We’re Talking University Podcasts

in Uncategorized | June 6th, 2007

A quick fyi: We recent­ly did an inter­view with The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion where we talked about uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts and relat­ed trends. You can catch the inter­view here (iTunes — mp3), and I would also encour­age you to explore their oth­er pod­cast­ed inter­views.

You can look through our gen­er­al col­lec­tion of uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts here.  Our oth­er pod­cast col­lec­tions include: Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy —  Uni­ver­si­ty (Law School) — Pod­cast Primer

Best of Open Culture — May

in Uncategorized | June 2nd, 2007

iTunes U & What It Means For You

in Apple | May 31st, 2007

Here’s a log­i­cal fol­low up to our last post — 10 Free Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es on iTunes.

It turns out that yes­ter­day Apple nice­ly inte­grat­ed iTunes U into iTunes. Now, you’ll prob­a­bly ask what is iTunes U, and why should I care about this inte­gra­tion? So here is the sim­ple answer:

iTunes U is essen­tial­ly a non-com­mer­cial ver­sion of iTunes that sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ties start­ed to use over the past year. And, in fact, some of the best uni­ver­si­ty pod­cast col­lec­tions (name­ly, Berke­ley’s and Stan­ford’s) were launched on this plat­form. The prob­lem was that you could­n’t access these pod­casts from the iTunes store that every­one’s accus­tomed to using. So, if you opened iTunes and searched for Stan­ford pod­casts, you got bubkis.

The dis­tinc­tion between iTunes and iTunes U was large­ly arti­fi­cial, and so it made per­fect sense to mesh togeth­er the two plat­forms. (Read the press release here.) What does­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly make sense is the way in which the two plat­forms now fit togeth­er — or actu­al­ly kind of don’t. If you do a search for “MIT,” for exam­ple, you’ll see that some MIT pod­casts come up in a search results buck­et called “Pod­casts” (these are from MIT’s busi­ness school) and oth­ers come up in a buck­et called “iTunes U.” So, put sim­ply, the MIT pod­casts aren’t grouped togeth­er in one col­lec­tion. (Try it out and you will see what I mean.)

But why com­plain, the new inte­gra­tion is no doubt a good step in the right direc­tion.

10 Free University Courses on iTunes

in Apple, Online Courses | May 30th, 2007

We haven’t talked about the uni­verse of uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts in some time. So let’s get back to it.Below, we have high­light­ed ten full-fledged cours­es from top flight uni­ver­si­ties. All of these cours­es can be down­loaded to your iPod for free. That’s a price that you can’t beat. (You can see our com­plete col­lec­tion of free online cours­es here.)

1. Euro­pean His­to­ry from the Renais­sance to the Present (UC Berke­ley)

“This course is an intro­duc­tion to Euro­pean his­to­ry from around 1500 to the present. The cen­tral ques­tions that it address­es are how and why Europe–a small, rel­a­tive­ly poor, and polit­i­cal­ly frag­ment­ed place–became the motor of glob­al­iza­tion and a world civ­i­liza­tion in its own right.”

–Thomas Laque­ur, Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry

2. Geog­ra­phy of World Cul­tures (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty)

Even in a glob­al­ized world, peo­ple con­tin­ue to be joined togeth­er and divid­ed asun­der by the lan­guages they speak, the reli­gions they fol­low, and the eth­nic iden­ti­ties to which they belong. This map-inten­sive course exam­ines every world region, seek­ing to under­stand how places vary from each oth­er with regard to the cul­tur­al attrib­ut­es of their inhab­i­tants. (Note: This course is being rolled out in week­ly install­ments.)

–Mar­tin Lewis, Lec­tur­er in His­to­ry, Inter­im Direc­tor, Pro­gram in Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions

3. Old Eng­lish in Con­text (Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty)

A four lec­ture mini-course on how Eng­lish became Eng­lish dur­ing the medieval peri­od.

–Dr Stu­art Lee, OUCS

4. Physics for Future Pres­i­dents (UC Berke­ley)

This course gives you the physics you need to know to be a pres­i­dent, Supreme Court jus­tice, diplo­mat, busi­ness­man, lawyer, foot­ball coach, or oth­er world leader.

–Richard Muller, Pro­fes­sor of Physics.

NOTE: Tthe same course hap­pens also to appear on Google Video. Sim­ply go to Google Video and per­form a search with the fol­low­ing key­words: physics 10 berke­ley.

5. Quan­tum Mechan­ics (UC Davis)

If Physics for Future Pres­i­dents is too basic for you, you can get into some more heavy duty sci­ence right here.

–John Tern­ing, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Physics

6. The His­tor­i­cal Jesus (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty)

Who was the his­tor­i­cal Jesus of Nazareth? What did he actu­al­ly say? In short, what are the dif­fer­ences — and sim­i­lar­i­ties — between the Jesus who lived and died in his­to­ry and the Christ who lives on in believ­ers’ faith?

–Thomas Shee­han, Pro­fes­sor of Reli­gious Stud­ies and Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Phi­los­o­phy

7. Under­stand­ing Com­put­ers and the Inter­net (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty)

This course demys­ti­fies com­put­ers and the Inter­net (along with their jar­gon) so that stu­dents under­stand not only what they can do with each, but also how each works and why.

–David Malan, Instruc­tor

8. Entre­pre­neur­ship and Busi­ness Plan­ning (Carnegie Mel­lon)

This class par­al­lels a course being offered at Carnegie Mel­lon. It cov­ers the ins-and-outs of start­ing a new ven­ture, look­ing at how to devel­op ideas for new com­pa­nies, write busi­ness plans, cre­ate teams. It also looks at typ­i­cal b‑school top­ics: mar­ket­ing, com­pet­i­tive strat­e­gy, sales, pric­ing, fund­ing and finance.

–Mark Juliano, Adjunct Pro­fes­sor

9. The Lit­er­a­ture of Cri­sis (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty)

In look­ing at great works by Pla­to, Sopho­cles, Shake­speare, Vergil, and Voltaire, this course explores crises that change the course of indi­vid­u­als and larg­er cul­tures.

–Marsh McCall, Pro­fes­sor of Clas­sics

–Mar­tin Evans, Pro­fes­sor in Eng­lish

10. Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film (UC Berke­ley)

The course looks at efforts “to rein­ter­pret the Judeo/Christian God, and to deter­mine in what sense God is still a liv­ing God.” Along the way it looks at “Dostoyevsky’s and Kierkegaard’s attempts to pre­serve a non-the­o­log­i­cal ver­sion of the God of Chris­tian­i­ty, as well as Nietzsche’s attempt to save us from belief in any ver­sion of God offered by our tra­di­tion.” Films also get dis­cussed here.

–Hubert Drey­fus, Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy

What Pirates Can Teach Us about Democracy

in Books, Film | May 25th, 2007

I’ve always felt that pirates under­stood the good things in life. Fresh air. Rum. Inter­est­ing hats. It turns out we had more in com­mon polit­i­cal­ly than I would have giv­en them cred­it for. Accord­ing to Col­in Woodard, author of The Repub­lic of Pirates, the “Gold­en Age” of Caribbean pira­cy was­n’t too shab­by. Sea­men and cap­tains received almost equal shares of booty (that is, a ratio of 2 — 1 instead of 14 — 1) and cap­tains could be deposed at almost any time. NPR Books did a great inter­view with Woodard two weeks ago (site — iTunes — feed).

All of this means that you should go see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie when it opens today, no mat­ter how ter­ri­ble it is. If Jack Spar­row does­n’t inspire civic virtue, at least he encour­ages eye­lin­er sales. Besides, how many amuse­ment park rides can you think of that have demon­strat­ed such dra­mat­ic depth?

The oth­er rea­son to go see the movie is that Talk Like A Pirate Day is lit­er­al­ly months away. How long can you hold that “AAAARRRRRHH”?

YouTube’s Impact on the 2008 Election: The Hype and the Fact

in Current Affairs, Google, Media, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | May 23rd, 2007

YouTube is a lit­tle more than two years old. It’s a mere tod­dler. But, it’s now owned by an over­grown, ful­ly-beard­ed nine year old. Yes, that would be Google, and that means that YouTube is ready to storm its way into the media main­stream, pam­pers and all. You can be sure that GooTube has already cooked up sev­er­al strate­gies that will lead the video unit to media dom­i­na­tion. But, even to the untrained media observ­er, it’s fair­ly clear that Google’s video unit has cho­sen the 2008 elec­tion as an are­na in which it intends to com­pete with oth­er major media out­fits for eye­balls. In April, YouTube launched its polit­i­cal chan­nel Cit­i­zen­Tube (get more info here) and, along with it, its first major line of video pro­gram­ming called You Choose ’08. The con­cept here is sim­ple and promis­ing: Cit­i­zens ask ques­tions to the ’08 can­di­dates, and the can­di­dates respond. The results, how­ev­er, have been large­ly dis­ap­point­ing. When you strip every­thing away, what you get are politi­cians speak­ing the same plat­i­tudes that we’ve seen for decades on TV. (See a sam­ple reply here.) The only dif­fer­ence is that the video qual­i­ty is worse, and they’re man­ag­ing to get their plat­i­tudes in front of a young demo­graph­ic, which is no small feat. For bet­ter or for worse, YouTube is to the ’08 elec­tion what MTV (remem­ber Bill play­ing the sax?) was to the ’92 elec­tion. While nei­ther Cit­i­zen­Tube nor the polit­i­cal cam­paigns are using the video plat­form in rev­o­lu­tion­ary ways, the mil­lions of aver­age users who make YouTube what it is are doing a bet­ter job of it. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the way in which videos are emerg­ing on YouTube that counter images being care­ful­ly pro­ject­ed by can­di­dates and their cam­paigns. Here are two quick exam­ples. GOP can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney has been pre­dictably work­ing to cast him­self as a social con­ser­v­a­tive. Twice in recent months, he has shown up at Pat Robert­son’s Regent Uni­ver­si­ty to deliv­er lines like this: “We’re shocked by the evil of the Vir­ginia Tech shoot­ing…” “I opened my Bible short­ly after I heard of the tragedy. Only a few vers­es, it seems, after the Fall, we read that Adam and Eve’s old­est son killed his younger broth­er. From the begin­ning, there has been evil in the world.” …“Pornog­ra­phy and vio­lence poi­son our music and movies and TV and video games. The Vir­ginia Tech shoot­er, like the Columbine shoot­ers before him, had drunk from this cesspool.” But then, how­ev­er incon­ve­nient­ly, videos from Mitt Rom­ney’s past polit­i­cal cam­paigns show up on YouTube, ones which should make evan­gel­i­cals think twice, and there is not much Rom­ney can do about it. The past hurts, but it does­n’t lie: Then there is Hillary Clin­ton. She’s got the mon­ey, the par­ty machine is back­ing her, try­ing to wrap up the nom­i­na­tion with a bow. But then a damn­ing attack ad crops up on YouTube. This pitch for Barack Oba­ma remix­es the “1984” TV ad that famous­ly intro­duced Apple com­put­ers to Amer­i­ca, and it casts Hillary as a polit­i­cal automa­ton, an image that rings true for many. (The Oba­ma cam­paign denies hav­ing any­thing do with the video, and its cre­ator remains unknown.) It is with videos like these that YouTube gets polit­i­cal­ly inter­est­ing. Just as quick­ly as a polit­i­cal cam­paign projects an image for Rom­ney or Clin­ton, your aver­age web user can scrounge up footage that calls that image into ques­tion. A retort is always pos­si­ble, which was nev­er the case on TV. And the cost of delivering/countering a mes­sage runs next to noth­ing. Again a first. YouTube equal­izes, and it isn’t a ter­rain on which the rich can instant­ly claim vic­to­ry. Just ask Rom­ney and his over $200 mil­lion in per­son­al wealth. What good has it done him in YouTube land?

Art Blogs — A New Addition to the Culture Blogs Family

in Art | May 21st, 2007

Who Killed JFK? Two New Studies

in Books, History, Politics | May 21st, 2007

Whether you think John F. Kennedy was a great pres­i­dent or just a guy
who enjoyed sul­try birth­day
ser­e­nades (see clip below), you have to admit
his hold on America’s cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion is still pow­er­ful four
decades after his assas­si­na­tion. Two major new works of his­to­ry tack­le
the ques­tion and, pre­dictably, come down on oppo­site sides of it. David
Talbot’s Broth­ers: The Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kennedy Years offers new evi­dence fur­ther­ing the great con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, while Vin­cent Bugliosi’s Reclaim­ing His­to­ry: The Assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy agrees with offi­cial his­to­ry and the War­ren Com­mis­sion.

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing thing about these lat­est prod­ucts of the
Kennedy indus­try is the fact that both books are tak­ing advan­tage of
new media for­mats to com­bat the tra­di­tion­al prob­lem with Big His­to­ry
texts–weight. Bugliosi’s tome comes in at a back-wrench­ing 1,612
pages, so be thank­ful that his pub­lish­ers includ­ed the many end­notes on
an accom­pa­ny­ing CD. (You would be well-advised to save a few months and
read the New York Times review here.) Talbot’s Broth­ers is only a third as long, but that’s still almost 500 pages–so why not enjoy it as an eBook instead, or just check out the excerpt on Salon? Or take in its New York Times review here. If your eyes are tired already, rest assured that both authors also appeared on the Leonard Lopate show (Bugliosi mp3; Tal­bot mp3 ). And if you hap­pen to live in the Bay area, you can go see Tal­bot will be in San Fran­cis­co pro­mot­ing the book tomor­row, May 22.

U2 Plays @ The Cannes Film Festival

in Film, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | May 20th, 2007

Climate Crisis, the Happiness Conundrum & the Evolution of Religions: TED Talks on YouTube

in Psychology, TED Talks, Video - Arts & Culture | May 15th, 2007