Making Your Own Podcasts: Resources to Get You Started

in Podcasts, Technology | December 31st, 2006

With all the recent talk about pod­casts, you may have won­dered how you can cre­ate your own. How can you record and dis­trib­ute via pod­cast what­ev­er valauble things you have to say? We have recent­ly come across some help­ful mate­r­i­al that seemed worth high­light­ing for you. Pod­cast Acad­e­my At Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, Pod­cast Acad­e­my recent­ly held a two-day sem­i­nar, led by sea­soned tech­nol­o­gy vet­er­ans, that offered a very com­pre­hen­sive overview of the craft. The top­ics cov­ered here ranged from get­ting start­ed with record­ing, edit­ing and pub­lish­ing pod­casts; to devel­op­ing a per­son­al style; to work­ing with the right equip­ment; to know­ing how to get pod­casts list­ed in search engines and also mon­e­tize them. You can review and stream all of the pre­sen­ta­tions in video from this page. Plus you can also find here copies of the PDFs used in these talks. This is an excel­lent resource for start­ing out. Apple’s Pod­cast Recipe Giv­en that Apple helped more than any­one to give life to pod­cast­ing, it only makes sense that they would offer some primers. You can find here a three-part sem­i­nar cre­at­ed by Apple experts, who offer their wis­dom on how to cre­ate a great-sound­ing pod­cast, pro­duce a pro­fes­sion­al show, and then pro­mote it. These pre­sen­ta­tions are also avail­able in video, and they are free. How­ev­er, you do need to reg­is­ter with Apple before you can start watch­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions. Nuts and Bolts Primers The mate­ri­als above don’t real­ly walk you through the actu­al tech­ni­cal mechan­ics of cre­at­ing a pod­cast, so we have added here a few primers that will real­ly give you the real nuts and bolts. About.com’s “How to Cre­ate Your Own Pod­cast — A Step-by-Step Tuto­r­i­al” PodcastingNews.com’s “Make Your First Pod­cast” Dig­i­tal Trend’s “How to Make a Pod­cast” If you close­ly review all of these mate­ri­als, you should soon be ready to devel­op your first pod­cast, cre­ate a pro­fes­sion­al sound, and bring it to lis­ten­ers who will ben­e­fit from what you have to say. If you know of any oth­er great resources that should be added to this col­lec­tion, feel free to let us know.

A World Without Net Neutrality

in Technology | December 28th, 2006

If you’re a savvy tech­nol­o­gist, you’ve heard a lot about the debate over “net neu­tral­i­ty.” If you’re not, then you should get up to speed on the issue because it could change the face of the web as you know it.

Bill Moy­ers recent­ly put togeth­er an excel­lent pro­gram look­ing at the Faus­t­ian bar­gain that Con­gress might soon be mak­ing. In exchange for giv­ing the tele­phone com­pa­nies an incen­tive to build a fast fiber net­work in the US — some­thing that many oth­er coun­tries already have, and some­thing that the tel­cos promised to build years ago, but did­n’t, despite accept­ing tax breaks — our nation­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives may be primed to let the tel­cos con­trol the future web and oper­ate it as a “toll road.” Under the cur­rent regime, every web site is treat­ed neu­tral­ly, mean­ing
that web sites can dis­trib­ute con­tent at equal speeds and costs to con­tent providers. If things change,
the tel­cos will cre­ate a “fast lane” and a “slow lane” for dis­trib­ut­ing con­tent, and they can use their dis­cre­tion, based on what­ev­er stan­dards they choose, to charge con­tent providers dif­fer­ent rates for using the dif­fer­ent lanes. This will have a whole host of con­se­quences for the future devel­op­ment of the inter­net, chang­ing how com­pa­nies com­pete on the web, how the pace of inno­va­tion pro­gress­es (or not), how you access con­tent, and whether you can access con­tent freely and equal­ly. In short, it will deter­mine whether your cul­ture stays open or not.

There is a lot to this issue, and Moy­ers on Amer­i­ca does a very good job teas­ing apart the issue in this 90 minute exposé that you can find on iTunes (or see the rss feed). The pro­gram’s web site also has a lot of good sup­port­ing infor­ma­tion and is worth a look.

For more infor­ma­tion, you should also see what the ACLU is say­ing about the issue.

Open Culture Podcast Collection Gets Some Play on Diggnation Podcast

in Uncategorized | December 27th, 2006

Since we’re talk­ing a lot about pod­casts these days, it seemed rea­son­able to men­tion that our for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts got a lit­tle men­tion on the lat­est episode (#77) of Dig­gna­tion, the week­ly pod­cast put out by Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, and Alex Albrecht. Our pod­cast col­lec­tion now has 1877 “dig­gs,” and so it got their atten­tion and gave them a good plat­form to goof on Kev­in’s com­mand of Ara­bic. You can check out the episode here — iTunes, Rss feed.

See Open Cul­ture’s for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­cast col­lec­tion.

Free Audiobooks for Your iPod

in Uncategorized | December 26th, 2006

This is just a quick heads up that we have added audio­book pod­casts to our larg­er pod­cast col­lec­tion. You’ll find here 40+ major lit­er­ary and philo­soph­i­cal works. Mark Twain, Shake­speare, Jane Austen, Friedrich Niet­zsche, Franz Kaf­ka, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe — they are all here, and the list will con­tin­ue to grow. In the mean­time, if you would like to see a par­tic­u­lar text added to the list, feel free to let us know.

Audio­book Pod­casts
Com­plete Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

World-Changing Ideas on Demand: Princeton’s “University Channel”

in Current Affairs | December 22nd, 2006

If you want to know what the world’s lead­ing thinkers are say­ing, you’ll want to check out the Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel. Orga­nized by Prince­ton, but access­ing mate­ri­als from oth­er major aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions across the world, the Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel puts online impor­tant speech­es made by promi­nent fig­ures, often com­ing from the world of pub­lic and inter­na­tion­al affairs. In recent weeks, just to give a few exam­ples, the Chan­nel has fea­tured Noam Chom­sky talk­ing about the cur­rent cri­sis in Mid­dle East, Chris­tine Todd Whit­man offer­ing her views on pol­i­tics and the envi­ron­ment, Peter Singer dis­cussing the ethics of food, and Vaclav Hav­el and Bill Clin­ton talk­ing togeth­er about the chal­lenges fac­ing new democ­ra­cies. Con­ve­nient­ly, all talks are avail­able in audio and video for­mats, both on iTunes (audio — video) and as feeds (audio — video). The Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel offers a great way to pack your iPod with talks that deal with the press­ing issues of our time.

For more uni­ver­si­ty lec­tures and cours­es, see Open Cul­ture’s Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast col­lec­tion.

Also see Open Cul­ture’s oth­er col­lec­tion: Uni­ver­si­ty Online Cours­es & Online Media

TIME Talks about You

in Media | December 22nd, 2006

This past week, TIME Mag­a­zine named “you” — the one of many mil­lions of web users — the per­son of the year. TIME’s cur­rent cov­er sto­ry
explains why the sto­ry of 2006 was­n’t one shaped by a “great man,” as
it usu­al­ly is, but by a com­mu­ni­ty of web users “on a scale nev­er seen
before.” It’s a sto­ry, TIME says, “about the cos­mic com­pendi­um of
knowl­edge Wikipedia and the mil­lion-chan­nel peo­ple’s net­work YouTube
and the online metrop­o­lis MySpace. It’s about the many wrest­ing pow­er
from the few and help­ing one anoth­er for noth­ing and how that will not
only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”

If these grand dec­la­ra­tions hap­pen to move you, or if you’re look­ing
for some more elab­o­ra­tion on how TIME gave you this hon­or, you can
always lis­ten to TIME’s lat­est piece on iTunes which fea­tures a round­table dis­cus­sion of their annu­al edi­tion.

Mozart’s Musical Scores Now Fully Available Online

in Music | December 21st, 2006

As the cel­e­bra­tion of Mozart’s 250th birth­day winds down, the Inter­na­tion­al Mozart Foun­da­tion has offered up a nice gift to Mozart enthu­si­asts by putting online the mas­ter’s full body of work. This web site, called the Neue Mozart-Aus­gabe, lets vis­i­tors explore over 600 indi­vid­ual works, or 24,000 pages of music, which were for­mer­ly avail­able only in print. You can access the site in Eng­lish, and you can peruse it as much as you like. The only caveat is that users must agree to use the col­lec­tion only for per­son­al pur­pos­es and not to down­load the works in whole­sale fash­ion. So far, the pub­lic response to this offer­ing has been over­whelm­ing. In the first 12 hours after the launch, the online col­lec­tion received more than 400,000 hits. And over the next four days, it received more than 12 mil­lion. With traf­fic lev­els eas­ing up, now might be a good time to take a look.

The Historical Jesus on Your iPod

in Stanford | December 20th, 2006

Cutting-Edge Physics on iTunes

in Science, Stanford | December 19th, 2006

This is hot off the press, so to speak. Today, Stan­ford post­ed a new pod­cast of a course called Mod­ern The­o­ret­i­cal Physics: Quan­tum Entan­gle­ment. It’s intrigu­ing on sev­er­al dif­fer­ent lev­els. First, it’s in video. Sec­ond, the course is pre­sent­ed by Leonard Susskind, who is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered the father of string the­o­ry, a con­tro­ver­sial inno­va­tion in physics that squares quan­tum the­o­ry with rel­a­tiv­i­ty and explains the nature of all mat­ter and forces. Now, when Susskind gets into quan­tum entan­gle­ment, he is sure­ly get­ting into some heady, cut­ting-edge stuff. But the good thing — and now for my third point — is that he has pre­sent­ed this course through Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies Pro­gram (where I work, just to put my cards on the table), and it was geared toward the gen­er­al pub­lic. And, to boot, it was the most pop­u­lar course in the pro­gram. You can find a slight­ly more involved course descrip­tion here.The pod­cast will be rolled out in week­ly install­ments, and the first is avail­able start­ing today. Since this is a video pod­cast, you should be able to watch it on your Ipod’s video screen if you have one of the lat­est mod­els. Or you could always just watch it on your com­put­er screen, with­in iTunes itself.

Feeds: You can down­load the course on iTunes here or access the RSS feed here.

The Hottest Course on iTunes (and the Future of Digital Education)

in Apple, History, Most Popular | December 19th, 2006

What’s the most pop­u­lar pod­cast in the High­er Edu­ca­tion sec­tion of iTunes? Ahead of all the pod­casts from Prince­ton, and all of those from Yale, and ahead of the Under­stand­ing Com­put­ers course from Har­vard, and even the psy­chol­o­gy course from UC Berke­ley, is an unex­pect­ed pod­cast called Twelve Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire. The course, which focus­es on the Greek-speak­ing Roman Empire of the Mid­dle Ages, is taught by Lars Brown­worth, who teach­es high school at The Stony Brook School on Long Island, New York. And it gets rave reviews. “I’m dis­ap­point­ed because I don’t think I’ll ever find a pod­cast that I enjoy as much as this one.” “This pod­cast has quick­ly become a hit with me and all of my friends, even those who don’t like his­to­ry so much.” You get the gist.

The suc­cess of this course makes us think that com­pa­nies that sell dig­i­tal lec­tures for a fee might not be long for this world. Take The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny for exam­ple. They’re in the busi­ness of sell­ing pol­ished, lec­ture-based cours­es, which can often be very well done. And, yes, they offer too a course on the Byzan­tine Empire that retails in audio down­load form for $129. So what will the savvy con­sumer do? Down­load Brown­worth’s course for free? Or pay $129? This is not a knock on what The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny is doing. I like their prod­uct and can appre­ci­ate their need to sell prod­ucts to recoup their costs. But you can’t com­pete with free. With so many uni­ver­si­ty cours­es now tap­ing their cours­es and allow­ing peo­ple to down­load them to the ubiq­ui­tous iPod (see our full list of uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts), you have to won­der whether The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny is just anoth­er once viable busi­ness mod­el that is being steadi­ly com­mod­itzed by the Inter­net.