UC Berkeley & Google Team Up

in UC Berkeley | December 18th, 2006

Not long ago, we talked about UC Berke­ley’s ambi­tious pod­cast­ing ini­tia­tive, about how the uni­ver­si­ty is cur­rent­ly dis­trib­ut­ing a large num­ber of cours­es over iTunes. But there is noth­ing like giv­ing users some options, and so the uni­ver­si­ty has also decid­ed to make some cours­es, cam­pus events, and con­fer­ences avail­able over Google Video as well. (That’s Google’s ver­sion of Youtube, which, of course, Google just recent­ly bought.) To take a clos­er look, just click here to scan through the dif­fer­ent video offer­ings. Or, to sam­ple things, take a peek below at this inter­view with Michael Pol­lan, author of The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma, a book that The New York Times just named one of the ten best books of 2006.

50 Arts & Culture Programs to Add to Your Podcast Collection

in Uncategorized | December 16th, 2006

Our direc­to­ry of arts & cul­ture pod­casts is now 50 pro­grams strong. Here you’ll find smart cul­tur­al pro­grams
from NPR, The New York Times, MoMA, Salon, Slate and the BBC. And you’ll find pro­gram­ming orig­i­nat­ing from the US, the UK, Cana­da and Aus­tralia and even France.

The pod­casts are all high-qual­i­ty, allow­ing you to spend your time expand­ing your intel­lec­tu­al hori­zons. While this direc­to­ry includes links to pod­casts on iTunes, it also includes direct links to RSS feeds so that you can use the pod­catch­er of your choice. Plus, we have added links to the web sites of the indi­vid­ual pod­cast cre­ators.

Final­ly, the For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast direc­to­ry was also updat­ed this week to include links to iTunes, RSS feeds, and the web sites of the pod­cast cre­ators. We’ll soon be sim­i­lar­ly updat­ing the News and Uni­ver­si­ty pod­cast pages as well. Have a good week­end.

Two Views of the Iraqi Refugee Crisis (on Podcast)

in Current Affairs | December 15th, 2006

As a fol­low-up to the Iraqi Expe­ri­ence in Dig­i­tal, we sim­ply want­ed to put along­side one anoth­er two excel­lent pod­casts that speak direct­ly to the mount­ing Iraqi refugee cri­sis. Tak­en togeth­er they give you an excel­lent view of this prob­lem.

First, a recent pod­cast from Open Source, which fea­tures interivews with Iraqis who have had to make the jour­ney out of Iraq and in to Syr­ia and Jor­dan. (So far, 7% of the Iraqi pop­u­la­tion has fled to these two coun­tries.) Sec­ond, an inter­view with George Pack­er, who writes for The New York­er (you can find many of his arti­cles here) and who sum­ma­rizes extreme­ly well the issues at hand, and par­tic­u­lar­ly rais­es the ques­tion whether the US has a moral oblig­a­tion to take some of these refugees in.

Online Foreign Language Exchange

in Language Lessons | December 14th, 2006

Because our for­eign lan­guage les­son pod­casts have gen­er­at­ed a lot of inter­est this week, we want­ed to men­tion anoth­er intrigu­ing for­eign lan­guage resource: The Mixxer.

An excel­lent way to learn a lan­guage is to par­tic­i­pate in a lan­guage exchange. Years ago, when I set out to learn French, I went to Paris and found some­one (a French per­son) who want­ed to learn Eng­lish, and we met twice a week and spent one hour speak­ing in Eng­lish, the oth­er hour in French. And, with­out fail, my com­mand of French dra­mat­i­cal­ly improved.

Now you don’t need to trav­el very far to get involved in your own lan­guage exchange. The Mixxer has devel­oped a site where you can find eager lan­guage part­ners, down­load Skype (the soft­ware that lets you talk over the inter­net for free), and then start your bilin­gual exchange.

With this and our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons, the inter­net will rapid­ly get you up the lan­guage learn­ing curve.

MIT Brings Science & Technology Courses to Your Home

in MIT | December 14th, 2006

Five years ago, MIT launched an ambi­tious ini­tia­tive with its Open­Course­Ware project. The con­cept was fair­ly sim­ple. It involved putting online the mate­ri­als from MIT cours­es — the syl­labi, read­ing lists, course notes, assign­ments, etc. — and mak­ing them avail­able online to the world at large. Ben­e­fit­ing from this ini­tia­tive were stu­dents and fac­ul­ty across the globe, all look­ing to find guid­ance on how to teach them­selves, or their stu­dents, the lat­est in their par­tic­u­lar aca­d­e­m­ic field. By ear­ly this year, MIT had online mate­ri­als for 1,285 cours­es and was receiv­ing 36,000 dai­ly vis­its to the Open­Course­Ware site. A suc­cess by all counts.

If there was a down­side to the MIT ini­tia­tive, it was that the Open­Course­Ware mate­ri­als lacked media ele­ments that real­ly let teach­ers and stu­dents see how a course was taught. It’s one thing to get the course mate­ri­als, but quite anoth­er to see the mate­ri­als in action. These days, MIT has filled that gap by adding audio and video com­po­nents to a num­ber of cours­es. (You can review the full list here.) With this addi­tion, you can now see a vari­ety of MIT cours­es in action, rang­ing from biol­o­gy to physics to genom­ic med­i­cine to ani­mal behav­ior. They’re worth a look.

For more online mate­ri­als from top-notch uni­ver­si­ties, see our full list. Uni­ver­si­ty Online Cours­es & Online Media.

Open Culture Podcast Library

in Uncategorized | December 12th, 2006

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News &
Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty Lec­tures & Class­es

See Dai­ly Fea­tures Below

The News Podcast Collection: News Junkies Beware

in Uncategorized | December 9th, 2006

If you’re a news junkie, you might want to pre­tend that you nev­er laid eyes on this … because you might not be sleep­ing for a while. As promised, we’ve put togeth­er a big col­lec­tion of news pod­casts, all avail­able on iTunes. Here, you’ll find over 80 dif­fer­ent news pro­grams from major news orga­ni­za­tions, start­ing with The New York Times, and mov­ing to The Wall Street Jour­nal, the BBC and NPR, and, of course, the major Amer­i­can net­works (ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC). We also have cov­er­age from Aus­tralia, Cana­da, and Ger­many, and some of this con­tent is nice­ly offered in video. Enter the iTunes News Col­lec­tion at your own risk.

The New York Times on iTunes

in Media | December 8th, 2006

It may sound a bit strange, but you can now lis­ten to the front page of The New York Times. Amer­i­ca’s finest dai­ly paper now offers a series of 22 pod­casts on iTunes, which come in dai­ly and week­ly fla­vors. Most are direct spin-offs of pop­u­lar sections/features of the paper. Here’s a sam­ple of what you can load on to you iPod:

• The New York Times Book Review,
• Sci­ence Times,
• David Pogue on Tech Gad­gets,
• The Ethi­cist,
• Most E‑Mailed Arti­cles
• Times Talks (lots of good inter­views)

You get the point.

If you like this kind of thing, you might want to check out our large col­lec­tion of news pod­casts — over 80 pod­casts from major news orga­ni­za­tions.

Or check out our com­plete pod­cast col­lec­tion, Smart iTunes Resources: The Free Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

Iraq Study Group Report: Free Download

in Books | December 7th, 2006

The long-await­ed Iraq Study Group Report came out today, and, by evening, the book ver­sion was already #32 on Amazon.com’s top 100 book list. The book runs about 160 pages, but the sub­stance of the report runs only about 60, and you can spare your­self the $10.95 retail price and sim­ply down­load it in PDF form for free here. You can also get much more back­ground infor­ma­tion about the Iraq Study Group at: https://www.usip.org/isg/

Open Culture Featured on Top Apple Blog

in Uncategorized | December 6th, 2006

It’s nice to see some of our work get­ting a lit­tle appre­ci­a­tion. TUAW.com, oth­er­wise known as The Unof­fi­cial Apple Weblog, one of the 100 most pop­u­lar blogs in the coun­try, recent­ly spot­light­ed our pod­cast col­lec­tions, which set off a viral effect. Hours lat­er, del.icio.us users picked up on it, and the next thing you know, our pod­cast page was the third most pop­u­lar page on the social book­mark­ing ser­vice. And, from there, oth­er sites caught on. It’s amaz­ing to watch how the inter­net works in real time.