How to Read The Wall Street Journal for Free

in Business | June 1st, 2009

The Sil­i­con Alley Insid­er tells you how…

Where Do You Go for Intelligent Video?

in Video - Arts & Culture | May 28th, 2009

Folks, it’s time for a new group project. Last year, I asked you to tell us about your Life-Chang­ing Books, and we pulled togeth­er an excel­lent list that many read­ers have enjoyed. Now we want to know: where do you go for intel­li­gent video? If you list the sites that you like best — TED, Fora.TV, YouTube EDU, Snag­Films, Aca­d­e­m­ic Earth, etc. — we’ll pull togeth­er a big list and present it next week. My hope is that the list will include some well-known names and some less well-known names. If there’s a site where you find intel­li­gent video, we want want to know about, and your fel­low read­ers will thank you for it. Feel free to email me your picks at ma**@*********re.com, or write them in the com­ments below. Thanks all!

The Infinite Jest Summer Challenge

in Books, Literature | May 27th, 2009

When I devel­op the cur­ricu­lum for Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, I often like to cre­ate cours­es around big, hard books that stu­dents have long intend­ed to read, but have nev­er quite pulled off: James Joyce’s Uly­sess, Pla­to’s Repub­lic, Tol­stoy’s Anna Karen­i­na, you get the pic­ture. For many stu­dents, it takes a course, or some­thing equiv­a­lent, to pro­vide the struc­ture and encour­age­ment to get through a tru­ly major work.  A more mod­ern exam­ple is Infi­nite Jest, David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s 1100 page sprawl­ing nov­el, which TIME Mag­a­zine includ­ed on its list of all-time 100 nov­els. To help you work through the nov­el, a web site called Infi­nite Sum­mer has invit­ed read­ers to tack­le the nov­el with oth­er read­ers start­ing on June 21. Here’s the basic invi­ta­tion:

You’ve been mean­ing to do it for over a decade. Now join endurance bib­lio­philes from around the web as we tack­le and com­ment upon David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s mas­ter­work, June 21st to Sep­tem­ber 22nd. A thou­sand pages¹ ÷ 93 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat. 

Return to this site on June 1st for full details. In the mean­while, buy or bor­row a copy of the nov­el, fol­low us on Twit­ter (#inf­sum), join the Face­book group, and clear your lit­er­ary sched­ule for the fore­see­able future.

If I can wrap up Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov (my cur­rent read) by then, I’ll give it a go. In the mean­time, you should def­i­nite­ly give this some thought. Also, as a quick aside, you may know that David Fos­ter Wal­lace trag­i­cal­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide last year. To learn more about DFW, his writ­ing career, and spi­ral into depres­sion, give this piece in The New York­er a read.

Listen to 1800 Free Audio Books on Your iPhone

in Apple, Audio Books, iPhone | May 26th, 2009

The iPhone just got a bit smarter. Thanks to this new, free app, you can lis­ten to 1800 free audio books on your Apple device. The app lets you lis­ten to pub­lic domain audio books from the great Lib­rivox (whose works, read by vol­un­teers, also appear in our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion). The ad-sup­port­ed soft­ware is straight­for­ward and easy to use. The only real down­side is that you’ll need access to Wi-Fi to down­load the books. (I could­n’t get things to work on Edge). But that’s not a huge impo­si­tion. You can down­load an entire book in no time, and then sim­ply take it to go. Check it out. Get some Dick­ens, Twain or Tol­stoy. And let us know your thoughts. 

P.S. 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.

Stanford and iTunes Offer 30 Free Songs

in Music | May 26th, 2009

From Stan­ford’s Face­book Page:

Thanks so much for becom­ing a Fan of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty on Face­book! As a small token of our appre­ci­a­tion, we’ve teamed up with the iTunes team to bring you a spe­cial sum­mer mix with 30 free songs. Down­load at http://bit.ly/stanford-summer-mix (US res­i­dents only).

While we’re talk­ing Face­book, you can become an Open Cul­ture Fan on FB here and also find us on Twit­ter (@openculture)

Introducing The Hugest Kindle Ever

in Amazon Kindle, Comedy | May 24th, 2009

File under com­e­dy…

See direct link to video here.

When Miles Davis Opened for Neil Young

in Music | May 19th, 2009

Back in March 1970, Miles Davis was the open­ing act for Neil Young at the Fill­more East in NYC. Not exact­ly the most like­ly com­bo. But that’s what con­cert pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham put togeth­er. 

You can lis­ten to mp3s of Miles’ live per­for­mance. (Make sure you scroll down.) What you get here is not bebop Miles Davis, or cool jazz Miles Davis. It’s elec­tric Miles Davis all the way, post Bitch­es Brew. 

For more jazz, check out our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. Also check out one of our pre­vi­ous pieces: Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats

via Large­heart­ed Boy on Twit­ter. Find our Twit­ter stream here.

Time Magazine Picks Favorite Open Courses

in Online Courses | May 19th, 2009

Recent­ly, Time Mag­a­zine ran a piece called “Log­ging On to the Ivy League” that tells a sto­ry we’re all famil­iar with here — many major uni­ver­si­ties are now record­ing cours­es and mak­ing them freely avail­able online. (See our full list of cours­es here.) Some­what iron­i­cal­ly, the arti­cle most­ly fea­tures cours­es from non ivy league uni­ver­si­ties (Berke­ley, Stan­ford, MIT, etc.) But maybe I’m being too picky in men­tion­ing that. Per­haps I should sim­ply tell you what cours­es Time likes best. (These are high­light­ed in the print edi­tion.) First up: the often-men­tioned physics cours­es taught by MIT’s Wal­ter Lewin (more on that here). Next, Mar­tin Lewis’ course, The Geog­ra­phy of US Elec­tions, which comes out of Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (my day job). Loy­al read­ers will remem­ber that we fea­tured Lewis’ course on Open Cul­ture last fall. And then there’s Mar­i­an Dia­mond’s Human Anato­my course. We’ve post­ed the first lec­ture of this pop­u­lar UC Berke­ley course above. You can access the com­plete course via these links: iTunes — Feed — YouTube. Enjoy.

Stanford Online Writing Courses — The Summer Lineup

in Uncategorized | May 18th, 2009

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

in Audio Books, Literature | May 12th, 2009

From The Inter­net Archive: “Record­ed here is the com­plete, orig­i­nal sto­ry The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton as penned by Fitzger­ald in the ear­ly 1920s, pub­lished orig­i­nal­ly in Col­liers and final­ly col­lect­ed in the pop­u­lar Tales of the Jazz Age.” You can down­load and lis­ten to this Fitzger­ald sto­ry here. Mul­ti­ple for­mats are avail­able. We’ve also  added this work to our Free Audio Book col­lec­tion, along with some oth­er good works: Niko­lai Gogol’s The Over­coat, Walt Whit­man’s Song of Myself and Oth­er Poems, and Lu Xun’s “A Mad­man’s Diary.