Helen Keller Captured on Video

in History | August 22nd, 2009

You’ve all heard about Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sul­li­van. Now, thanks to this vin­tage footage from the 1930s, you can see Keller in the flesh and dis­cov­er how she learned to talk (then  even­tu­al­ly became an author, lec­tur­er, and cham­pi­on of many pro­gres­sive caus­es). It’s worth watch­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the stir­ring fin­ish. We’ve added this clip to our YouTube Favorites.

via Boing Boing

Good “Reads” On Audible (with Freebie Possibilities)

in Audio Books, Books, Deals, Literature | August 21st, 2009

A quick note: Audi­ble has recent­ly launched a series called the Audi­ble Mod­ern Van­guard (more details here) that brings ground­break­ing works and authors into unabridged audio for the first time. Here, you’ll find works by Paul Auster (one of my faves), Saul Bel­low, John Cheev­er, John Irv­ing, Kurt Von­negut, and William Kennedy.

There are some good “reads” here, and, unless I’m mis­tak­en, there’s a way that you can down­load one for free. I’ve cre­at­ed a page where you can get infor­ma­tion on Audi­ble’s (no strings attached) 14 day tri­al here, which gives you a com­plete­ly free down­load of any audio book you choose.

Argument to Beethoven’s 5th

in Comedy, Music | August 20th, 2009

A lit­tle piece of clas­sic Amer­i­cana TV. We take you back to the 1950s and Sid Cae­sar’s com­ic work. It’s hard to imag­ine some­one work­ing Beethoven’s 5th into com­ic mate­r­i­al, but Cae­sar did it. In the mean­time, if you want some­thing a lit­tle more seri­ous, I give you this rare footage of Her­bert von Kara­jan con­duct­ing the same sym­pho­ny in 1966. An old gem. Last­ly, get lots of free clas­si­cal music from our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Freud in One Yale Hour

in Psychology, Yale | August 20th, 2009

Freudi­an­ism may no longer be in vogue. But, even so, Sig­mund Freud remains one of the most enve­lope-push­ing thinkers of the past cen­tu­ry, some­one still worth get­ting to know. In this lec­ture, Yale psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Paul Bloom offers a primer on Freud and Freudi­an thought. The lec­ture is part of a larg­er free course (20 lec­tures in total) called “Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy.” You can access the course via the Yale Open Course web site, YouTube and iTune­sU.

How to Get an Author to Sign Your Kindle

in Amazon Kindle | August 20th, 2009

Ok, so we’re back to giv­ing the Kin­dle a hard time. Thanks Scott for the tip!

via the Rumpus.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the Hugest Kin­dle Ever

The Future of Content Delivery

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Books, Podcasts | August 18th, 2009

This pod­cast (get it here) presents the thoughts of Scott Sigler–media maven, NY Times Best­selling Author of INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS (both avail­able free as pod­casts), podi­o­book dynamo, and social net­work­ing mastermind–on none oth­er than “how will peo­ple read books in the near future?”

In this repod­cast of his keynote speech at this year’s Balti­con con­fer­ence, Scott talks about how he built a HUGE online fan base for his fic­tion, land­ed a major pub­lish­ing deal with Crown Books, reached NY Times best­seller sta­tus, and why he insists that giv­ing his fic­tion away for free is the best mar­ket­ing around.

He presents his thoughts on Big Pub­lish­ing, small pub­lish­ing, smart-phones vs. the Kin­dle, and per­haps most impor­tant­ly, lays out the meth­ods by which he pre-sold 1,500 copies of his new, self-pub­lished nov­el THE ROOKIE this April via his own web­site, scottsigler.com. That’s right: For­get print-on-demand and its high­er cost-per-book. Scott breaks down how he pre-sold enough books to pay for an entire print run before THE ROOKIE ever went to press! It’s a mod­el so far ahead of every­one else that we’ve got to take notes!

If you’re a writer or aspir­ing author, you need to lis­ten to this. And don’t let the intro scare you off.

To down­load this file and lis­ten to it on your own time, on your iPod or sim­i­lar device, sim­ple right click this link: DOWNLOAD and choose “Save Link as…” on a Mac, or “Save File” on a PC.

Or lis­ten to it right here:

Seth Har­wood, the author of JACK WAKES UP, will be teach­ing an online course (The Grip­ping Read) with Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. And he’ll also be teach­ing an Author Boot­camp with Scott Sigler on Stan­ford’s cam­pus on Novem­ber 7 and 14. Each course only has a few slots still open.

Woodstock Revisited in Three Minutes

in Music | August 17th, 2009

It was 40 years ago today — August 15 to August 18, 1969.

In Memory of Les Paul

in Music | August 13th, 2009

Les Paul, the gui­tar mas­ter and inven­tor, passed away today at the age of 94. The clip above shows Paul at 90, just a few years ago, liv­ing a still vig­or­ous life. He’ll be missed.

Introducing “Book Oven”

in Books | August 12th, 2009

The folks who brought you Lib­rivox (one of our favs) are now rolling out a new site: Book Oven. The beau­ty of Lib­rivox is that it has used crowd­sourc­ing to pro­duce the largest col­lec­tion of free audio books on the web (and we’ve fea­tured many of them in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books). Book Oven takes crowd­sourc­ing and does some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent with it. It gives book lovers the pow­er to par­tic­i­pate in the writ­ing, sales and dis­tri­b­u­tion of new books. Above, Hugh McGuire, founder of Lib­rivox, explains the con­cept of Book Oven more ful­ly. (You’ll need to turn up the vol­ume a bit.) The site is cur­rent­ly in alpha, and I sus­pect that you can watch it evolve dur­ing the months ahead. Watch Book Oven Blog to track its devel­op­ment.

Will Amazon (or Apple) Cut Publishers Out of the Loop?

in Amazon Kindle, Apple, Books, e-books | August 11th, 2009

If you’re won­der­ing where the book/publishing mar­ket is head­ing, then you’ll want to give this insight­ful arti­cle a read.  Fast for­ward five years, here’s what you’ll like­ly find: Ama­zon, using the Kin­dle and on-demand pub­lish­ing, starts work­ing direct­ly with authors and cut­ting tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ers out of the loop. It will dom­i­nate the book/e‑book mar­ket, much as Apple does the music mar­ket. The only thing stand­ing in Jeff Bezos’ way? Steve Jobs. Why? Because Apple can pro­duce an e‑book read­er that actu­al­ly appeals to a mass mar­ket, and Ama­zon can’t. And guess what? Apple is rumored to have a new device com­ing out this year. More on that here. Thanks to Seth Har­wood for send­ing this along.