Underwater Volcanic Eruption Witnessed for the First Time

in Science | January 4th, 2010

What do you have here? Lava flow­ing from a deep-ocean seafloor vol­cano, explod­ing into 35 foot long streams with bub­bles as much as 3 feet across. This kind of action has nev­er been wit­nessed before. (Some­what sur­pris­ing, no?) This clip comes out of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton. And the real action, which takes place near Amer­i­can Samoa, begins at the 1:28 mark.

Free Courses Now Easier to Find

in Online Courses | January 3rd, 2010

Just a quick note: our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties was get­ting a bit long, push­ing toward 275 cours­es. So we decid­ed to make things a bit eas­i­er to nav­i­gate. You can now direct­ly access indi­vid­ual sec­tions of the col­lec­tion. The sec­tions are list­ed below, and you can oth­er­wise find them in the “Free Cours­es” sec­tion of our site (locat­ed in the cen­ter ver­ti­cal nav). All cours­es can be down­loaded to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er (yup, it’s a bonan­za of free con­tent), and while the col­lec­tion includes many cours­es in audio, you will also find many in video too.

• Biol­o­gy
• Com­put­er Sci­ence
• Eco­nom­ics
• Engi­neer­ing
• His­to­ry
• Lit­er­a­ture
• Math
• Phi­los­o­phy
• Physics
• Polit­i­cal Sci­ence
• Psy­chol­o­gy
• All Free Cours­es

Can You Train the Aging Brain?

in Life, Science | January 1st, 2010

The New York Times asks: Can an old brain learn, and then remem­ber what it learns? Can it keep nim­ble and throw off the rust? Hap­pi­ly, new stud­ies sug­gest that it can, and it large­ly comes down to nudg­ing neu­rons in the right direc­tion by chal­leng­ing our ingrained per­cep­tions, con­fronting new ideas, and con­stant­ly push­ing to dis­cov­er new things. Get more on how to keep your mind sharp here.

Learn a New Language in the New Year

in Language Lessons | January 1st, 2010

We can’t help you get fit (at least phys­i­cal­ly) in the new year. But we can help you learn a new lan­guage. Our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons cov­ers 37 lan­guages, and we have now devel­oped sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to com­mon­ly sought after lan­guages. (See below.) Please keep in mind that the col­lec­tion also fea­tures less fre­quent­ly spo­ken languages–Maori, Lux­em­bour­gish, Taga­log, Yid­dish and beyond. For all lan­guages, please vis­it the full col­lec­tion How to Learn Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & 37 Oth­er Lan­guages:

• How to Learn Ara­bic for Free
• How to Learn Chi­nese for Free (most­ly Man­darin)
• How to Learn Eng­lish for Free
• How to Learn French for Free
• How to Learn Ger­man for Free
• How to Learn Ital­ian for Free
• How to Learn Japan­ese for Free
• How to Learn Russ­ian for Free
• How to Learn Span­ish for Free

Open Culture Makes You Say, “Holy Cow This is So Cool”

in Random | December 31st, 2009

Yes­ter­day, Jon Gor­don (the host of Future Tense, a tech­nol­o­gy show aired by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media) dis­cussed the major tech inno­va­tions of the decade. At the end of the show (around the 49th minute), a caller asked: “What’s the neat­est site, in terms of wow fac­tor, that makes you say holy cow this is so cool?” And, in answer, Jon respond­ed: Open Cul­ture. We’re not cut­ting edge. We’re under-read and under-appre­ci­at­ed. (All prob­a­bly true — any thoughts on how to fix that?). But we deliv­er the goods. Thanks very much Jon, and thanks for allow­ing me the rare self-pat on the back. You can lis­ten to the inter­view below or access it here. And, if you want, you can fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book and get updat­ed on all new bits of Open Cul­ture.

The Best of Open Culture 2009

in Most Popular | December 29th, 2009

Could­n’t let you down. Could­n’t let the year end with­out giv­ing you a “best of” list. So here it goes. A pure­ly sub­jec­tive list. 25 items. Some edu­ca­tion­al; some a lit­tle more enter­tain­ing; some pop­u­lar, etc. I hope you enjoy, and you can always search through our com­plete archive here. Thanks all, and best wish­es in ’10.

• 10 Pow­er Tools for Life­long Learn­ers
• Big List of Free Movies
• How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.
• Every TED Talk Under the Sun
• Top Ten Rea­sons Why the Kin­dle Won’t Be an iPod for Books
• The Bayeux Tapes­try Ani­mat­ed
• Anne Frank: The Only Exist­ing Video Now Online
• The Old Man & The Sea Ani­mat­ed
• Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites
• Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Film Noir, Doc­u­men­taries & More
• Free eBooks for Your PC, iPhone, Kin­dle & Beyond
• Ira Glass on Why Cre­ative Excel­lence Takes Time
• James Joyce Read­ing from Finnegans Wake
• Learn­ing Physics Through Free Online Cours­es
• Steve Jobs Demos the First Mac­in­tosh in 1984
• Tchaikovsky’s Voice Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der (1890)
• Helen Keller Cap­tured on Video
• The Ancient His­to­ry Learn­ing Guide
• Bill Gates Puts Richard Feyn­man Lec­tures Online
• Sita Sings the Blues: Share It, Remix It
• Bike Tricks Cour­tesy of Thomas Edi­son
• Blogs & Pod­casts for the Finan­cial Cri­sis
• Google Puts Free Books on Your Mobile Phone
• When “Stand By Me” Trav­els Around the World
• The His­to­ry of the Inter­net in 8 Min­utes
• Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy: Stu­dent Brings Type­writer to Class

Quentin Tarantino Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

in Film | December 29th, 2009

Yup, we men­tioned Quentin Taran­ti­no last week, and we’re doing it again this week because Rosario has unearthed this nice clip. In six snap­py min­utes, Taran­ti­no (direc­tor of Pulp Fic­tion, Reser­voir Dog, Inglo­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, etc) lists his favorites films made since 1992 — when he, him­self, start­ed mak­ing films. You’ll know some of these titles, but like­ly not oth­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art (1994)

Free eBooks for Your PC, iPhone, Kindle & Beyond

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, iPhone, Literature, Most Popular | December 27th, 2009

Today, we’re rolling out a siz­able col­lec­tion of Free eBooks, most of them clas­sics, that fea­tures major works writ­ten by James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Jane Austen, Niet­zsche and oth­ers. (We have even thrown in a lit­tle Paulo Coel­ho.) You’ll find 100+ free ebooks in total, and you can down­load the texts to your com­put­er, smart phone (iPhone, Android, etc.) or Kin­dle, depend­ing on the for­mat you choose.  Our eBooks Primer overviews the dif­fer­ent down­load options, so please give it a quick read over. Below, we’ve post­ed a quick sam­ple from the new col­lec­tion (plus a link to the entire list of Free eBooks). Feel free to offer feed­back and share the list with friends. Down the road, you can always find this col­lec­tion in the top nav­i­ga­tion bar. Just looks for eBooks.

• Austen, Jane — Pride & Prej­u­dice — Google Mobile — Guten­berg — Kin­dle — Feed­books
• Coel­ho, Paulo — War­rior of the Light — Feed­books
• Dos­to­evsky, Fyo­dor — Crime and Pun­ish­ment — Google Mobile — Kin­dle — Feed­books
• Fitzger­ald, F. Scott — This Side of Par­adise — Google Mobile — Guten­berg — Kin­dle
• Melville, Her­man — Moby Dick — Google Mobile — Guten­berg — Kin­dle — Feed­books
• Niet­zsche, Friedrich — Beyond Good and Evil — Google Mobile — Guten­berg — Feed­books

For more ebooks, please vis­it Free eBooks: Great Books on Your PC, iPhone, Kin­dle & Beyond

Note: Don’t for­get to check in on Seth Har­wood’s big Kin­dle exper­i­ment. What hap­pens when you sell your book for 99 cents on the Kin­dle? Find out as the exper­i­ment unfolds. Sto­ry here.

Disney Kindle Commando Sunday is Here!

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Books, Literature | December 27th, 2009

Today’s free sto­ry: When They Were Call­ing You in for Din­ner (lis­ten here) or read it in the Charles Riv­er Review [To down­load the sto­ry and lis­ten on your MP3 play­er, just right-click and “save file as…”]

Dear OC read­ers,

About a week ago, I post­ed here about my Pub­lish­ing Exper­i­ment Take 1. I spoke of the need for authors (Yes, Authors!) to make exper­i­ments in new media and pub­lish­ing. Well, now’s the time to put my fic­tion where my mouth is. Today I’m launch­ing my col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, A Long Way from Dis­ney, on Ama­zon’s Kin­dle plat­form at the price of $.99.

Direct link to buy A Long Way from Dis­ney on Ama­zon.

Please vis­it SethHarwood.com/kindle for more info. You can buy the book if you have 1) A Kin­dle 2) an iPhone/iPod Touch or 3) Any PC com­put­er!

Easy! See you soon with more free sto­ries and results from this exper­i­ment.

PS: If you’d like to hear more free sto­ries like this, you can check out new posts today at CrimeWAV.com and SethHarwood.com. You can also get the sto­ries direct­ly from iTunes.

Seth Har­wood pod­casts his ideas on the pub­lish­ing indus­try and his fic­tion for free at sethharwood.com. He will be teach­ing an online course (The Essen­tial Art: Mak­ing Movies in Your Reader’s Mind) with Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies start­ing in Jan­u­ary. His first nov­el, JACK WAKES UP, is in stores now.

Free Russian Lessons

in | December 26th, 2009

Learn Russ­ian for free online. Down­load free audio lessons to your com­put­er or mp3 play­er and start learn­ing Russ­ian instant­ly. To learn more lan­guages, please vis­it our com­plete col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons.

• For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute Russ­ian Fast — Web Site
  • Text­book (PDF) and eight audio lessons (MP3).
• For­eign Ser­vice Russ­ian: An Active Intro­duc­tion - Web site
  • 11 lessons and a text­book.
• Learn Russ­ian — Web Site
  • A free course by RT.com that cov­ers all aspects of Russ­ian includ­ing alpha­bet, pho­net­ics, vocab­u­lary and gram­mar. It also has mul­ti­ple gram­mar tables and tests. RT.com is a Russ­ian 24/7 Eng­lish-lan­guage news chan­nel.
• Learn Russ­ian Flu­ent­ly, Eas­i­ly and Effec­tive­ly - Spo­ti­fy
  • A 4‑hour series of lessons that are freely avail­able on Spo­ti­fy
• Russ­ian Gram­mar — YouTube
  • 50 free, short videos on top­ics in basic Russ­ian gram­mar. Fund­ed by a grant from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, the videos were cre­at­ed by Cur­tis Ford, a senior instruc­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Russ­ian Lit­er­a­ture — Web Site
  • Also pre­sent­ed by UCLA, the lessons help users improve their com­pre­hen­sion and vocab­u­lary by lis­ten­ing to excerpts from Tol­stoy, Gogol, Chekhov and oth­er Russ­ian lit­er­ary greats.
• One Minute Russ­ian — YouTube
  • Learn the absolute basics of Russ­ian with a 10-les­­son course of “espres­­so-break” episodes. In this course you’ll learn to greet peo­ple, say that you’re learn­ing the lan­guage, intro­duce your­self and ask peo­ple how they’re feel­ing, and lots more.
• RussianPod101 — iTunes Free
  • Helps you learn Russ­ian and Russ­ian cul­ture at your con­ve­nience.

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