≡ Category: Google, Most Popular, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube | ≅ 3 Comments
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 [...]
≡ Category: Google, Science | ≅ 2 Comments
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 [...]
≡ Category: Books, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
Salman Rushdie’s latest book, The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel, has hit the streets. And it comes just three years after his last one, Shalimar the Clown, which makes him a good deal more prolific than many of his contemporaries. (A piece in The Guardian — The Great American Pause — notes that many celebrated [...]
≡ Category: Google, Science | ≅ 1 Comment
Here’s what you get when Google engineers put their heads together with astronomers from large observatories: With Google Sky, “you can search for planets, listen to Earth & Sky podcasts, watch some beautiful Hubble telescope images, or explore historical maps of the sky from the comfort of your browser.” The product was rolled out just [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Google, Media | ≅ 2 Comments
Today, the Chronicle of Higher Education has a good article on an emerging trend — universities bringing their lectures to YouTube. As you’ll see, we get a mention in the article.
We first began discussing this trend about a year ago. In this public radio interview aired last March, we talked about the sheer dearth of [...]
≡ Category: Google, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 17 Comments
(UPDATED: See 70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube)
It’s been a constant lament that YouTube offers its users scant little intellectual content. And that content is itself hard to find. Just visit YouTube’s so-called Education Section, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything actually educational. But the good news is that we’re seeing some recent [...]
≡ Category: Google | ≅ 9 Comments
As many now know, Google announced Friday that it’s testing a new content initiative — dubbed “knol” — that it hopes will rival Wikipedia. Realizing that Wikipedia entries rank first on 27% of all Google search result pages, the folks at Googleplex couldn’t resist launching a competitive product. In announcing “knol,” the company highlighted two [...]
≡ Category: Google, MIT | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s a quick fyi on two initiatives announced for high school students this past week:
For six years, MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative has done a great job bringing free educational materials to adult learners worldwide. (More on the initiative here.) Now, it has launched a section of its website devoted to high school students and teachers. Here, [...]
≡ Category: Google | ≅ 2 Comments
Google announced earlier this week that it has partnered with Weekly Reader, a producer of educational materials for children since 1928, to help teach “collaborative writing” to young students in the US. The concept here is fairly straightforward. Using Google Docs (a web-based word processor) and its new revision features, students “can work together [...]
≡ Category: Books, Current Affairs, Google | ≅ 1 Comment
Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore has had quite a run. He first won himself an Emmy, then an Oscar, and now the Nobel Peace Prize. Although the film represents Gore’s most well known work on the environment, it’s hardly where his environmental efforts began. His campaign goes back to the late [...]
≡ Category: Books, Google | ≅ 2 Comments
Marking the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Google Book Search has launched a “microsite” dedicated to Germany’s most celebrated writer - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. There, you can learn about his life and travels and, even better, get access to free digital versions of his writings. That’s right, you get to read Faust online [...]
≡ Category: Google, UC Berkeley, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 8 Comments
Updated: See full collection of University Video Collections on YouTube.
I heard rumors something like this was coming, and now it’s here. YouTube has struck deals with major universities, creating dedicated channels from which schools can distribute their media content. Not surprisingly UC Berkeley, always at the digital forefront, has taken the lead and launched an [...]
≡ Category: Film, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s a little something for the film buffs out there: TheListUniverse has posted a collection of ten classic films from the 1920s, 30s and 40s that you can watch on Google Video. Just click and watch. On the list, you’ll find Fritz Lang’s M, the 1922 German silent film Nosferatu, The Gold Rush with Charlie [...]
≡ Category: Books, Google, Web/Tech | ≅ 3 Comments
A few weeks ago, our readers contributed to creating a list of books that left an indelible mark on their lives. You can review the original post here. But we figured why not add them to our “My Library” page on Google, a new product that we briefly mentioned yesterday. You can access the [...]
≡ Category: Google | ≅ 6 Comments
As part of Google’s push into the digital book market (see Friday’s post), the company launched last week My Library, which lets you create lists of your own books, search the content of your book inventory by keyword, and then share your book lists with friends. (You can see examples of these book lists here [...]
≡ Category: Books, Google, Technology | ≅ 2 Comments
In case you missed it, The New York Times published a piece yesterday previewing two new efforts to bring electronic books to the mass market. In October, Amazon.com will roll out the Kindle (check out leaked pictures here), an ebook reader, priced somewhere between $400 to $500, that will wirelessly connect to an e-book store [...]
≡ Category: Books, Google | ≅ 1 Comment
Google Earth added new functionality this week that lets you search the world by geographical location and find books that reference that location. So, for example, if you open Google Earth and type “London,” you will be presented with numerous yellow book icons. Click on any one of them, and Google will show you instances [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film, Google, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
For some, it came as no surprise that “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s latest film and critical look at America’s healthcare system, got strong reviews at The Cannes Film Festival. What else would you expect from Europe’s lefty intelligentsia? Then there was this little curveball. The right-leaning Fox News also called the film “brilliant and uplifting.” How [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Google, Media, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 2 Comments
YouTube is a little more than two years old. It’s a mere toddler. But, it’s now owned by an overgrown, fully-bearded nine year old. Yes, that would be Google, and that means that YouTube is ready to storm its way into the media mainstream, pampers and all.
You can be sure that GooTube has already [...]
≡ Category: Books, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 1 Comment
More good news for book fans: Google has launched a new collection of videos called Authors@Google. The videos feature talks by authors, writing across many genres (literary fiction to science fiction, sociology to technology, politics to business) who have made recent visits to Google campuses.You can access the talks via a new homepage, or just [...]
≡ Category: Google, Media, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
One of the most bookmarked items this weekend on del.icio.us was a streamed version of The Pirates of Silicon Valley. It’s a well-regarded television movie, based on the book Fire in the Valley, which looks at the early days of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the respective founders of Microsoft and Apple Computer. The video [...]
≡ Category: Google, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
Last week, we talked about how it can be logistically difficult to find smart videos on Google Video and YouTube. Then, this week, we stumble upon this: a no-frills web site called Best Online Documentaries that aggregates, yes, you guessed it, high-quality online documentaries, almost all from Google Video. The video segments are divided into [...]
≡ Category: Google, Science, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Last week, we talked a little (here and here) about the trials and tribulations of finding enlightened content on GooTube (Google Video + YouTube). What we didn’t mention is that some of this good content comes straight from Google headquarters itself. This page, simply titled Videos from Googleplex, captures talks given mostly at corporate central, [...]
