≡ Category: Media, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Late in the week, TEDTalks named its top ten videos. Whether this is a quantitative or qualitative judgment, I am not sure. On the list, you’ll find Al Gore talking about how to avert a climate crisis, David Gallo showing amazing underwater creatures, and Ken Robinson describing why schools kill creativity (we’ve posted that one [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 1 Comment
Here’s a little something for consumers and producers of good cultural media.
BlogTalkRadio gives anyone with a computer and telephone the ability to create their own live radio show, and then later turn the broadcast into a podcast. So far, about 82,000 shows have aired on this free service, and about 2.4 million listeners [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 7 Comments
The German publisher Bertelsmann announced that it will publish annually a 1,000 page edition of Wikipedia starting next September. To be called “The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia,” it will sell for 19.95 euros (or roughly $32 U.S.) and feature some of the most popular articles from the German version of Wikipedia. One euro per copy will [...]
≡ Category: Media, YouTube | ≅ 1 Comment
It’s perhaps a stretch to call this a piece of “open culture,” except that the footage, using time-lapsed video to show a man stuck in an elevator for 41 hours, accompanies a piece printed in the latest edition of The New Yorker — Up and Then Down: The Lives of Elevators.
Then, there’s this noteworthy fact: [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 2 Comments
Thanks to a new program called Britannica Webshare, web publishers — be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers who post frequently on the web — can now get free online access to Britannica and its 65,000 articles. Normally, this service runs $70 per year. For more info, read TechCrunch’s scoop on the new initiative. To sign [...]
≡ Category: Books, Business, Foreign Language, Media, Technology | ≅ Leave a Comment
The New York Times has a great article on a professor of management science who has founded an almost completely automated publishing company. The 200,000 books he’s published sound, well, terrible, and terribly overpriced: “Among the books published under his name are ‘The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea’ ($24.95 and 168 pages long); ‘Stickler [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 2 Comments
One of our readers (thanks Scott!) pointed us to an intriguing video collection hosted by the University of Texas. Here, you’ll find an archive of the nationally televised program, The Mike Wallace Interview, which aired from 1957 to 1960. And what you get is Mike Wallace (of later 60 Minutes fame) asking probing questions to [...]
≡ Category: Film, Media, Television, Video - Arts & Culture, Web/Tech | ≅ 5 Comments
One of the things they promised us in the heyday of the 1990s Internet boom was the end of television and a brave new world of high quality video online, on demand. Well, we’re still waiting. Youtube is great for short clips, but not designed for the technical (or legal) challenge of serving up whole [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ Leave a Comment
This week, UC Berkeley professor Paul Duguid squared off in a debate with provocateur Andrew Keen (author of the flimsy bestseller, The Cult of Amateur). At issue here is the question: “Is the Web 2.0 a Threat to Our Culture?” How did the well-attended debate go? Have a listen here and see photos here.
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≡ Category: Literature, MIT, Media, Weblogs | ≅ 2 Comments
For a graduate student in an English Ph.D. program, one of the big milestones on the road to the dissertation is the Oral Exam. In my case this involves five professors, a list of 60-80 books, and two hours in a (rhetorically) smoke-filled room. Since I’m working on contemporary literature and new media, one of [...]
≡ 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: Audio Books, Media | ≅ Leave a Comment
Podcasting is a new form of media distribution that’s done a good job of reviving old forms of media, particularly old radio shows. In the past, we’ve pointed you to several old radio broadcasts, including Orson Welles’ famous 1938 radio drama that led many Americans to hunker down in basements, desperately hoping to avoid an [...]
≡ Category: Literature, Media | ≅ 2 Comments
WNYC’s latest On The Media (iTunes - Feed - Site) covers the crisis of traditional book publishing in a new media age. While Amazon rolls out the Kindle and more and more content comes out in pure digital form, we’re still publishing more books than ever before. One interesting note from the program is that [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ Leave a Comment
Digital Journalist, a web site affiliated with the University of Texas, has posted 100 world-changing photographs by the iconic LIFE magazine. You can read the introduction to the collection here, or start with the first powerful image and then advance through a sampling of the other impact-filled images that topped their list.
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≡ Category: Media | ≅ Leave a Comment
In early October, The New Yorker magazine held its eighth annual festival in NYC. (Yikes! As I am typing I’m feeling my first earthquake here in California. Apparently 5.7 on Richter scale. Details here.) Anyway, the festival brings to the stage an impressive list of writers & artists (see the full schedule here). And while [...]
≡ Category: Books, Media | ≅ Leave a Comment
Earlier this month, The New York Times Book Review launched an online Reading Room that lets readers tackle great books with the help of “an all-star cast of panelists from various backgrounds—authors, reviewers, scholars and journalists.” The first reading starts with Leo Tolstoy’s 1200+ page epic, War and Peace (1865-69), and it’s led by book [...]
≡ Category: Business, Current Affairs, Media | ≅ Leave a Comment
As we’ve discussed before on this blog, one of the major casualties in the shifting new media landscape is the traditional investigative journalist–someone with the time and resources to research in-depth stories. In response to this problem a new group called Pro Publica is proposing a novel economic model: hire the journalists into a foundation [...]
≡ Category: Media, Stanford, Technology | ≅ Leave a Comment
I just heard Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, speaking at Stanford Law School today. Wales is working on some new projects that he hopes will harness the community-driven collaboration of Wikipedia. He’s already had some success in branching out from the encyclopedia idea with Wikia, which is a “wiki farm” compiling information on a variety [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Media | ≅ 1 Comment
The satirists are getting a lot mileage out of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s declaration that Iran is gay-free. Last week, Saturday Night Live spoofed Ahmadinejad, as we noted. Then, The New Yorker parodied Ahmadinejad on the magazine’s cover with one of its famed cartoons. (The image included a not-so-oblique reference to Larry Craig, the conservative US Senator [...]
≡ Category: Media, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
The New Yorker has rolled out a series of animated cartoons, which puts in motion its famous cartoons. They can be watched as video podcasts or as streamed videos. You should definitely head over to The New Yorker web site to view the larger collection. But, if you want a little taste, take a look [...]
≡ Category: Books, Current Affairs, Media, Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
Earlier this week I spoke on the phone with Alan Weisman, the author of The World Without Us. (See our initial piece on his book.) Alan was gracious enough to take some time out of his publicity schedule to share his thoughts on the book, the world, his writing process, and more. What follows is [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 2 Comments
Effective at midnight, The New York Times will make the “TimesSelect” section of its website entirely free. (It used to cost subscribers $49.95 a year.) And it will also free up “its archives from 1987 to the present … , as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain.”
In [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Media, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
HBO just started airing the sixth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, so it seemed fitting to serve up this lengthy interview with Larry David. The talk is very funny. No shock there. But it also gets into some good substance. How Larry got into comedy; how he struggled during his early standup years and had [...]
≡ Category: Books, Media | ≅ 3 Comments
Publisher’s Weekly announced last week that Lars Brownworth, a New York high school teacher, will publish with Crown (a Random House division) a new book that covers “1,200 years of Byzantine history, examining the culture’s forgotten role in preserving classical thought, connecting East and West, and building modern Western society.” It’s expected to hit the [...]
≡ Category: Books, Business, Media | ≅ 2 Comments
A couple of years ago I met Jason Epstein in passing and he excitedly described his new project: a machine to print On Demand Books. The plan is finally bearing fruit: the Espresso Book Machine was demonstrated at the New York Public Library on Wednesday. Three of the machines are out in the wild, and [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Media, Sci Fi | ≅ 5 Comments
Today, by popular demand, we’re running an updated version of one of our more popular posts to date. Enjoy…
At hastened speeds during the past year, we have seen book lovers recording homegrown audiobooks and posting them on sites like Librivox (see our collection of free audiobooks here). For obvious copyright reasons, these audio texts largely [...]
≡ Category: Media | ≅ 1 Comment
When you think of The New Yorker, you don’t generally think of a magazine with a substantial digital footprint. But, ever so gradually, under David Remnick’s editorial direction, this institution in American journalism and cultural commentary has launched a series of digital initiatives that complement the traditional print journal. And when you add them all [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
(Continued from Part II)
The most recent major foray into the world of cultureboxes comes in an entirely different size and market niche: the Apple iPhone. It may look different, but it has all the hallmarks of a culturebox. The iPhone wants to deliver video, audio and the best of the Web; it hopes to revolutionize [...]
≡ Category: Media, Technology, Television, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The online magazine Slate runs most of its arts and culture stories in a section called “Culturebox.” Ironically, it’s taken the consumer electronics industry several years to catch up, but now it seems like every new gadget is marketed as a culturebox, from the shiny iPhone to the pioneering Tivo to the hot-running Xbox 360. [...]
≡ Category: Business, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The online magazine Slate runs most of its arts and culture stories in a section called “Culturebox.” Ironically, it’s taken the consumer electronics industry several years to catch up, but now it seems like every new gadget is marketed as a culturebox, from the shiny iPhone to the pioneering Tivo to the hot-running Xbox 360. [...]
