More Free Classical

in Music | October 21st, 2008

Until Novem­ber 24, the Roy­al Con­cert­ge­bouw Orches­tra, based in the Nether­lands, is offer­ing 10 sym­phonies as free down­loads. You have to reg­is­ter, but once you do, you can down­load high qual­i­ty per­for­mances of Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms, and more. Hat tip to Metafil­ter for point­ing this one out.

The Old Man and the Sea Animated

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | October 19th, 2008

In 1999, Alek­san­dr Petrov won the Acad­e­my Award for Short Film (among oth­er awards) for a film that fol­lows the plot line of Ernest Hem­ing­way’s clas­sic novel­la, The Old Man and the Sea (1952). As not­ed here, Petro­v’s tech­nique involves paint­ing pas­tels on glass, and he and his son paint­ed a total of 29,000 images in total. Rather incred­i­ble. Below, we present the 20 minute short. You’ll find this film list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

As promised

in Uncategorized | October 17th, 2008

Here’s the YouTube video of the first lec­ture from The Geog­ra­phy of US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tions. The next install­ment comes next week.

A Brief History of the 1929 Crash

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 13th, 2008

With the gyra­tions of the world mar­kets, 1929 was sud­den­ly very present last week. All too present. What real­ly went down in ’29? Below we present “The Crash of 1929,” a doc­u­men­tary that aired as part of PBS’ The Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence Series. Part 1 appears below. You can get the remain­ing parts here: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Free Pres­i­den­tial Biogra­phies on iTunes: FDR and Beyond

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Morphing Van Gogh Portraits

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | October 12th, 2008

You’ll get the con­cept of this pret­ty quick­ly. And if you’re a fan, see these oth­er clips (Women in Art & Women in Film). These cre­ative videos by Philip Scott John­son all reside in this larg­er YouTube col­lec­tion, which has now made it on to our our grow­ing list: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions.

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The Living Camera in Rome

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | October 8th, 2008

Here’s a rather amaz­ing video (added to our YouTube playlist) that shows what hap­pens when an artist, who hap­pens to be autis­tic, takes a 45 minute heli­copter flight over Rome and then works to artis­ti­cal­ly repro­duce all that he sees. The human brain nev­er ceas­es to amaze:

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Writing on the Margins of the Web

in Web/Tech | October 7th, 2008

Today, the world can begin to explore a new web app that will undoubt­ed­ly hold appeal for book lovers on the web. The app is called Reframe It, and it lets you write in the mar­gins of any web page, much as you’d write in the mar­gins of a book. And, even bet­ter, it lets you share the com­ments with oth­ers, turn­ing mar­gin­a­lia into some­thing of a pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion. (Watch the video below to see what I mean.)

Reframe It is being released today in beta. To give it a try, you can down­load the free Fire­fox or Inter­net Explor­er Reframe It brows­er exten­sion here. Give it a try and feel free to let us know what you think.

A Day in the Life of Air Traffic

in Random | October 6th, 2008

The Air­Traf­fic team presents a rather intrigu­ing visu­al­iza­tion of what glob­al air traf­fic looks like over a 24 hour peri­od. File this under Ran­dom. Here it goes:

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Live from Bombay

in Online Courses, Web/Tech | October 6th, 2008

Sev­er­al months back, we men­tioned how the Indi­an Insti­tutes of Tech­nology (oth­er­wise called the IITs) had launched a series of free tech­nol­o­gy cours­es on YouTube. You can find about 50 free cours­es here in total.

As a quick fol­low up, it’s also worth let­ting you know about a new series of cours­es being web­cast live (and in Eng­lish) from IIT Bom­bay (watch here). Accord­ing to the head of their Cen­tre for Dis­tance Engi­neer­ing Edu­ca­tion Pro­gramme, you can watch the live trans­mis­sion of 35 cours­es. A sched­ule of fall cours­es can be found here. Please note that the times ref­er­enced here are in Indi­an Stan­dard Time, but you can use this time zone con­vert­er to make sure that you’re in sync.

For more free online cours­es, see our own meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

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A Brief History of Disbelief

in History, Religion, Video - Politics/Society | October 5th, 2008

Jonathan Miller’s Brief His­to­ry of Dis­be­lief is a BBC pro­duc­tion (2005) that offers tele­vi­sion’s first sus­tained look at the hid­den his­to­ry of athe­ism. The three-part doc­u­men­tary takes you from unbe­liev­ers with­in Ancient Greece, to the re-emer­gence of dis­be­lief in 15th and 16th cen­tu­ry Europe, through to the French Enlight­en­ment, Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Amer­i­ca and the rise of Dar­win­ian thought. We’ve post­ed Part 1 below. You can watch Parts 2 and 3 here and here.

This video comes our way via onlinedocumentaries4u.com

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