Kindle the Answer? For Author J.A. Konrath It Is

in Amazon Kindle, Books, e-books | November 22nd, 2009

With six pub­lished nov­els under his belt, you might think J.A. Kon­rath has it made. But, if you know much about the cur­rent pub­lish­ing mar­ket, you could cer­tain­ly ques­tion that. Made or not, JA made a very inter­est­ing dis­cov­ery recent­ly when he sat down and com­pared his Hype­r­i­on ebook roy­al­ty state­ments with the pro­ceeds he’s brought in by putting up four nov­els on Ama­zon’s Kin­dle store all by him­self.

What did he learn? That self-pub­lish­ing ebooks can be a lucra­tive and very real option for known authors! You’ve got to read the whole post here to get a full sense of the fig­ures involved and why this has been work­ing for him.

While we’re at it, if you want more writ­ers dis­clos­ing their roy­al­ty state­ments in blogs, have a look at what Lynn Viehl has to say about the pro­ceeds from her NY Times Best­selling books at Genreality.com. Thanks to April Hamil­ton at  Pub­le­tari­at for bring­ing this to my eye.

You can find out more about Seth’s work (includ­ing his lat­est book Jack Wakes Up) at SethHarwood.com.

Jimi Hendrix Breaks Out in America, Covers Bob Dylan

in Music | November 20th, 2009

We take you back to 1967, to the three-day Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in Cal­i­for­nia, which was kind of a pre­cur­sor to the Wood­stock Fes­ti­val held in 1969. Mon­terey marked, among oth­er things, the first major Amer­i­can appear­ances by Jimi Hen­drix and The Who. Above, we give you Hen­drix cov­er­ing Bob Dylan’s anthem Like a Rolling Stone. And here, we have Wild Thing, which ends famous­ly in Hen­drix adding fire to his best imi­ta­tion of Pete Town­shend. Great vin­tage clips which you’ll find in our YouTube favorites.

I Met the Walrus: An Animated Film Revisiting a Teenager’s 1969 Interview with John Lennon

in Music | November 19th, 2009

It hap­pened 44 years ago. A 14-year-old Bea­t­les fan named Jer­ry Lev­i­tan man­aged to sneak into John Lennon’s Toron­to hotel room and asked for an inter­view. And he got one. Now, there’s a short ani­mat­ed film that brings that encounter back to life. I Met the Wal­rus was nom­i­nat­ed for the 2008 Acad­e­my Award for Ani­mat­ed Short. You’ll know why when you watch it. Anoth­er excel­lent find by Vick­ie.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

Get a Fly-on-the-Wall View of John Lennon Record­ing & Arrang­ing His Clas­sic Song, “Imag­ine” (1971)

Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

Remix Manifesto: A True Movie for the Digital Age

in Film | November 18th, 2009

It’s nice to see cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Michael Wesch get­ting fea­tured right now on YouTube’s home­page. (A pro­fes­sor get­ting fea­tured on YouTube? That has to be a first.) Any­way, Wesch is direct­ing view­ers to a film called RIP: A Remix Man­i­festo, a prize win­ning film that offers a “prob­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into how cul­ture builds upon cul­ture [think mashup] in the infor­ma­tion age.” I have post­ed the trail­er above. You can also watch the com­plete movie in mul­ti­ple parts on YouTube (Part 1 is here), or direct­ly down­load the entire film and name your price. If you haven’t seen Wesch’s own videos, you can watch his cre­ative pieces here, here, and here.

Google Puts Supreme Court Opinions Online

in Google, Law | November 17th, 2009

A quick fyi: Start­ing today, you can find online legal opin­ions from the Supreme Court, as well as fed­er­al and state courts, thanks to Google Schol­ar. When you vis­it Google Schol­ar, click on the “Legal opin­ions and jour­nals” radio but­ton, and then begin your query. If you type “sep­a­rate but equal,” Schol­ar with present you with famous Supreme Court Cas­es such as Plessy v. Fer­gu­son and Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion. You get the gist. You can read more about this online legal data­base over at Google’s blog.

UPDATE/NOTE FROM READER: “This has already been done for the US Supreme Court, and very well, at oyez.org.  Oyez is easy to use, has lots of addi­tion­al con­tent, includ­ing sum­maries and audio of oral argu­ments, and is ad-free and Cre­ative Com­mons licensed for its orig­i­nal con­tent.  Plus, you can search by court term, Jus­tice, and the name of the legal coun­sel.” An alter­na­tive source to look at…

The Crowdsourced Musical Collaboration

in Music | November 16th, 2009

This musi­cal bit is eas­i­er watched than described. Click through, start the 20 videos play­ing in any order/timing that you want, and see what you get. You can read the FAQ for the InB b 2.0 project here.

Thanks V for the tip!

Tchaikovsky’s Voice Captured on an Edison Cylinder (1890)

in Music | November 14th, 2009

Take a quick trip back in time, to 1890. Here you can lis­ten to Pyotr Tchaikovsky (The Nut­crack­er, the 1812 Over­ture, etc.) and oth­er emi­nent musi­cians hav­ing some fun, record­ing their voic­es on a then new-fan­gled tech­nol­o­gy, the phono­graph cylin­der, invent­ed by Thomas Edi­son in 1877. To get a tran­script of what the friends had to say, you can read the tran­script after the jump. Thanks Mag­gie for this tip. (via Boing­Bo­ing)

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Can Cultural Evolution Stave Off Global Collapse?

in Science | November 12th, 2009

The pat­tern always repeats itself. Civ­i­liza­tions rise and fall. Then new ones take their place. But, some­thing else may be about to hap­pen. There might be an impend­ing col­lapse of our entire glob­al civ­i­liza­tion. Not one major civ­i­liza­tion, but the entire glob­al civ­i­liza­tion, gone. Or, so that’s how Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Paul Ehrlich sees it. Ehrlich, who has been called “one of the most influ­en­tial ecol­o­gists of our age,” sees one thing staving off dis­as­ter. A big shift in cul­ture first and fore­most. A cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion. Watch above.

A New TV Guide for Internet Television

in Television | November 12th, 2009

Today, Clicker.com comes out of beta and promis­es to become the com­plete guide to Inter­net Tele­vi­sion. Cur­rent­ly, the site “con­tains more than 450,000 episodes, from over 6,000 shows, from over 1,200 net­works, tens of thou­sands of movies, and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists.” The con­tent (all appar­ent­ly legal) is gen­er­al­ly sup­plied by oth­er con­tent providers, and then aggre­gat­ed by Click­er. Although the con­tent is often quite pop, you can find some uni­ver­si­ty con­tent (Berke­ley, Yale, Prince­ton, Stan­ford, etc.) in the mix, much of it sup­plied by Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth. Oth­er qual­i­ty con­tent appears in the Art & Artists sec­tion here and the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion here.

Thanks Denise for the tip.

via USA Today

Stephen Hawking/Carl Sagan Mashup Released as Single

in Music, Physics, Science | November 11th, 2009

For the past cou­ple of months, A Glo­ri­ous Dawn, a mashup meld­ing Stephen Hawk­ing’s voice with scenes from Carl Sagan’s Cos­mos, has been mak­ing its way around the blo­gos­phere. Now, on the eve of what would have been Sagan’s 75th birth­day (he died in 1996), A Glo­ri­ous Dawn has been offi­cial­ly released as a sin­gle by Third Man Records, the label cre­at­ed by White Stripes singer Jack White. We have post­ed the video above. You can also down­load the song in mp3 and oth­er for­mats here, or buy it as a spe­cial 7 inch sin­gle (pre-order here).

via Huff­in­g­ton Post and Telegraph.co.uk