Smart video collections keep appearing on YouTube. But rather antithetical to the ethos of its parent company (Google), YouTube unfortunately makes these collections difficult to find. So we’ve decided to do the job for them. These enriching/educational videos come from media outlets, cultural institutions, universities and non-profits. There are about 70 collections in total, and the list will grow over time. If we’re missing anything good, feel free to let us know, and we’ll happily add them. You can find the complete list below the jump.
The leading human rights organization brings you various videos outlining human rights concerns across the globe, and the work they’re doing to improve conditions.
A series of videos promoting programs coming out of Britain’s main media outlet. Unfortunately many of these videos are short and not entirely substantive. A missed opportunity.
In advance of tomorrow’s release of the new 3G iPhone, Apple has launched its new App Store on iTunes, which features new tools that will immediately make the iPhone (and iPod Touch) a more versatile — and, in some cases, enlightening — device. Below, we have highlighted ten apps worth exploring if you’re hungry for enriching information. 9 of the 10 are free. (Please note: To access the App Store, you will need to download the latest version of iTunes (here) and also the new iPhone 2.0 firmware, which has yet to be officially released — although you can find an unofficial release and directions on how to install it here. The official release should be coming any time now.)
1.) The New York Times: Thanks to this app, you can read “All the News That’s Fit to Print” on your iPhone. It lets you customize the news you read, and also read articles offline.
2.) AOL Radio: One downside to the first generation iPhone is that it didn’t allow you to access internet radio. This app helps to change some of that. It gives you access to 150 CBS radio stations across the US, including some key news stations.
3.) Mandarin Audio Phrasebook: Lonely Planet, the publisher of fine travel guides, has produced a free Mandarin audio phrasebook, which includes 630 commonly used phrases. Via the iPhone you can hear how the phrases are spoken (and also see how they are phonetically written). For $9.99, you can purchase phrasebooks in nine other languages, including Spanish, French, Japanese, Italian, Thai, Vietnamese and Czech. See full collection here.
4.) Truveo Video Search: The Wall Street Journal calls Truveo the “best web-wide video-search engine.” And now, with this Truveo app, you can use the iPhone to find videos from across the web, and, regardless of their format, play them all in one application. This sounds like a great addition, especially since many videos weren’t playable on 1st generation iPhones.
5.) NetNewsWire: With this app, you can add an RSS reader to the iPhone, allowing you to read RSS feeds in a neat and clean way. It also lets you “clip” articles that you like and read them later. Don’t forget to sign up for our feed, and you can always add more cultural feeds by perusing our list of 100 Culture Blogs.
6.) Google Mobile App: Let’s face it. In today’s information world, Google is a must-have. And so it’s nice to have an app that makes Google and its many functionalities completely iPhone friendly.
8.) Talking Spanish Phrasebook: Too busy to learn a new language? Then you’re in luck. This app will do the talking for you. It takes basic phrases in English and then converts them into spoken Spanish. There are also free versions in French, German, and Italian.
9.) Epocrates: This free app turns your iPhone into a comprehensive drug database. Very handy for the medical community.
10.) NearPics: If you’re traveling, and if you want to discover great places nearby, this app lets you discover pictures that have been taken in the vicinity. The app offers a way to discover intriguing places (or things) that normally fly below the radar. Also, this other app lets you put Flickr on your iPhone. More ways to satisfy your inner photographer.
A contribution (which we always welcome) from one of our readers in Romania:
“The brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière created the first publicly shown movies, the first documentaries and, with this 50-second film shot at a Provence railway station, the first horror picture. It is said that as Paris audiences watched the train chug toward the screen, they believed it was about to crash out of the frame and into the auditorium, and ran out screaming. True or not, the story indicates the power the medium would wield over its audience.
The 50-second silent film [L’Arrivée D’un Train En Gare De La Ciotat] captures the entry of a steam locomotive into the train station in the French coastal town of la Ciotat. Like most of the other early Lumière films, L’Arrivée d’un train consists of a single, unedited ‘view’ illustrating an aspect of everyday life.”
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When completed in Dubai, this “dynamic building” designed by David Fisher will be in constant motion, always changing its shape, and also generate its own electric energy. You can reserve your apartment today, or wait for similar buildings to get erected in Moscow and New York. The whole concept feels a bit Las Vegas-esque. But who knows, maybe this is the wave of the future. To see what I’m talking about, watch the video below and get more info here.
Without Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, Americans wouldn’t have the Declaration of Independence. Rather strangely, both men died on the same day, exactly fifty years after the signing of the Declaration — July 4, 1826.
Every June 16 is Bloomsday, which commemorates Jame’s Joyce’s Ulysses (get free audio here). In Dublin and around the world, celebrations usually include a reading of Joyce’s classic. This year, in New York City, one high-profile event featured Stephen Colbert reading the part of Leopold Bloom, the character around which the sprawling novel turns. You can listen to Colbert read here and here. Enjoy, and I will catch you back here after the holiday weekend.
Not an obvious conclusion, I’ll agree. However, Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, presents the argument like this: as all sorts of data accumulate into a vast ocean of petabytes, our ability to synthesize it all into elegant theories and laws will disappear. The story is the cover of this month’s issue of Wired but I came across it in a newsletter from The Edge, a group of thinkers trying to promote a “third culture” of online intellectual thought.
Anderson’s argument isn’t really that the scientific method will disappear, but rather that correlation will become as good as it gets in terms of analyzing real-world data. Everything will be too messy, noisy and changing too quickly for proper hypotheses and theorems. As Anderson puts it, it will be “the end of theory.”
The nice thing about reading this on Edge is that the newsletter comes with several critical responses included from “The Reality Club,” which includes thinkers like George Dyson, Kevin Kelly and Stuart Brand. But I say that as the consumers and producers of most of these masses of data, the vote should lie with you, reader: does Google’s brute force approach to data hording spell the end scientific elegance?
A quick fyi: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersch has a new piece in The New Yorker detailing “a major escalation of covert operations against Iran.” The plans drafted by the Bush administration and funded by Congress brings the US another step closer to a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program, and such a strike becomes all the more likely, Hirsch believes, if Obama wins the November election. (Why? Because Obama favors having direct talks rather than using preemptive force.) You can find an accompanying audio interview with Hersch here. He also appeared yesterday on NPR’s Fresh Air and elaborated on all of this. You can listen here: Stream — iTunes — Feed.
Darwinmania (as The New York Times dubbed it) is about to begin. During the next year, we will celebrate Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species (download zip audio here) and the discovery of natural selection. It’s pretty much a given that the minutiae of Darwin’s life will get thoroughly reexamined. So I figured why not get ahead of the curve and give you this — Darwin’s writing room. It’s provided courtesy of the Guardian Book Section, which lets you take a peek at the writings rooms of Virginia Woolf, Lord Byron, Rudyard Kipling, Martin Amis and many other important writers. (You can also visit our piece from last year for more room photos.)
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