The Beatles: Rock Band Intro

in Music | September 7th, 2009

Speak­ing of The Bea­t­les, I’m remind­ed that The Bea­t­les: Rock Band, the new video game hon­or­ing The Fab Four, is hit­ting the streets this week. (See the soft­ware on Ama­zon for the Wii or Xbox.) The clip above shows you the intro to the game, and this Ars Tech­ni­ca piece tells you why The Bea­t­les: Rock Band (which can be pricey if you need to buy instru­ments) may actu­al­ly be worth your hard-earned mon­ey.

Blackbird

in Music | September 6th, 2009

Today is a hol­i­day in the U.S. But I leave you with this bit of Bea­t­les good­ness. Back tomor­row.

(If you want to find more clips of 12 year old Sung­ha Jung play­ing rock clas­sics, check out this page.)

A Bob Dylan Christmas

in Music | August 26th, 2009

Bob Dylan sings your favorite Christ­mas songs. “Here Comes San­ta Claus,” “Win­ter Won­der­land,” “Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy” and “Must Be San­ta.”

It sounds strange. But it’s very real. All mon­ey will go to char­i­ty. You can pre-order now. And although the album won’t be released until Octo­ber, it’s already #4 on Amazon.com’s sales chart.

If any­one comes across some mp3s from the album, Christ­mas in the Heart, please send them our way. Get more details on the project here.

Open Books from Google

in e-books, Google | August 26th, 2009

New from the Google Books Blog:

Try doing a search for [Ham­let] on Google Books. The first few results you’ll get are “Full View” books — which means you can read the full text. And, because the book is in the pub­lic domain, you can also down­load a copy of Ham­let in PDF form.

Start­ing today, you’ll be able to down­load these and over one mil­lion pub­lic domain books from Google Books in an addi­tion­al for­mat. We’re excit­ed to now offer down­loads in EPUB for­mat, a free and open indus­try stan­dard for elec­tron­ic books. It’s sup­port­ed by a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions, so once you down­load a book, you’ll be able to read it on any device or through any read­ing appli­ca­tion that sup­ports the for­mat. That means that peo­ple will be able to access pub­lic domain works that we’ve dig­i­tized from libraries around the world in more ways, includ­ing some that haven’t even been built or imag­ined yet.

The post con­tin­ues here.

The Beatles Talk Before the Fall

in Music | August 25th, 2009

Flash­back to 1966. The Bea­t­les hold a press con­fer­ence in LA, on the eve of their very last live con­cert. As you’ll see, the ques­tions range from the friv­o­lous (“What do you think of Amer­i­can wom­en’s legs?”) to the more seri­ous (“Do you real­ly think you’re more pop­u­lar than God?” Or, “What would hap­pen if you came to an event with­out an armored truck and with­out police?”). A brief glimpse into a day in the life of a Bea­t­le. Part 1 is above. Part 2 is here. And Part 3, here.

Google Knol Prediction Revisited

in Google, Wikipedia | August 25th, 2009

Back in Decem­ber 2007, I made a bet against Google Knol, the search giant’s answer to Wikipedia. In a fair­ly involved piece, I list­ed three rea­sons why Knol would­n’t upend Wikipedia. Now fast for­ward 18+ months: Tech Crunch has report­ed that Knol’s traf­fic is trend­ing down. It peaked in Feb­ru­ary at around 320,000 vis­i­tors per month, accord­ing to Quant­cast esti­mates. Now it’s at around 174,000. (See the graph here.) The bot­tom line? You can’t win at every­thing. But for­tu­nate­ly there’s some good new things com­ing out of Google, and we’ll be men­tion­ing them in the com­ing days.

PS In case you did­n’t hear, Wikipedia is start­ing to put edi­to­r­i­al restric­tions on cer­tain entries. The lais­sez-faire days are com­ing to an end.

We Are as Gods

in Uncategorized | August 24th, 2009

Between 1968 and 1972, Stew­art Brand pub­lished The Whole Earth Cat­a­log. For Steve Jobs, it was a “Bible” of his gen­er­a­tion, a kind of Google 35 years before Google came along (see the excel­lent com­mence­ment speech where Jobs makes these com­ments.) More recent­ly, Brand found­ed The Long Now Foun­da­tion, which is all about cul­ti­vat­ing “slower/better” think­ing instead of the “faster/cheaper” mind­set that dom­i­nates our day. (You can get The Long Now pod­cast here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site.  It’s also in our Ideas & Cul­ture Audio Col­lec­tion.) Brand is good at look­ing thought­ful­ly into the future, and above he takes a long-range view on our glob­al cli­mate prob­lems. The upshot is that “we are as gods” and we had bet­ter get good at it. If you watch, you’ll see what I’m talk­ing about. This video orig­i­nal­ly comes from the EDGE.org.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Whole Earth Cat­a­log Now Online

Bet­ter Think­ing Through Pod­casts

Reading Free Books on the Kindle

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Literature | August 17th, 2009

Even though we some­times give Ama­zon’s Kin­dle a hard time, the device is undoubt­ed­ly handy for read­ing e‑books. The Kin­dle lets you seam­less­ly down­load books straight from Ama­zon in a mat­ter of sec­onds. And, even bet­ter, you can load the Kin­dle with thou­sands of free e‑books from sources such as Project Guten­berg. (Few peo­ple know this.) This guide will show you how to down­load a free book from Project Guten­berg, and then read it on your Kin­dle. You can also find many free ebooks for the Kin­dle in our Free eBook col­lec­tion.

Step 1:

Go to https://www.gutenberg.org and search for a book you would like to read.

Making the Web Work for Science

in Science | August 16th, 2009

httpv://vimeo.com/6087817

How can the web advance the progress of sci­ence? It’s a big ques­tion, obvi­ous­ly. And some smart folks have some­thing to say about it. Here we have Tim O’Reil­ly (founder of O’Reil­ly Media, one of the lead­ing tech pub­lish­ers), Jim­my Wales (Wikipedia Founder), Stephen Friend (founder of Roset­ta Inphar­mat­ics and for­mer EVP at Mer­ck Research Lab­o­ra­to­ries) and John Will­banks (VP and head of the Sci­ence Com­mons project at Cre­ative Com­mons) offer­ing their thoughts. The con­ver­sa­tion was held on July 28th at the The Com­mon­wealth Club of Cal­i­for­nia.

Rod Blagojevich Sings Elvis with Fabio

in Music | August 14th, 2009

One month you’re the gov­er­nor of Illi­nois; the next you’re indict­ed and kicked out of office for try­ing to sell Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s Sen­ate seat; and sev­er­al months lat­er, you wind up imi­tat­ing Elvis at block par­ties. Oh how the mighty have fall­en. The mon­ey moment comes 50 sec­onds in. Have a good week­end. Back to seri­ous stuff next week.