80+ Free Courses from UCSD

in Podcasts | March 27th, 2008

Here’s a quick note for any­one look­ing for free online cours­es: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia — San Diego now gives you free access to more than 80 cours­es. (Access the full list here.) The cours­es, most­ly root­ed in the sci­ences, can be accessed via iTunes or rss feed. We’ve inte­grat­ed some of these cours­es into our own meta list of Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. It now includes about 215 cours­es, and we’d encour­age you to book­mark the page and use it often.

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The Top 25 Educational Podcasts on iTunes

in Podcasts | February 9th, 2008

Every now and then, we like to list the top rank­ing edu­ca­tion­al on pod­casts on iTunes. No mat­ter how much time goes by, one thing seems to stay the same: peo­ple like pod­casts that teach for­eign lan­guages, par­tic­u­lar­ly Span­ish, above all else. Have a look, and if you want to learn more for­eign lan­guages, vis­it our For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. It cov­ers 26 dif­fer­ent lan­guages.

#1. Cof­fee Break Span­ish iTunes Feed Web Site

#2. Gram­mar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Bet­ter Writ­ing iTunes Feed Web Site

#3. Learn Span­ish at SpanishPod101 iTunes Feed Web Site

#4. Learn Span­ish Sur­vival Guide iTunes Feed Web Site

#5. Learn to Speak Span­ish iTunes Feed Web Site

#6. The French Pod Class iTunes Feed Web Site

#7. Span­ish Pod­casts for Begin­ners iTunes Feed Web Site

#8. Learn French with Cof­fee Break French iTunes Feed Web Site

#9. LearnItalianPod.com iTunes Feed Web Site

#10. JapanesePod101.com iTunes Feed Web Site

(more…)

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How to Extend the Life Of Your iPod Battery

in Apple, Podcasts | February 6th, 2008

For those who use their iPod to take advan­tage of our copi­ous pod­cast col­lec­tions:

via Life­hack­er

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Turn Your iPod into a Travel Guide: 20 Travel Podcasts

in Podcasts | January 27th, 2008


Over the past year, we’ve seen a steady sup­ply of new trav­el pod­casts com­ing online. Some are pro­duced by the pub­lish­ers of major trav­el guides; oth­ers by pas­sion­ate indi­vid­ual trav­el­ers. Many are in video, some even in HD. These pod­casts will gen­er­al­ly help you trav­el much more knowl­edge­ably. And, in most cas­es, they’ll say some­thing about a trav­el des­ti­na­tion that a tra­di­tion­al guide nev­er could. This col­lec­tion will grow over time. You can find it housed per­ma­nent­ly in our Pod­cast Library locat­ed on the top right of each page. (There you can also find our col­lec­tion of Free Lan­guage Lessons, which will be handy, too, for your trav­els.)
  • A Year in Europe iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A well reviewed pod­cast. “Scott and Sheryl quit their jobs and sold their home. Now they’re on a year-long excur­sion through Europe where they’re explor­ing the places they’ve read about and dreamed of vis­it­ing. Fol­low them on their jour­ney as they expe­ri­ence the cul­tures, art and his­to­ry they find fas­ci­nat­ing.”
  • Ama­teur Trav­el Pod­cast — Video iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Focus­es on trav­el sto­ries with a dash of trav­el news, trav­el tips and trav­el resources. And, yes, as the title sug­gests, it’s in video.
  • Antho­ny Bour­dain — No Reser­va­tions iTunes Web Site
    • Pro­duced by the Trav­el Chan­nel, this video pod­cast com­bines trav­el with the love of food.
  • Beau­ti­ful Places (iPod/iTunes) iTunes Down­load Web Site
    • This video pod­cast focus­es on the great out­doors. Des­ti­na­tions explored here include Big Sur, Yosemite, Rocky Moun­tain Nation­al Park, etc. You can find an HD ver­sion of the pod­cast here.
  • Big in Tai­wan HD iTunes Feed Web Site
    • These videos high­light the peo­ple, cul­ture, sights & sounds of Tai­wan.
  • Copen­hagen Pod­walks iTunes Web Site
    • Pod­casts that will get you around Den­mark’s cap­i­tal.
  • Dis­cov­er France with Sebastien iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Gives you a good look at French towns. In video.
  • Find­ing Amer­i­ca iTunes Feed Web Site
    • See the real Amer­i­ca in video. Trav­el every major road in the USA and see the coun­try from some­thing oth­er than a glossy, man­u­fac­tured per­spec­tive.
  • From­mer’s Pod­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Trav­el info from Kel­ly Regan, edi­to­r­i­al direc­tor of From­mer’s Trav­el Guides, and David Lytle, edi­to­r­i­al direc­tor of Frommers.com. So far audio only. (It’s curi­ous that the big pub­lish­ers are pro­duc­ing less dynam­ic pod­casts than the small guys are.)
  • Inside Grand Canyon iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Learn about Grand Canyon Nation­al Park with a park ranger as your guide. This is a video pod­cast.
  • iPod Trav­el­er iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Two Lon­don­ers give you their per­son­al look at Europe. This audio pod­cast was dis­con­tin­ued in 2007, but the exten­sive archive remains.
  • Italy From the Inside iTunes Web Site
    • A native Ital­ian tells first-time trav­el­ers how to make the most of Italy. Some in audio; some in video.
  • Let’s Trav­el Radio iTunes Feed Web Site
    • An inter­net trav­el radio show that takes you to the four cor­ners of the world. Fea­tures talks with glo­be­trot­ters, artists, chefs and musi­cians.
  • Lone­ly Plan­et Trav­el­casts iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pro­duced by one of the lead­ing trav­el guide pub­lish­ers, these pod­casts are very inter­na­tion­al in scope. Audio only.
  • Lon­don Land­scape TV HD iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A visu­al HD guide to the great city of Lon­don.
  • Saman­tha Brown: Pass­port to Latin Amer­i­ca iTunes Web Site
    • Pro­duced by the Trav­el Chan­nel, this well-reviewed video pod­cast often focus­es on Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, which is some­thing that’s hard to find .… at least so far.
  • The Trav­el Des­ti­na­tion Pod­cast: Tips for Trav­el­ers iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Unabellav­ista: How to Tour Italy iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Learn about Italy’s art, his­to­ry, archi­tec­ture, food, and lan­guage. In audio.
  • Walks of a Life­time iTunes Feed Web Site
    • Pro­duced by Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­el­er. “Stroll across the world, from crowd­ed city cen­ters to rus­tic coun­try routes, with trav­el expert Rudy Maxa in Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­el­er mag­a­zine’s selec­tion of the world’s great­est walk­ing tours.” In audio.
  • Wash­ing­ton Trav­el­cast iTunes Feed Web Site
    • A week­ly walk­ing tour of the US capi­tol.

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The 20 Best iPod Utilities

in Podcasts, Web/Tech | December 4th, 2007

ipodclass3.jpgLife­hack­er 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 (and par­tic­u­lar­ly YouTube videos) to you iPod, 4) put Wikipedia on your iPod, 5) free your­self from using iTunes, 6) back­up your iPod, etc.

Check out the full list here and learn to make your iPod a bet­ter learning/entertainment tool.

PS: A very sim­i­lar list of iPod tips was pub­lished a few days ago over at Pachecus.com, and they were kind of enough to include a link to one of our old fea­tures. Have a look here too.

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How to Watch DVDs on Your iPod?

in Podcasts, Web/Tech | November 27th, 2007

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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A World in Your Ear

in Podcasts | November 25th, 2007

Times Online (the large UK-based news web­site) has post­ed today a fea­ture that offers an intro­duc­tion to pod­cast­ing. It explains the whos, hows, whats, etc. and pro­vides some help­ful links, includ­ing one to our col­lec­tion of For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts.

Pod­cast­ing offers an amaz­ing way to access free, high-qual­i­ty media, across many top­ics, wher­ev­er and when­ev­er you want it. And it’s some­thing that even techno­phobes can eas­i­ly fig­ure out. For more infor­ma­tion on how to work with pod­casts, see our our Pod­cast Primer. We take you through pod­cast­ing step-by-step. Also check out our exten­sive Pod­cast Library, which gives you access to audio­books, cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming, sci­ence pod­casts, uni­ver­si­ty cours­es and more.

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Listening to Poetry Online

in Literature, Podcasts | November 5th, 2007

shakespearenew2.jpgToday, we have a guest fea­ture from Don from Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which offers a great line­up of poet­ry pod­casts. They have just kicked off a week ded­i­cat­ed to war poet­ry, which includes pieces by Shake­speare, Coleridge and Melville, among oth­ers. Below, Don offers a very help­ful sur­vey of the poet­ry pod­cast land­scape and helps us see why pod­cast­ing might be the per­fect medi­um for spark­ing a renais­sance in poet­ry. Take it away Don…

Short, intense and often emo­tion­al pieces of writ­ing penned for the human ear: poems could have been invent­ed for pod­casts. It’s no sur­prise, then, that poet­ry read­ing pod­casts have sprung up like daisies this year.

Most are the aur­al equiv­a­lent of blogs, telling the inti­mate sto­ries of the poet, and often about as inter­est­ing. Some, though, are ded­i­cat­ed to read­ing oth­ers’ poet­ry, and they are worth vis­it­ing for a reg­u­lar, short piece of writ­ing that will almost always stim­u­late thought and feel­ing – and if it doesn’t, well, you’ve prob­a­bly only wast­ed the few min­utes it takes to read a poem.

Clas­sic Poet­ry Aloud (Tunes Feed Web Site)), my own pod­cast, is ded­i­cat­ed to any­thing in the Eng­lish lan­guage which is over 70 years old. Exper­i­men­tal­ly, this week (Nov 4 – 11) is War Poet­ry Week, fea­tur­ing poems from Samuel Coleridge and Her­man Melville as well as Wil­fred Owen and Shake­speare. It’s an attempt to take lis­ten­ers on a week-long jour­ney from the first rumours of war (on Mon­day 5th) through to remem­ber­ing the dead (on Sun­day 11th, Remem­brance day in the UK).

Most poet­ry pod­casts don’t deal exclu­sive­ly with the past, how­ev­er. On the excel­lent Poet­ry Off the Shelf (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), from the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion, you’ll find the smooth-toned Cur­tis Fox inter­view­ing con­tem­po­rary poets about their works, and hav­ing them read and inter­pret a poem or two. It’s won­der­ful­ly pro­duced and Fox’s intel­li­gent, self-dep­re­cat­ing style puts both this guests and his lis­ten­ers at ease. Oth­er pod­casts, such as MiPO­ra­dio (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), fol­low the same interview/reading for­mat.

Cloudy Day Art (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) sim­i­lar­ly involves inter­views, most recent­ly with for­mer US Poet Lau­re­ate Ted Koos­er, but with a dif­fer­ent focus. A home-pro­duced show by Wash­ing­ton DC res­i­dent Will Brown, the aim is to draw out of those he inter­views thoughts, tips and advice for those who, like the ever-enthu­si­as­tic Will him­self, are writ­ing poet­ry, for pub­li­ca­tion or just for them­selves.

One pod­cast focus­es pure­ly on Shakespeare’s son­nets, and is read by a man describ­ing him­self as “some guy from New York” (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). The shtick on this pod­cast is that the read­er was ordered to read the son­nets as some form of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice or face the prospect of prison. I’m not sure I quite believe this – the inter­pre­ta­tions are too good, and the atti­tude too laid-on. None of this detracts from what is, though, an enter­tain­ing and intel­li­gent lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence.

For pure sim­plic­i­ty, and no atti­tude, I sub­scribe to Clarica’s Poet­ry Moment (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), which gives me what I want: a clear female voice read­ing a wide range of poet­ry, with no fuss, just a sense of plea­sure in the mean­ing and the sound of the words.

In this reac­tion, I am a reg­u­lar poet­ry pod­cast lis­ten­er: all com­ments I’ve read on my own, and oth­er sites show reac­tion to all this spo­ken poet­ry to be over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive, and some­times deeply emo­tion­al. Peo­ple love to hear the poem come off the page, whether they are a recep­tion­ist in Hol­land, study­ing for their Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture exams at high school in Scot­land, or learn­ing Eng­lish in the Far East. It’s won­der­ful to sense the world being brought togeth­er through the medi­um of the poet­ry pod­cast. Some­times it almost seems that tech­nol­o­gy has enabled the oral tra­di­tion to be reborn.

For more poems and nov­els, please vis­it our Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion and if you want to guest blog, get in touch.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.