The Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection

in Literature | September 10th, 2009

poeA quick note: The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, a human­i­ties research library and muse­um at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin, is com­mem­o­rat­ing the 2009 bicen­ten­ni­al of Edgar Allan Poe, Amer­i­can poet, crit­ic and inven­tor of the detec­tive sto­ry, with the exhi­bi­tion “From Out That Shad­ow: The Life and Lega­cy of Edgar Allan Poe.” To mark the occa­sion, the Cen­ter’s web site has launched The Edgar Allan Poe Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion, and it nice­ly fea­tures Poe’s man­u­scripts, his let­ters and doc­u­ments, pho­tographs and even cryp­tographs that Poe liked to solve. (You can try to solve them too.) Have a look, and then feel free to down­load read­ings of Poe’s work in our col­lec­tion of  Free Audio Books.

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Get Smart with Your iPhone

in Apple, iPhone | September 9th, 2009

opencultureappDur­ing the lazy days of sum­mer, we qui­et­ly launched a new, free iPhone app. Now sum­mer is fad­ing, peo­ple are get­ting back to work, stu­dents back to school, and it’s time to get the word out. This app takes our intel­li­gent media col­lec­tions and let’s you lis­ten to them on the go. Once you down­load the app, you can lis­ten to free audio books, uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, for­eign lan­guage lessons, sci­ence pod­casts and oth­er intel­li­gent con­tent on the iPhone.

The app opens all media files in native iPhone soft­ware — iTunes, Safari, the YouTube play­er, etc. You will need WI-FI (Apple says so) to down­load the con­tent. This app, which was very gen­er­ous­ly devel­oped by Fred Hsu, is a work in progress. Don’t hes­i­tate to give us feed­back. And, if you don’t mind, please leave a nice review/rating in the App Store and spread the word.

Last­ly, let me leave you with some praise that we received today. “I love this appli­ca­tion. Been using it a lot for the Biol­o­gy – Human Anato­my Cours­es avail­able. Thank you so much for devel­op­ing this app. Absolute­ly Bril­liant!!!” Does this intrigue you enough to check it out?

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Be a 2010 TED Fellow!

in Life | September 9th, 2009

TEDWant to attend the 2010 TED Con­fer­ence and hang with some of the world’s great­est minds? Here’s your chance. Apply to the TED Fel­lows pro­gram.  Orga­niz­ers of the TED Con­fer­ence are look­ing for 25 promis­ing Fel­lows from around the world to par­tic­i­pate in TED 2010, and they’re accept­ing appli­ca­tions through Sep­tem­ber 25, 2009. Fel­low­ships include con­fer­ence admis­sion, round-trip trans­porta­tion, hous­ing and all meals. Fel­lows will also par­tic­i­pate in a pre-con­fer­ence with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present a short talk for con­sid­er­a­tion for TED.com. Appli­cants should gen­er­al­ly between 21–40 years of age, though any­one over 18 and over 40 may apply. They must also be flu­ent in Eng­lish. Click here and get start­ed with your appli­ca­tion today!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every TED Talk Under the Sun

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The Obama School Nontroversy

in Education | September 8th, 2009

Any­one look­ing for con­tro­ver­sy in Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s school speech will be dis­ap­point­ed. No “social­ist indoc­tri­na­tion” here. Just a good ol’ red, white & blue pep talk to stu­dents. The talk gets start­ed at 2:10

In case you’re won­der­ing what ground school talks cov­ered in 1988, here’s a look back.

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Every TED Talk Under the Sun

in TED Talks, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Science | September 7th, 2009

If you reg­u­lar­ly vis­it Open Cul­ture, then you’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with TED Talks — the series of 15 minute “riv­et­ing talks by remark­able peo­ple” that TED pro­duces and makes free to the world. We’ve includ­ed TED in our col­lec­tion, Intel­li­gent Video: The Top Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Video Sites, and it’s one of the best sources of intel­li­gent video out there. Hav­ing said that, I was pleased to find this Google spread­sheet of every TED Talk ever post­ed online. Although TED hosts many videos on its web site (and on its iTunes and YouTube chan­nels), these plat­forms don’t give you clean access to the entire TED cat­a­logue. Mean­while, this sim­ple and sortable spread­sheet does. So enjoy, and use it well.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

TED to Chi­na: An Inside View

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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.

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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.)

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Underwater Astonishments

in Science, TED Talks | September 3rd, 2009

Bril­liant, and we’ve added this one, too, to our YouTube Favorites. Now I’m off for the long week­end. See you Tues­day!

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Touring Mars with Google Earth

in Google, Science | September 2nd, 2009

Google Earth has some­what out­grown its name. These days, Google’s satel­lite pro­gram (down­load it here) gives you more than a unique view of our plan­et Earth. It also offers a nice tour of Mars (and the Moon). The Mars tour is guid­ed by a famil­iar voice — the voice of Ira Fla­tow, who hosts the well known NPR pro­gram, Talk Of The Nation: Sci­ence Fri­day. The video below will show you how to access the tour in a quick two min­utes. In the mean­time, you should also note that Google Earth hosts oth­er edu­ca­tion­al con­tent. In the past, we’ve men­tioned how the pro­gram will let you tour the Pra­do Art col­lec­tion in Spain, and also see Ancient Rome in 3D. But that’s not where the edu­ca­tion­al con­tent ends. For more, please vis­it this sum­ma­ry page assem­bled by Google.

Launch the pro­gram, and then tog­gle on the Uranus icon on the top nav bar. Then

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“September 1, 1939” by W.H. Auden

in Literature, Poetry | September 1st, 2009

The poem was W.H. Auden’s. The date marked the moment when Ger­many invad­ed Poland, ini­ti­at­ing the start of World War II. “Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939” was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in The New Repub­lic on Octo­ber 18, 1939. You can find the text of the poem here. Plus, you can also read George Orwell’s account of what hap­pened that his­toric day in Poland. I found it, and just had to throw that in.

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The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It

in Books, e-books, Technology | August 31st, 2009

zittraincover2Lawrence Lessig calls Jonathan Zit­train’s book “Absolute­ly required read­ing.” Cass Sun­stein says it’s “Absolute­ly essen­tial read­ing.” And Lawrence Tribe declares that it is “The most com­pelling book ever writ­ten on why a trans­for­ma­tive tech­nol­o­gy’s tra­jec­to­ry threat­ens to sti­fle that tech­nol­o­gy’s great­est promise for soci­ety.”

The book is The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It.  You can buy it on Ama­zon for $11.56, or, even bet­ter, you can down­load it for free from Zit­train’s web site. Vis­it the web site, and find the PDF here. Thanks for this tip goes to Tony Yet, who guest blogged TED to Chi­na: An Inside View ear­li­er this sum­mer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Audio­book of Chris Anderson’s “Free”

The Future of the Inter­net: A Free Stan­ford Course

Lawrence Lessig’s Free Cul­ture: Avail­able in Text or Audio (For Free)

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