges­tion sent our way by a read­er: Nun­tii Lati­ni (mp3 — web site) is “a week­ly review of world news in Clas­si­cal Latin, the only inter­na­tion­al broad­cast of its kind in the world, pro­duced by YLE, the Finnish Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny.”

To learn more lan­guages, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & Beyond.

Relat­ed Resource: See our arti­cle called “Cof­fee Break Span­ish & The Threat to Tra­di­tion­al Media”