Over the past week, we’ve dis­cov­ered a num­ber of good items being put togeth­er by some of our read­ers.

The first is a new pop­u­lar pod­cast called “Robots” (iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site). Assem­bled by a group of grad stu­dents asso­ci­at­ed with the Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Lau­sanne (EPFL), each episode focus­es on a spe­cif­ic top­ic (e.g., robot soc­cer) and fea­tures inter­views with high pro­file guests in robot­ics and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Also, each episode high­lights news and views from peo­ple build­ing and pro­gram­ming robots inside and out­side uni­ver­si­ties.

Next, you may want to swing over to Nigel Beale’s site and lis­ten to his radio program/podcast called The Bib­lio File. The site hous­es about 100 audio inter­views with var­i­ous authors. Per­fect for the bib­lio­phile.

Last­ly, two quick men­tions: Tom Han­son, over at the “Open Edu­ca­tion” blog, rec­om­mends Zaid Alsagof­f’s free e‑book called “69 Learn­ing Adven­tures in 6 Galax­ies,” which essen­tial­ly offers a “resource for teach­ers seek­ing to be tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant.” And then, along sim­i­lar lines, you can find at SmartTeaching.org a help­ful post called “100 Awe­some Class­room Videos to Learn New Teach­ing Tech­niques.”

Keep them com­ing.…

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By now, most every­one knows that Randy Pausch sad­ly died of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer last week. And, if you have an inter­net pulse, you’re already acquaint­ed with his lec­ture that caught the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion last year: Real­ly Achiev­ing Your Child­hood Dreams. What you may not have seen is the short, six-minute speech Pausch made at Carnegie Mel­lon’s grad­u­a­tion in late May — a short two months ago. The phi­los­o­phy here remains the same. The pitch is just short­er and to the point. It’s added to our YouTube playlist. Here it goes:

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I want to send a quick apol­o­gy to our email sub­scribers. Long sto­ry short, we encoun­tered some prob­lems with our email sub­scrip­tion list over the past week (prob­lems that we’re beyond our con­trol). But things are work­ing again, and I want­ed to high­light some of the posts you may have missed. Sor­ry again. And here it goes:

• 70 Signs of Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube
• 10 New iPhone Apps for the Think­ing Per­son
• Down­load Paul Coelho’s Best­seller, “The Alchemist,” for Free on iTunes
• Stephen Col­bert Reads Joyce’s Ulysses
• The African-Amer­i­can Free­dom Strug­gle & Barack Obama’s Amer­i­can Dream (Free Stan­ford Course)
• The First Unin­tend­ed Hor­ror Film (1895)?
• Online Cours­es in the Age of High Gas Prices
• Archi­tec­ture in Motion
• Will Google Kill Sci­ence?
• Sey­mour Hersh Reveals Covert Oper­a­tions In Iran
• E=mc²: Ein­stein Explains His Famous For­mu­la
• Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Howard Zinn’s His­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Empire
• Craphound: Down­load Cory Doctorow’s Short Sto­ry via Free MP3 (and oth­er Good­ies)

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In 2004, Dan­ger Mouse released The Grey Album which lay­ered the rap­per Jay-Z’s The Black Album on top of The Bea­t­les’ White Album. Black and white makes grey.

Now, on YouTube, you can find The Grey Video, which exper­i­men­tal­ly brings Dan­ger Mouse’s con­cept to video. The video, cre­at­ed by two Swiss direc­tors, mesh­es clips from The Bea­t­les’ film A Hard Day’s Night with footage of Jay‑Z per­form­ing. Watch it below, and get more info on The Grey Album here. Also check our col­lec­tion of MP3 Music Blogs.

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In case you missed it, a new piece in the Atlantic Month­ly — Is Google Mak­ing Us Stu­pid? — rais­es some ques­tions about whether the inter­net is chang­ing the way we think. Or, to para­phrase, is it tin­ker­ing with our brains, remap­ping the neur­al cir­cuit­ry, repro­gram­ming our mem­o­ry, short­en­ing our con­cen­tra­tion, mak­ing it hard­er to read books and long arti­cles, etc. Anec­dotes con­firm­ing this trend abound. But now there’s new sci­en­tif­ic research that seems to back it up. Have a read.

In the mean­time, if you want some inter­net con­tent that will unques­tion­ably make you smarter, check our list of 225 Free Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

via The Wired Cam­pus

The advent of dig­i­tal cam­eras has changed pho­tog­ra­phy as we know it. It has dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­ered the cost of pho­tog­ra­phy, and we’re now snap­ping more pho­tos than ever before. But we’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly tak­ing bet­ter pic­tures.

This is where Nikon steps in. Their cam­eras make casu­al pho­tog­ra­phers immense­ly bet­ter than they actu­al­ly are. (Trust me, I know.) And Nikon has now set up a free Dig­i­tal Learn­ing Cen­ter that offers tuto­ri­als and tips for tak­ing a range of dif­fer­ent pic­tures — por­traits, trav­el pho­tos, nature pho­tog­ra­phy, etc. Ques­tions that get tack­led here include, but are not lim­it­ed, to: “How can I take bet­ter por­traits?” “How can I take pho­tos at dusk with­out hav­ing them look com­plete­ly dark?” “How do I get true-to-life skin tones?” “How can I get the mov­ing fig­ures in my pho­tos to look like they’re in motion and not frozen?” “My por­traits have red eyes. How can I pre­vent this?” Give a tour of the Learn­ing Cen­ter here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

• If you’d like to learn about dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy using pod­casts, check out Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips from the Top Floor (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). And, for that mat­ter, if you need to learn how to use a pod­cast, spend some time with our Pod­cast Primer here.

• Also Slate recent­ly put togeth­er a nice gallery of images fea­tur­ing the work of Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son, a mas­ter pho­tog­ra­ph­er who is con­sid­ered the father of mod­ern pho­to­jour­nal­ism.

The name of the pro­gram is Morn­ing Sto­ries (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). The host is Tony Kahn. And the show is all about pre­sent­ing great sto­ries from every­day peo­ple — sto­ries that get at some­thing deeply human, things that oth­er peo­ple can iden­ti­fy with, no mat­ter what their age, back­ground, or nation­al­i­ty. (Hence the rea­son why the show’s pod­cast has unex­pect­ed­ly devel­oped a con­sid­er­able fol­low­ing in Chi­na.)

I fig­ured that there’s no bet­ter way to intro­duce the show than to ask Tony Kahn to high­light some of his own favorite episodes. So that’s what I did, and here’s what he had to say. Once you get beyond lis­ten­ing to his favorites, you can peruse the com­plete archive here. Enjoy.

1. Over Here and Over There (mp3): Morn­ing Sto­ries Pro­duc­er and Direc­tor catch­es up with his friend Fati­ma, by phone from Brazil, and recalls her sto­ry of the hopes that once made her flee her home­land for Amer­i­ca, and the fears that sent her back.

2. How Can You Say No? (mp3): Jack­ie Lantry fights time and City Hall in Chi­na to give her son a fam­i­ly, and Tony Kahn and Gary Mott dis­cuss their per­son­al expe­ri­ences with adop­tion.

3. Fam­i­ly Tree (mp3): Karen Dil­lon begins the pod­cast with a report on work­ing with griev­ing chil­dren. Kat­ri­na Mur­ray ends it with a moth­er’s tale.

4. A Les­son in Chi­nese (mp3): A caller from Xian, Chi­na teach­es Tony the true mean­ing of “hap­pi­ness,” “love,” and “vol­un­teer job.”  Also, Tony and Gary dis­cuss the true mean­ing of “wan­ton.”

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