41 Hours in an Elevator

in Media, YouTube | April 21st, 2008

It’s per­haps a stretch to call this a piece of “open cul­ture,” except that the footage, using time-lapsed video to show a man stuck in an ele­va­tor for 41 hours, accom­pa­nies a piece print­ed in the lat­est edi­tion of The New York­er — Up and Then Down: The Lives of Ele­va­tors.

Then, there’s this note­wor­thy fact: the video (see below) is host­ed on The New York­er’s new YouTube site, which we have added to our col­lec­tion “60 Smart Video Col­lec­tions on YouTube.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• The New York­er Mag­a­zine Cross­es the Dig­i­tal Divide
• Sat­i­riz­ing Ahmadine­jad: The New York­er Picks Up Where SNL Left Off
• Ani­mat­ed New York­er Car­toons: A Fun­ny Twist on Einstein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty

Encyclopedia Britannica Now Free For Web Publishers

in Media | April 21st, 2008

Thanks to a new pro­gram called Bri­tan­ni­ca Web­share, web pub­lish­ers — be they blog­gers, web­mas­ters, or writ­ers who post fre­quent­ly on the web — can now get free online access to Bri­tan­ni­ca and its 65,000 arti­cles. Nor­mal­ly, this ser­vice runs $70 per year. For more info, read TechCrunch’s scoop on the new ini­tia­tive. To sign up, click here.

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The Lecture That Captured the Public Imagination: From YouTube Sensation to #1 Best-Selling Book

in Life | April 20th, 2008

By now, many of you have prob­a­bly seen (or at least heard about) the last lec­ture by Randy Pausch, a com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor from Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty, who is dying from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. Enti­tled “Real­ly Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams,” the lec­ture (see video below) is upbeat and uplift­ing with­out being the slight­est bit morose. And it sets an exam­ple for how we can think about liv­ing and dying. The lec­ture has been watched by mil­lions on YouTube, and it serves as the basis for a new book called The Last Lec­ture, which is now the num­ber one best­seller on Ama­zon. We’ve added the video to our YouTube playlist. If you haven’t seen it yet, give it your time. It will teach you some­thing more valu­able than any­thing else we serve up here. Also, you can down­load it on iTunes.

Global Geopolitics: A New Stanford Course on iTunes

in Online Courses, Stanford | April 17th, 2008

Today we’re high­light­ing for you a new course post­ed on Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s iTunes site. Orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed by Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (where I hap­pi­ly spend my days), Glob­al Geopol­i­tics is taught by geog­ra­phy expert Mar­tin Lewis, and “exam­ines the glob­al polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion from a geo­graph­i­cal per­spec­tive. Top­ics include: how the coun­tries of the world were formed and came to occu­py their present ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­fig­u­ra­tions; bor­der con­flicts and oth­er spa­tial­ly based inter­na­tion­al issues; strug­gles for seces­sion from estab­lished states and move­ments for ter­ri­to­ri­al­ly based auton­o­my; and the devel­op­ment and enlarge­ment of supra­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions such as the Euro­pean Union (EU) and the Asso­ci­a­tion of South­east Asian Nations (ASEAN). While the course is glob­al­ly com­pre­hen­sive, spe­cial atten­tion will be giv­en to cur­rent sites of geo-polit­i­cal ten­sion. Maps will be used exten­sive­ly for both descrip­tive and ana­lyt­i­cal pur­pos­es.”

[NOTE: This is an enchanced pod­cast that allows you to see images and maps ref­er­enced in the lec­tures. To view them, click on View, then Show Art­work, in iTunes. This will let you see them on your com­put­er.]

You can now down­load the first lec­ture. Addi­tion­al lec­tures will be released in week­ly install­ments. The course is also list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

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Free Digital Fiction from Penguin

in Books | April 17th, 2008

Pen­guin is pre­sent­ing six sto­ries, by six authors, over six weeks, in a series called We Tell Sto­ries. And they’re using the web to tell these sto­ries in orig­i­nal ways. One sto­ry, The 21 Steps, gets told over Google Maps — an approach that scores points for cre­ativ­i­ty, but also tires a lit­tle quick­ly. You can access all six sto­ries here. Also check out our exten­sive col­lec­tion of free audio­books here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Learn Moviemaking From a Master (Courtesy of Apple)

in Apple, Film | April 16th, 2008

The folks at Apple have rolled out an intrigu­ing new pod­cast that takes you inside the world of moviemak­ing. The Set to Screen Series (get it on iTunes here) fol­lows Baz Luhrmann, the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed direc­tor (Moulin Rouge! and William Shakespeare’s Romeo+Juliet) as he works on a new film. And every three weeks, from now through Octo­ber, a new video pod­cast will be released that shows you how films get made. On-set still pho­tog­ra­phy, cos­tume design, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, scor­ing — it all gets cov­ered here. And yes, of course, this pod­cast is all in video. You can get more info on this project here.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven Read by 18 YouTubers (or Christopher Walken)

in Literature | April 15th, 2008

Can you bear it? If not, here’s a ver­sion by Christo­pher Walken.

(This video has not been added to our YouTube playlist.)

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The Automated Publishing House

in Books, Business, Language Lessons, Media, Technology | April 14th, 2008

The New York Times has a great arti­cle on a pro­fes­sor of man­age­ment sci­ence who has found­ed an almost com­plete­ly auto­mat­ed pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny. The 200,000 books he’s pub­lished sound, well, ter­ri­ble, and ter­ri­bly over­priced: “Among the books pub­lished under his name are ‘The Offi­cial Patient’s Source­book on Acne Rosacea’ ($24.95 and 168 pages long); ‘Stick­ler Syn­drome: A Bib­li­og­ra­phy and Dic­tio­nary for Physi­cians, Patients and Genome Researchers’ ($28.95 for 126 pages); and ‘The 2007–2012 Out­look for Tuft­ed Wash­able Scat­ter Rugs, Bath­mats and Sets That Mea­sure 6‑Feet by 9‑Feet or Small­er in India’ ($495 for 144 pages).”

But Philip M. Park­er, the man behind them, is noth­ing if not ambi­tious. He’s also pro­gram­ming his machines to gen­er­ate lan­guage-learn­ing cross­words (i.e. clues in one lan­guage, answers in anoth­er), acros­tic poet­ry, and even scripts for game shows and videogames. All of this reminds me of a nov­el by Neal Stephen­son, The Dia­mond Age. In it, engi­neers of the future design a sort of arti­fi­cial­ly intel­li­gent primer for young girls–the book gen­er­ates sto­ries and lessons on the fly. Maybe Park­er’s read this one before.

MIT’s (Free) Introduction to Physics

in Physics, Science | April 13th, 2008

Wel­come to MIT. Here’s your intro­duc­tion to Physics.

Today, we present Physics I: Clas­si­cal Mechan­ics, a fresh­man course taught by Wal­ter Lewin, the pop­u­lar physics pro­fes­sor who was recent­ly writ­ten up in The New York Times. The course cov­ers the foun­da­tions of mod­ern physics, which takes you from Isaac New­ton’s ground­break­ing work to super­novas, and which cov­ers such oth­er top­ics as Flu­id Mechan­ics, Kinet­ic Gas The­o­ry, Bina­ry Stars, Neu­tron Stars, Black Holes, Res­o­nance Phe­nom­e­na, Musi­cal Instru­ments, and Stel­lar Col­lapse.

You can down­load the course lec­tures in video via iTunes or in var­i­ous for­mats here. (The course is also list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties, which now con­tains over 200 free cours­es.) For more lec­ture series by Wal­ter Lewin, look here (Elec­tric­i­ty and Mag­net­ism) and here (Vibra­tions and Waves).

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Interview with Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet, Robert Hass

in Literature | April 9th, 2008

This week, the Pulitzer Prize for poet­ry went to Robert Hass, a UC Berke­ley pro­fes­sor and for­mer U.S. poet lau­re­ate. To mark the occa­sion, we’re post­ing here Sier­ra Club Radio’s inter­view with Hass. The inter­view, record­ed this past Sat­ur­day (mp3 — iTunes — web site), delves into Hass’ “thoughts on the inter­sec­tion between lan­guage and our envi­ron­ment, how he decid­ed to use his posi­tion as Poet Lau­re­ate for advo­ca­cy, and has him read­ing selec­tions from his new book of poet­ry Time and Mate­ri­als — win­ner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. He also gives some insights into the col­lec­tion and sto­ries behind some of the poems.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

101 Ear­ly Wal­lace Stevens Poems on Free Audio

Lis­ten­ing to Famous Poets Read­ing Their Own Work

The Art of Read­ing a Poem (Accord­ing to Harold Bloom)

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