≡ Category: Apple, Most Popular, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
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 [...]
≡ Category: Video - Arts & Culture, Web/Tech, YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
A couple weeks ago we talked about a new trend in the book publishing world — creating promotional videos for new books and letting them go viral on YouTube and other social video sites. Here’s one of the better examples I’ve seen. 12 books by Lemony Snicket get promoted at once. Lots of bang for [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
Things got a little nerdgasmic yesterday when Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone at WWDC. Although the pitch lasted 107 minutes, the highlights have been boiled down to a neat 60 seconds. In watching the clip, here’s my simple take away: When I bought an iPhone earlier this spring, I apparently paid two times too [...]
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ 2 Comments
Long ago, I got in the habit of using Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. And I’ve suffered through the painfully slow page loads for the better part of a decade. But then I stumbled upon a better alternative. NinjaWords is “a really fast dictionary … fast like a Ninja.” Give it a try. You’ll enjoy the speed.
PS [...]
≡ 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: Books, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
At The Berkman Center for Internet and Society (at Harvard Law School), Clay Shirky gave a talk on his highly touted new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. You can catch his talk here: video for computer or portable device - high res video - mp3 audio. And sample some of [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Politics, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The truism goes that laws and sausages are the two things you don’t want to see being made. Nevertheless, if more of us paid attention to what our congressional representatives are really up to (and let them know when they screw up), we’d probably be a little happier with how the system works overall. Two [...]
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
There’s lots of buzz today around the launch of Wikia Search, the new search engine created by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. It’s premised on the same ideas that made Wikipedia, Wikipedia …. open source and the power of people. Here’s Jimmy Wales giving a quick explanation of the project. (For a longer conversation with Wales, [...]
≡ Category: Business, MIT, Technology, Web/Tech | ≅ 5 Comments
The New York Times ran a fascinating article today about the feud between Intel and the One Latop Per Child program run by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte. If you haven’t heard about it, the initiative is intended to develop a reasonably priced ($200) laptop for primary school children in the third world. The model they’re selling [...]
≡ Category: Most Popular, Web/Tech | ≅ 18 Comments
The iPod can supercharge your learning. But it’s often a matter of finding the right software and content. Below, we’ve listed several new pieces of software that will let you suck more educational media (DVDs, web videos, audio files, etc.) into your iPod. And we’ve also listed some important pieces of content that will make [...]
≡ Category: Podcast Articles and Resources, Web/Tech | ≅ 2 Comments
Lifehacker has assembled a great list that will help you maximize the use of your iPod. Here, they point you to free software that will let you 1) rip a DVD to your iPod, 2) copy music and videos to and from your iPod, and also from and to any computer, 3) load videos [...]
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
Interesting stats:
In December 2005, how often did Wikipedia come up as the first search engine result in a given search? Just about never in Google’s case, and 7% of the time in Yahoo’s case. Now, Wikipedia is the first search result 27% of the time on Google and 31% of the time on Yahoo. Rather [...]
≡ Category: Podcast Articles and Resources, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The answer is simple: Handbrake. This free, open source software (which works on MacOS X, Linux and Windows) makes it simple to load and watch DVDs on your video iPod. Here are some helpful instructions to get you started.
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≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
Valleywag, the blog that tracks Silicon Valley and things tech, posted an amusing comparison between the traditional book and Amazon’s new electronic reader (see yesterday’s post). It’s clearly meant to be more witty than serious, but it makes some obvious and valid points along the way. (See Valleywag article here)
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≡ Category: Books, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The Kindle, Amazon’s new eBook reader, is just now hitting the streets. The promo video below overviews its basic features, including the Kindle’s “paper-like” screen, ergonomic design, and free wireless access to content. As you’ll see, the $399 reader, which holds 200 books, promises to succeed where other digital readers have failed — to offer [...]
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The creativity associated with Wikipedia never ends. If you click here, a program called WikipediaVision will show you a Google map that displays in real time who is writing/editing what Wikipedia entry across the globe. Cool mashup. (Source: The New Scientist.com)
Related Content:
Keeping Wikipedia Honest
Tracking Wikipedia’s Manipulations
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≡ Category: Video - Science, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
Earlier this year, Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State, released a smart video that immediately went viral on the internet. It was called Web 2.0… the Machine is Us/ing Us and it cleverly explained the often vague concept of Web 2.0 and why it matters. Now Wesch has launched another [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The digital music market is big, and so far Apple has owned it. But now Amazon may be quickly emerging as a viable competitor.
Tuesday, Amazon launched Amazon MP3, which gives you access to 2 million songs and more soon to come. Amazon’s product has several nice advantages over iTunes. Let’s list them briefly:
It delivers songs [...]
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ 1 Comment
Wikipedia is now the 9th most frequented site on the web, and it hosts over 7 million articles in over 200 languages. Like it or not, Wikipedia is here to stay.
Recognizing this, some innovative programmers have started developing ways to shore up Wikipedia’s sometimes shaky foundations. In particular, they’re finding ways to monitor Wikipedia entries [...]
≡ Category: Apple, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
Since we talk a lot here about podcasts and mp3 files, it seems worth flagging this Yahoo gadget review that pits the new iPod lineup against its rivals. Here, we’ve got the new iPod Touch v. the Samsung Yepp YP-P2; the new Nano (with video) v. the Sansa View, and the iPod Classic v. Microsoft’s [...]
≡ 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: Web/Tech | ≅ 3 Comments
Here’s a handy tool that many of our readers will appreciate. Skreemr allows you to search the web for audio content of your choice. It works like your typical search engine. Type “Mozart” and this is what you get. For tips on how to search most effectively, click here. If you’re running Firefox, you should [...]
≡ Category: Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
In 2006, we learned that staff members on Capitol Hill logged into Wikipedia and gave a partisan air-brushing to the biographies of various Congressmen and Senators. Meanwhile, in 2005, 15 paragraphs were mysteriously deleted from a Wikipedia entry on Diebold, the major American voting machine vendor that has found itself at the center of recent [...]
≡ Category: Podcast Articles and Resources, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
That sounds like a strange proposition. Podcasts are inherently mobile, so what can make them more mobile? Apparently myPodder can. It’s a free, cross-platform software package put out by Podcast Ready that has two notable advantages. Once you register and install their free software, you’ll no longer need to download podcasts first to your computer [...]
≡ 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. [...]
≡ Category: Online Courses, Stanford, Web/Tech | ≅ 2 Comments
Here is a new and free course to come out of a Stanford University program that (full disclosure) I help organize. It’s called The Future of the Internet: Architecture and Policy (iTunes), and it’s taught by Ramesh Johari. The course, designed for non-techies, gets into the important question of whether the internet will remain “neutral” [...]
≡ Category: Books, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | ≅ 1 Comment
New rule: Books that are short on good ideas should only get short reviews. And so that’s what we’re serving up today — a short review of Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur: How the Democratization of the Digital World is Assaulting Our Culture.
Keen’s argument can essentially be boiled down to this: Web 2.0 [...]
≡ Category: Books, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | ≅ 1 Comment
Last weekend’s New York Times Sunday Magazine has declared this the Amateur’s Hour, an era when unpaid hobbyists can edit breaking news, design space technology for NASA, and predict the end of the world. That last article is clearly an outlier, but the first two raise an interesting point—are we getting better service from processes [...]
