The American Idol for Thinking People: The New Twist on Book Publishing

in Books | January 15th, 2007

Firstchapters
It was prob­a­bly only a mat­ter of time before this hap­pened. Accord­ing to The New York Times, Touch­stone, an imprint of Simon & Schus­ter, has agreed to pub­lish a work by whichev­er new writer takes first prize in a con­test spon­sored by the social-net­work­ing site, Gather.com. A la Amer­i­can Idol, every­day peo­ple and pan­el of experts will read and vote on the first chap­ter of books sub­mit­ted by every­day peo­ple.  And although the win­ner will need to sign the “stan­dard Simon & Schus­ter con­tract,” he/she will get their work fast tracked to pub­li­ca­tion and for­go the  has­sle of shop­ping a book. Also, there’s a $5,000 cash prize and the promise of pro­mo­tion at local Bor­ders’ book stores.

The under­ly­ing log­ic behind the con­test, called “First Chap­ters,” comes down to this: It’s ulti­mate­ly peo­ple who buy books, so why not let a good sam­ple demo­graph­ic (Gather.com’s 175,000 old­er and more mature users) pre­view the sub­mis­sions, decide what they like, and save the edi­tor the effort of guess­ing what will fly. That makes a cer­tain amount of sense if you’re a pub­lish­er, work­ing in a slug­gish indus­try with nar­row mar­gins, who is always look­ing to max­i­mize the odds of putting out win­ners. How­ev­er, whether it will fur­ther the pub­lish­er’s mis­sion of bring­ing qual­i­ty books to our cul­ture is an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent ques­tion, and the jury remains out on this one. You can get more infor­ma­tion about the con­test by click­ing here.

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Harvard Now on iTunes: A New Model for University Podcasts?

in Uncategorized | January 14th, 2007


HarvIt was only a ques­tion of when, not if. Har­vard has final­ly carved out a space, albeit a rather small one,
on iTunes. Estab­lished by the Har­vard Exten­sion School, the iTunes site cur­rent­ly fea­tures one free, full-fledged course called Under­stand­ing Com­put­ers and the Inter­net, which had pre­vi­ous­ly been issued in oth­er dig­i­tal for­mats. (See our pre­vi­ous arti­cle.) In addi­tion, you can notably access out­takes from 30 com­plete cours­es that the school will offer online for a fee dur­ing the spring aca­d­e­m­ic term. (See press release.) These cours­es fall into three neat cat­e­gories: lib­er­al arts, man­age­ment and com­put­er sci­ence.

Har­vard’s iTunes strat­e­gy is rather unique. While most major uni­ver­si­ties are sim­ply giv­ing away podcasts/information, Har­vard Exten­sion is evi­dent­ly using the Apple plat­form more for busi­ness pur­pos­es than for pub­lic ser­vice. In a vac­u­um, it’s not a bad idea. In fact, seen in a cer­tain light, it’s innocu­ous, even savvy. Why not offer teasers to gen­er­ate more sales for sophis­ti­cat­ed online cours­es? Why not give cus­tomers a real sense of what they’re get­ting into? If there’s a prob­lem with these ideas, it’s sim­ply that they risk clash­ing with exist­ing expec­ta­tions — expec­ta­tions that uni­ver­si­ties offer pod­casts for free and for the pub­lic good. And there’s the risk that iTunes users will fail to make a crit­i­cal dis­tinc­tion between your aver­age free pod­cast, and a pod­cast that’s real­ly meant to be part of a very well round­ed, fee-based online course. One way or anoth­er, the busi­ness motive will like­ly raise some eye­brows. But, our guess is that Har­vard will be able to clar­i­fy the rea­son for the new mod­el, and they’ll find in iTunes, as oth­ers will too, a new and poten­tial­ly pow­er­ful way of giv­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty to cer­tain forms of online edu­ca­tion­al con­tent.

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Steve Jobs Presents the iPhone and the Podcast World Reacts

in Apple, Technology | January 12th, 2007

Each year, Steve Jobs kicks off Mac­World with a big address, which either con­firms or quash­es all the rumors and spec­u­la­tion about the new wave of Apple prod­ucts. It’s usu­al­ly a big deal, and this year did­n’t dis­ap­point. Jobs deliv­ered with flair the iPhone, which Apple hopes will rev­o­lu­tion­ize the cell phone mar­ket as the iPod did the portable music play­er mar­ket, if not the entire music mar­ket itself. And then there is Apple TV, which will let you wire­less­ly play your iTunes con­tent (movies, TV shows, music, pho­tos and pod­casts) on your widescreen TV.

If you have some down­time, you can check out the video of Jobs’ speech on iTunes or via Quick­Time. For ini­tial thoughts on the iPhone, you may want to read David Pogue’s and Wal­ter Moss­berg’s ear­ly reviews (and also Pogue’s iphone FAQ), and for com­men­tary across the pod­cast world, you can lis­ten in on:

  • GeekBrief.TV’s quick sur­vey of announce­ments iTunes Feed
  • Engad­get’s pod­cast com­men­tary of new prod­ucts iTunes Feed
  • Mac­World’s review of the keynote and new prod­ucts iTunes Mp3 Stream
  • Robert X. Cring­ley’s take on Apple’s trade­mark con­flict with Cis­co iTunes Feed
  • MacBreak Week­ly iTunes Feed
  • Forum on Tech­nol­o­gy & Soci­ety — A pan­el dis­cus­sion on the new gad­gets and how they affect our soci­ety iTunes Feed

Also see Open Cul­ture’s Tech­nol­o­gy Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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Podcasts to Hit Inflection Point in ’07

in Podcasts, Technology | January 12th, 2007

Dur­ing a radio inter­view yes­ter­day (iTunes — mp3), Jon Gor­don, the host of Future Tense, asked me

whether uni­ver­si­ties will con­tin­ue pour­ing con­tent into their iTunes troves in 2007. The answer boiled down to this: Pod­cast­ing stands poised to pro­lif­er­ate in ’07, much like the web did back in ’95 and ’96. Just a year ago, the New Oxford Amer­i­can Dic­tio­nary select­ed “pod­cast” as the “Word of the Year.” The buzz is out there. But how many peo­ple have ever lis­tened to a pod­cast first­hand? It turns out not too many. In a recent sur­vey, the Pew Research Cen­ter found that only 12% of web users have ever worked with pod­casts (as com­pared to 7% one year pri­or), and only 1% down­load them dai­ly. These num­bers are part­ly a reflec­tion of sup­ply and demand. Not too long ago, pod­casts were fair­ly lim­it­ed in num­ber. But, dur­ing the past 12 months, many uni­ver­si­ties (see our full col­lec­tion) have carved out some space on iTunes and devel­oped sub­stan­tial col­lec­tions. Some­where in ’07, we should hit an inflec­tion point. Sup­ply will increase demand. Demand will trig­ger more sup­ply. We’ll see expo­nen­tial growth and nev­er look back. The days where you could per­son­al­ly keep tabs on all the great new pod­casts will sim­ply be over, although we’ll sift through them and high­light what’s worth your time.

Resources Men­tioned in Inter­view:

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Worldly Citizens Take Notice

in Current Affairs | January 11th, 2007


ForaFORA TV
offers you some­thing that you’ll most cer­tain­ly want: an on-demand video por­tal that lets you access wher­ev­er, when­ev­er you want the lead­ing-edge ideas of promi­nent news­mak­ers — politi­cians, busi­ness lead­ers, authors, sci­en­tists, artists and more. All of the video comes from well-regard­ed orga­ni­za­tions (C‑SPAN, The Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, The Com­mon­wealth Club of Cal­i­for­nia, The Cato Insti­tute, to name a few). And a quick tour gives you access to some note­wor­thy talks. A few that stood out were those by Jim­my Wales (Founder of Wikipedia), George Pack­er (the New York­er writer who has report­ed exten­sive­ly on Iraq), Karen Arm­strong (the best­selling writer on Islam and oth­er world reli­gions), Isabel Allende (the Chilean writer who authored House of the Spir­its), and Andrew Sul­li­van (a sen­si­ble con­ser­v­a­tive & blog­ger who just pub­lished The Con­ser­v­a­tive Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back). A good com­ple­ment to FORA’s col­lec­tion is the Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel, a project orga­nized by Prince­ton that we wrote about not too long ago. Both are worth a good look.

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The Art of Reading a Poem (According to Harold Bloom)

in Literature | January 10th, 2007

Most uni­ver­si­ty pod­casts allow the out­side world to lis­ten in on fair­ly pol­ished and for­mal cam­pus lec­tures. But this pod­cast is dif­fer­ent. As part of its new iTunes ini­tia­tive, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty has recent­ly released a record­ing of famed lit­er­ary crit­ic Harold Bloom (see bio) teach­ing a sem­i­nar on “The Art of Read­ing a Poem” (lis­ten above). Here, Bloom endear­ing­ly takes his stu­dents through a poem by Wal­lace Stevens, Parts of a World, and con­stant­ly moves between inter­pre­ta­tion and digres­sion — digres­sions that are often filled with intrigu­ing per­son­al anec­dotes (as well as fre­quent laments for oth­er thinkers from Bloom’s gen­er­a­tion who have since passed away).

The pod­cast is notable for being remark­ably unedit­ed, which has its plus­es and minus­es. On the down­side, the sem­i­nar does­n’t real­ly get going until 13 min­utes in (so con­sid­er start­ing there), and the first few min­utes include a long stretch of silence when Bloom excus­es him­self from the room. On the upside, the unedit­ed cut cre­ates a kind of ciné­ma vérité expe­ri­ence for the lis­ten­er. You get to hear Bloom, one of Amer­i­ca’s best lit­er­ary crit­ics, work­ing in the class­room in an unadul­ter­at­ed way, teas­ing apart a poem by one of Amer­i­ca’s best poets. There is some­thing imme­di­ate, pure and excit­ing about this way of using the pod­cast, an approach that uni­ver­si­ties should look at more close­ly.

See more Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­casts here.

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50+ Free Courses from UC Berkeley on iTunes

in Online Courses, UC Berkeley | January 8th, 2007

This is noth­ing short of impres­sive. Last April, UC Berke­ley, one of the pre­miere uni­ver­si­ties in the coun­try, announced its plan to put com­plete aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es on iTunes. Fast for­ward nine months, and you can already find 59 full cours­es avail­able as pod­casts. Sim­ply click here to access Berke­ley’s iTunes site (or here for the Rss feed).No mat­ter where you live, you can access at no cost the very same cours­es attend­ed by stu­dents pay­ing full tuition. And, giv­en the crit­i­cal mass of cours­es being offered across a range of dis­ci­plines, you can put togeth­er your own per­son­al­ized cur­ricu­lum and expand your hori­zons on the fly.

If the human­i­ties are your thing, you can take US His­to­ry: From Civ­il War to Present, Exis­ten­tial­ism in Lit­er­a­ture & Film, or Euro­pean Civ­i­liza­tion from the Renais­sance to Present. If you’re into the social sci­ences, you may want to con­sid­er World Reli­gions, Peo­ples and States, US For­eign Pol­i­cy after 9/11, Human Emo­tions, or Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­tics. Turn­ing to the hard sci­ences, you can take your pick from Physics for Future Pres­i­dents, Intro­duc­tion to Chem­istry, Gen­er­al Astron­o­my, and Gen­er­al Biol­o­gy. Final­ly, for those with a tech­nol­o­gy bent, you can con­sid­er lis­ten­ing in on An Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­ers, The His­to­ry of Infor­ma­tion or even The Foun­da­tions of Amer­i­can Cyber­Cul­ture. But, if these par­tic­u­lar cours­es aren’t for you, there are many more to choose from.

Berke­ley’s col­lec­tion has gen­er­al­ly remained off of peo­ple’s radar screen, which is too bad. It’s an excel­lent pod­cast col­lec­tion, one of the best out there. Hope­ful­ly we can help read­ers find out what they are miss­ing.

For more, please see our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties.

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Yale’s 15 Lectures on Democracy

in Yale | January 5th, 2007

As part of its 300th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty gath­ered togeth­er some of its fore­most fac­ul­ty and offered an extend­ed series of lec­tures on the state of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. Col­lec­tive­ly enti­tled “Demo­c­ra­t­ic Vis­tas,” this wide-rang­ing series explores Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy in his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary terms and looks at how it mesh­es with oth­er fix­tures of our social life — reli­gion, fam­i­ly, eco­nom­ic mar­kets, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, etc. From this page, you can access all of the illu­mi­nat­ing pre­sen­ta­tions in audio and video, includ­ing those by Yale’s Pres­i­dent Richard Levin and Richard Brod­head, the for­mer Dean of Yale Col­lege and now Pres­i­dent of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty.

The one caveat worth men­tion­ing is that these talks were record­ed not long before 9/11. And, in some respects, this may give the lec­tures an out-dat­ed feel. Can we real­ly have a valu­able dis­cus­sion about Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy with­out address­ing 9/11, the war on ter­ror, and the war in Iraq? In some ways no, but in many ways yes. Amer­i­ca is still large­ly Amer­i­ca, the same coun­try it was six years ago, and, for the most part, these dis­cern­ing lec­tures remain high­ly rel­e­vant today. Indeed, Yale has already uploaded some of them to its new pod­cast col­lec­tion on iTunes.

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