A quick fyi: This morn­ing, Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies opened up reg­is­tra­tion for its spring line­up of online writ­ing cours­es. Offered in part­ner­ship with the Stan­ford Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram (one of the most dis­tin­guished writ­ing pro­grams in the coun­try), these online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors.

As you will see, there are a cou­ple of cours­es offered in con­junc­tion with The New York Times. The idea here is that you’ll learn writ­ing from a Stan­ford  writ­ing instruc­tor and then get your work reviewed by a Times book crit­ic. Quite a perk, I must say.

For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ.

Caveat emp­tor: These class­es are not free, and I helped set them up. So while I whole­heart­ed­ly believe in these cours­es, you can take my views with a grain of salt.

• Cre­ative Non­fic­tion with The New York Times (one spot left)
• Writ­ing Fic­tion with The New York Times
• Fic­tion I: Begin­ning Short Sto­ry Writ­ing
• Fic­tion II: Voic­es That Live
• Trav­el Writ­ing
• Mag­a­zine Writ­ing
• Intro­duc­tion to Cre­ative Writ­ing
• Putting a Spin on Sci­ence Writ­ing
• Nov­el Writ­ing III: A Plan for Suc­cess
• Mem­oir I: What I Saw, What I Wore, What I Ate, and More
  

As I gath­er mate­r­i­al for the blog, I often come across con­tent that’s inter­est­ing, but not quite right for the blog. It seemed like Twit­ter might be a good place to add this bonus mate­r­i­al. So from here on out, I’ll casu­al­ly add some extra con­tent there. Today, I just men­tioned how you can get 50% off of some clas­sic Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture. Check out our Twit­ter feed here.

This is just a quick note to let you know that you can now fol­low Open Cul­ture on Twit­ter. If you sub­scribe, you’ll know when­ev­er we post some­thing new on the site. To get going, cre­ate a Twit­ter account (if you don’t already have one), access our Twit­ter page here, and then click the word “Fol­low” beneath our logo, and you’ll be all set. If you’re won­der­ing what Twit­ter is all about, you can watch this handy video.

As you prob­a­bly know, Open Cul­ture launched a new look last week, and it seemed worth devot­ing a few words to it. With the new design, I was hop­ing to give the site a more invit­ing look and stream­line the over­all nav­i­ga­tion. I was also hop­ing to make it clear that user con­tri­bu­tions are always wel­come. If you have tips on good media, send them our way. And if you ever want to write a guest blog post, please feel free to let me know what you have in mind. The more indi­vid­ual read­ers con­tribute, the more our com­mu­ni­ty of read­ers ben­e­fits.

I def­i­nite­ly want to send a word of thanks to the folks at Rolling Orange, who han­dled all of the design and imple­men­ta­tion. An excel­lent group to work with. Also, I want to thank Eric Ober­le who has been very gen­er­ous with his tech sup­port since the begin­ning.

Last­ly, this is a great time to ask you what you would like to see from Open Cul­ture in the future. What should the site do more of? What should it do less of? What good things haven’t we thought about? Your input would be real­ly appre­ci­at­ed. Feel free to send thoughts from the con­tact page, or add any thoughts in the com­ments sec­tion below. Thanks in advance to all…

A quick fyi: If you made a New Year’s res­o­lu­tion to become a seri­ous writer, then you might be inter­est­ed in these online writ­ing cours­es offered by Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies (which, caveat emp­tor, I help over­see) and Stan­ford’s Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gram. These online cours­es give begin­ning and advanced writ­ers, no mat­ter where they live, the chance to refine their craft with gift­ed writ­ing instruc­tors. Class­es start next week. Unfor­tu­nate­ly some are already full … and they are not free. For more infor­ma­tion, click here, or sep­a­rate­ly check out the FAQ. And, if you live in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, feel free to look through the cours­es tak­ing place on the Stan­ford cam­pus.

• Mag­a­zine Writ­ing
  
• Short Sto­ry II: Sur­pris­ing Char­ac­ters and Sud­den Twists
• Craft­ing Suc­cess­ful Crime Fic­tion: How to Write the Action
• Poet­ry Writ­ing: Tran­scrib­ing from the Invis­i­ble
• Cre­ative Non­fic­tion: The Art of the Essay
  
• Get­ting Start­ed in Cre­ative Writ­ing (Closed)
• Con­tin­u­ing Your Nov­el (Closed)
• Writ­ing Mem­oir with The New York Times (Closed)

We have reached the final week of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions course. This week, Mar­tin Lewis slices and dices the elec­toral results of the ’08 elec­tion and high­lights the big and poten­tial­ly far-reach­ing shifts in US vot­ing pat­terns. No doubt, this is one of the more detailed analy­ses that you’ll find on the web. You can watch the last lec­ture in high­er res­o­lu­tion on iTune­sU here, or watch it below on YouTube. The com­plete course will be per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es under Geog­ra­phy and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence.

In case you were won­der­ing what kind of media we would be most hun­gry for in hard times (big bud­get action movies? escapist sit-coms), don’t for­get that this is reces­sion 3.0. Intro­duc­ing The pup­py cam, with 22,000 view­ers and count­ing. The shibu pup­pies are adorable, wor­ry-free, and of course, non-union.  Click here and tell us are you not enter­tained? (Thanks SA for the tip.)

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