The Free Music Archive

in Music | July 19th, 2009

A quick fyi: The Free Music Archive now offers up over 10,000 free, high qual­i­ty (and legal) mp3s. The archive is run by WFMU, the renowned freeform radio sta­tion that also runs the excel­lent “Beware of the Blog.” All of the audio has been hand-picked by music cura­tors, and you can use the audio pret­ty much how­ev­er you want. That’s because the archive hous­es songs that are either in the pub­lic domain, or released with a Cre­ative Com­mons license. Nice­ly, WFMU has also devel­oped a Twit­ter stream where they announce new addi­tions to the archive. You can learn more about the archive here.

The Open Culture iPhone App

in Apple, iPhone | July 15th, 2009

A quick heads up. We’ve now start­ed rolling out our new iPhone app. It will let you lis­ten to audio­books, uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, for­eign lan­guage lessons, and oth­er intel­li­gent con­tent on the iPhone. The app is free. And so is the con­tent. So there’s noth­ing to lose by check­ing it out.

We’ve designed it so that all media files open in native iPhone soft­ware — iTunes, Safari, the YouTube play­er, etc. You will need wi-fi (Apple says so) to down­load the con­tent. This app, which was very gen­er­ous­ly devel­oped by Fred Hsu, is a work in progress. Don’t hes­i­tate to give us feed­back. And, if you don’t mind, please leave a nice review/rating in the App Store and spread the word. Get it here.

Download The Crucible by Arthur Miller

in Theatre | July 14th, 2009

Here’s an Amer­i­can clas­sic. The Cru­cible, the great play by Arthur Miller, pre­miered in 1953, and it famous­ly used the 1690s Salem Witch Tri­als to offer a com­men­tary on McCarthyite Amer­i­ca. Thanks to LA The­atre Works, you can now lis­ten to the play online. The pro­duc­tion stars Sta­cy Keach, Richard Drey­fuss, Ed Beg­ley, Jr., Joe Spano, and Michael York, among oth­ers. And it’s direct­ed by Mar­tin Jenk­ins. You can access it in two mp3s: Hour 1 here and Hour 2 here.

Update: It appears that this pro­gram is no longer avail­able online. If you real­ly want a free copy, you do have one good alter­na­tive. You can down­load the per­for­mance of The Cru­cible, as an audio book, if you reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al of Audible.com. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion (as I did), or can­cel it, and still keep the audio book. The choice is entire­ly yours.

Philosophy for Beginners: A Free Course from Oxford University

in Philosophy | July 13th, 2009

Phi­los­o­phy does­n’t have to be daunt­ing. Thanks to the Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion pro­gram at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, you can ease into philo­soph­i­cal think­ing by lis­ten­ing to five lec­tures col­lec­tive­ly called Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners. (Find them above. They’re also on iTune­sU in audio and video, plus on YouTube.). Taught by Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Lec­ture 1 starts with a “Romp Through the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy” and moves in a brief hour from Ancient Greece to the present. Sub­se­quent lec­tures (usu­al­ly run­ning about 90 min­utes) cov­er the fol­low­ing top­ics: log­ic, ethics, pol­i­tics, meta­physics, epis­te­mol­o­gy, and lan­guage. For those han­ker­ing for more phi­los­o­phy, see our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

The Future of Content

in Books, Media | July 12th, 2009

Late last week, we fea­tured the free audio and text ver­sions of Chris Ander­son­’s new book, Free: The Future of a Rad­i­cal Price. Today, we high­light a con­ver­sa­tion that recent­ly took place at The Aspen Insti­tute’s Ideas Fes­ti­val, and it focus­es on a sim­i­lar ques­tion, real­ly the main ques­tion pre­oc­cu­py­ing many busi­ness lead­ers these days : How to make mon­ey in an era when con­sumers expect infor­ma­tion-based prod­ucts (books, news­pa­pers, etc.) to be free. The talk is mod­er­at­ed by James Fal­lows, and fea­tures Josh Tyrang­iel (man­ag­ing edi­tor of Time.com), Priscil­la Painton (edi­tor-in-chief of the Simon & Schus­ter adult trade imprint), Bob Pittman (for­mer CEO of MTV Net­works, AOL Net­works), and Deirdre Stan­ley (exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al coun­sel for Thom­son Reuters). It runs an hour plus.

Music Gets Back at the Man

in Music | July 12th, 2009

Bril­liant­ly done. If only we could all respond to cor­po­rate shenani­gans this art­ful­ly…

(PS It turns out that, once this video went viral, Unit­ed had some sec­ond thoughts. More here.)

via Andrew Sul­li­van

Update: How to Get “Free” Anywhere

in Audio Books, Business, Economics | July 9th, 2009

Ok, sor­ry to bela­bor this. Ear­li­er today, I men­tioned that you could down­load the audio­book of Chris Ander­son­’s Free: The Future of a Rad­i­cal Price at Audi­ble for no cost. It turns out that the Audi­ble offer isn’t avail­able to a world­wide audi­ence. It may just be avail­able to US res­i­dents. The good news is that I pinged Chris Ander­son on Twit­ter, and asked if there’s a uni­ver­sal ver­sion out there. And he kind­ly point­ed me in the right direc­tion. Here’s the deal: you can get a uni­ver­sal­ly free ver­sion over on Wired’s web­site. The page is here, and the zip file is here. Hope that helps.

Note: I’ve added Ander­son­’s zip file to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. There, I’ve also recent­ly added a cou­ple of relat­ed works: Lawrence Lessig’s Free Cul­ture and Cory Doc­torow’s Con­tent: Select­ed Essays on Tech­nol­o­gy, Cre­ativ­i­ty, Copy­right and the Future of the Future . You can find them housed under Non-Fic­tion.

Now Download Free Audiobook of Chris Anderson’s “Free”

in Audio Books, Business, Economics | July 9th, 2009

A quick update: Yes­ter­day, I men­tioned that you can grab on Google Books and Scribd a free e‑book of Chris Ander­son­’s lat­est work, Free: The Future of a Rad­i­cal Price. Today, I dis­cov­ered that you can also down­load an audio­book ver­sion of Free over at Audible.com. It will cost you noth­ing. But you will need to reg­is­ter with Audi­ble, pro­vid­ing name, email, user­name, etc.  If you find that you live in a geo­graph­i­cal mar­ket that Audi­ble won’t serve, then you can down­load a uni­ver­sal­ly free ver­sion at Wired.com’s web site. The page is here, and the zip file is here.

Sep­a­rate­ly, if  you start a 14 day free tri­al with Audi­ble, you can down­load two free audio books. This will give you access to many cur­rent best­sellers (Mal­colm Glad­well, David Sedaris, Barack Oba­ma, etc.). Whether you stick with the mem­ber­ship (as I did), or can­cel, you can keep the free books. Get more details here.

Last­ly, if you want many oth­er free audio­books, check out our big col­lec­tion of clas­sics.

Dominic West (aka Jimmy McNulty) Reads Jane Austen

in Literature, Television | July 5th, 2009

If you’ve watched The Wire, you know him as Jim­my McNul­ty, the smart, booz­ing Bal­ti­more cop that likes an occa­sion­al romp and goes rogue here and there. Now, here’s your chance to see anoth­er side of Dominic, the side that’s more at home, at least geo­graph­i­cal­ly speak­ing. Here we have, as Ed tells us, the British actor, an Eton prod­uct, “read­ing Pride and Prej­u­dice (he’s a first-rate read­er) and then smirk­ing before he game­ly sips some Carte Noire cof­fee.” Watch it here, and thanks Ed for the tip.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Moy­ers with The Wire’s David Simon

The Cre­ator of the Wire on Amer­i­can Urban Decline

100 Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists

in Science | July 1st, 2009

The title says it all. Lots of sci­ence lec­tures from lead­ing thinkers. Some sci­en­tists (Dawkins, Hawk­ing, etc.) list­ed here are house­hold names. Oth­ers are not. Note that most lec­tures come from broad­er video col­lec­tions that we were men­tioned in our pop­u­lar piece: Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites.

via @acourosa. Also check out @openculture