Your Favorite TED Talk Ever?

in TED Talks | November 25th, 2009

What’s the best TED Talk ever? That’s the lit­tle debate tak­ing place on Reddit.com, and the answer is not obvi­ous, see­ing that TED now has over 500 talks avail­able in its archive. (You can find a con­stant­ly updat­ed list of every TED Talk in a Google spread­sheet here.)

Now, what are some of the Red­dit favorites? Here are five talks that get fre­quent men­tions.

Mean­while, it’s worth men­tion­ing that TED keeps its own run­ning list of its 10 most pop­u­lar talks. Some good ones here. And now your turn. Tell us your favorites in the com­ments below, and don’t be shy.

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Get $3 in MP3s from Amazon.com

in Music | November 24th, 2009

A quick free­bie men­tion: Amazon.com is cur­rent­ly giv­ing away $3 worth of MP3’s until Novem­ber 30th. That amounts essen­tial­ly to three free songs. Just click to this page, fol­low a few easy steps (includ­ing using the code code MP34FREE), and you’ll be on your way.

via Life­hack­er

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The American Novel Since 1945: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in Literature, Yale | November 23rd, 2009

The video above is the first of 26 lec­tures mak­ing up a free Yale course called The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945. Taught by Amy Hunger­ford, the course intro­duces you to the nov­els of Amer­i­ca’s finest post-war writ­ers — Nabokov (émi­gré), Salinger, Ker­ouac, and Pyn­chon, and also Philip Roth, Toni Mor­ri­son, Cor­mac McCarthy and Jonathan Safran Foer. You can watch all lec­tures in the fol­low­ing for­mats: YouTube – iTunes Audio – iTunes Video. Yale also offers the files as mp3s/movs here. For more full-fledged cours­es from oth­er top uni­ver­si­ties (includ­ing many oth­ers from Yale), vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

You can stream all of the lec­tures, from start to fin­ish, below:

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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The Big NASA Image Archive

in Astronomy, Science | November 23rd, 2009

The Inter­net Archive has done it again. The San Fran­cis­co non-prof­it has teamed up with NASA to give you access to NASA’s image, video, and audio col­lec­tions. The con­tent is all avail­able in one sin­gle, search­able resource, which makes it the largest col­lec­tion of NASA’s media on the web. When you enter NasaImages.org, you’ll see that the media is nice­ly divid­ed into the fol­low­ing sec­tions. Uni­verse, Solar Sys­tem, Earth, Aero­nau­tics, and Astro­nauts. Now please help get the word out.

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Kindle the Answer? For Author J.A. Konrath It Is

in Amazon Kindle, Books, e-books | November 22nd, 2009

With six pub­lished nov­els under his belt, you might think J.A. Kon­rath has it made. But, if you know much about the cur­rent pub­lish­ing mar­ket, you could cer­tain­ly ques­tion that. Made or not, JA made a very inter­est­ing dis­cov­ery recent­ly when he sat down and com­pared his Hype­r­i­on ebook roy­al­ty state­ments with the pro­ceeds he’s brought in by putting up four nov­els on Ama­zon’s Kin­dle store all by him­self.

What did he learn? That self-pub­lish­ing ebooks can be a lucra­tive and very real option for known authors! You’ve got to read the whole post here to get a full sense of the fig­ures involved and why this has been work­ing for him.

While we’re at it, if you want more writ­ers dis­clos­ing their roy­al­ty state­ments in blogs, have a look at what Lynn Viehl has to say about the pro­ceeds from her NY Times Best­selling books at Genreality.com. Thanks to April Hamil­ton at  Pub­le­tari­at for bring­ing this to my eye.

You can find out more about Seth’s work (includ­ing his lat­est book Jack Wakes Up) at SethHarwood.com.

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100 Great, Free Movies Online

in Film | November 21st, 2009

Two weeks ago, we pre­sent­ed a list of 35 sites where you can watch free movies online. Now, we’ve tak­en the next step and added 100 high-qual­i­ty films to our list. Some films are con­tem­po­rary, but many are clas­sics cre­at­ed by leg­endary direc­tors, actors & actress­es. And they’re fre­quent­ly made avail­able by the great Inter­net Archive. (Note: you can usu­al­ly stream or down­load their films. It’s your choice.) Below I have list­ed 15 films, but you can find the com­plete list here. Final­ly, if you want to for­ward a short link to friends, here’s one that you can use: http://bit.ly/freeonlinemovies

  • Beat the Dev­il (1953) Direct­ed by John Hus­ton, with Humphrey Bog­a­rt and Peter Lorre.
  • Demen­tia 13 (1963) A hor­ror film that was one of Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s ear­ly main­stream efforts.
  • His Girl Fri­day (1940) Direct­ed by Howard Hawks. A clas­sic com­e­dy with Cary Grant.
  • Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton (1939) Direct­ed by Frank Capra, with Jim­my Stew­art.
  • My Best Friend’s Birth­day (1987) Direct­ed by Quentin Taran­ti­no.
  • Pan­ic in the Streets (1950) A noir clas­sic direct­ed by Elia Kazan, with Jack Palance.
  • Rashomon (1950) By the great Japan­ese direc­tor Aki­ra Kuro­sawa.
  • Scar­let Street (1945) Direct­ed by Fritz Lang with Edward G. Robin­son. A film noir great.
  • Sita Sings the Blues (2008) New prize-win­ning ani­mat­ed film by Nina Paley.
  • Super­Size Me (2004) Mor­gan Spur­lock­’s doc­u­men­tary on fast food in Amer­i­ca. Also watch here.
  • Taxi Dri­ver (1976) Direct­ed by Mar­tin Scors­ese, with Robert DeNiro. (US view­ers only)
  • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) Direct­ed by Alfred Hitch­cock, with James Stew­art and Doris Day.
  • The Ter­ror (1963) With Jack Nichol­son and part­ly shot by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la.
  • Tri­umph of the Will (1935) The major Nazi pro­pa­gan­da work by Leni Riefen­stahl. With sub­ti­tles.
  • The 39 Steps (1935) One of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s first hits.
  • Un Chien Andalou (1929) Sal­vador Dali and Louis Bunuel’s short, silent sur­re­al­ist film.

Get the full list of 100 free online movies here. And remem­ber to fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

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Jimi Hendrix Breaks Out in America, Covers Bob Dylan

in Music | November 20th, 2009


We take you back to 1967, to the three-day Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in Cal­i­for­nia, which was kind of a pre­cur­sor to the Wood­stock Fes­ti­val held in 1969. Mon­terey marked, among oth­er things, the first major Amer­i­can appear­ances by Jimi Hen­drix and The Who. Above, we give you Hen­drix cov­er­ing Bob Dylan’s anthem Like a Rolling Stone. And here, we have Wild Thing, which ends famous­ly in Hen­drix adding fire to his best imi­ta­tion of Pete Town­shend. Great vin­tage clips which you’ll find in our YouTube favorites.

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Free, Rare, Early Shakespeare Digital Archive

in Literature | November 19th, 2009

New­ly launched: The Shake­speare Quar­tos Archive is a new dig­i­tal col­lec­tion that fea­tures pre-1642 edi­tions of William Shake­speare’s plays. Here, for exam­ple, you will find rare ear­ly edi­tions of Ham­let, includ­ing all 32 exist­ing quar­to copies of the play in one place. An online first. Thanks Jere­my for the tip…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pla­gia­rism Soft­ware Dis­cov­ers New Shake­speare Play

Free Shake­speare on the iPhone

Goethe and Shake­speare on Google

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like

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I Met the Walrus: An Animated Film Revisiting a Teenager’s 1969 Interview with John Lennon

in Music | November 19th, 2009

It hap­pened 44 years ago. A 14-year-old Bea­t­les fan named Jer­ry Lev­i­tan man­aged to sneak into John Lennon’s Toron­to hotel room and asked for an inter­view. And he got one. Now, there’s a short ani­mat­ed film that brings that encounter back to life. I Met the Wal­rus was nom­i­nat­ed for the 2008 Acad­e­my Award for Ani­mat­ed Short. You’ll know why when you watch it. Anoth­er excel­lent find by Vick­ie.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

Get a Fly-on-the-Wall View of John Lennon Record­ing & Arrang­ing His Clas­sic Song, “Imag­ine” (1971)

Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

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Remix Manifesto: A True Movie for the Digital Age

in Film | November 18th, 2009

It’s nice to see cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Michael Wesch get­ting fea­tured right now on YouTube’s home­page. (A pro­fes­sor get­ting fea­tured on YouTube? That has to be a first.) Any­way, Wesch is direct­ing view­ers to a film called RIP: A Remix Man­i­festo, a prize win­ning film that offers a “prob­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into how cul­ture builds upon cul­ture [think mashup] in the infor­ma­tion age.” I have post­ed the trail­er above. You can also watch the com­plete movie in mul­ti­ple parts on YouTube (Part 1 is here), or direct­ly down­load the entire film and name your price. If you haven’t seen Wesch’s own videos, you can watch his cre­ative pieces here, here, and here.

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Einstein’s Relativity: An Animated New Yorker Cartoon

in Comedy | November 18th, 2009

In the past cou­ple of years, The New York­er has rolled out a series of ani­mat­ed car­toons, which puts in motion its famous car­toons. They can be watched iTunes, YouTube or right on the web.

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