August 10, 2005

EyeQ

How many hours a day do you think you spend reading? Between the newspaper, your favorite websites, stuff for work, the books you’re currently reading…it’s probably quite a bit. Most likely several hours a day for most people especially if you’re one of these “knowledge workers” we always hear about.

So if you spend several hours a day doing something, wouldn’t it make sense to become more efficient at it? Yet when it comes to reading speed most people take their current abilities as given. People tell themselves how they are “slow readers” while not taking into account that reading, like just about everything else, is a learned skill and one that can be improved upon.

You’re probably just about to ask what we’re doing talking about reading on an “audio and video learning” site. Well, here’s the deal. I’ve tried a number of “speed reading” strategies in my life. Some worked well for certain types of reading but not so well for others. For example, one technique had me tracing the words with my index finger. That tended to get the monitor a little grungy during all the computer reading I do… 🙂

The method that I’ve found the most useful and easy to learn is the EyeQ reading program. It’s not really a technique but rather a series of computer-based exercises that get you moving your eyes quicker and help you to filter out the words you do need to read from those you really don’t (an important part of increasing reading speed). It’s really easy to practice and because it’s a computer-based course the improvements work for both online and offline reading.

EyeQ is a bit expensive but in my mind, it’s well worth investment. Think about it. Let’s say you spend three hours a day reading. If you can improve your reading speed by 50% using EyeQ (very doable based on my experience) then theoretically that’s an extra hour every day that you’re saving. That’s more time to go to the gym, play with the kids, make love to your spouse (hey, whatever you want to do with your hour is none of my business!).

Seth just put up the EyeQ titles and I’d encourage you to check them out. I can’t think of very many skills which are more useful to spend some time polishing.

EyeQ: The Deluxe Edition
EyeQ: The Personal Edition

August 9, 2005

Travel Podcasts for the Restless Soul

I’ve recently subscribed to some Travel Podcasts, and I wanted to take a few minutes to tell you about my favorites thus far. I’ve just started to get the travel bug in recent years after going over to Europe while I was in college. Now I live on the west coast and I’ve pretty much lived up to my vow to see as much of the state as I can. All I have left to see is Napa Valley, Death Valley and the Redwoods and I’ll be satisfied. Anyway, this selection is by no means perfect, its just stuff I’ve responded to this week:

Live Ireland Podcast: I’m really into Ireland. I like it so much, I’ve been there twice (never been north though). Since I don’t consider twice to be enough, I take what I can get living in California, as I do. This Podcast is good for anyone that’s never been there, and for those like me that simply want to remember how great Ireland truly is. You hear about culture, meet various locals and get informed on different hotspots to be found in the Emerald Isle. I can almost breathe the air again.

Guzen Radio Podcast is hosted by an American living in Japan. At some point I want to set aside some time to get over to Japan, as I’ve been feeling drawn to the East recently. This podcast offers a great view of the country from the perspective of an anglo that has lived there for awhile and is in love with the culture. For another good Podcast set in Japan, I also recommend The Kyoto Podcast.

Interested in finding new places to hike? Deborah Lee Soltesz’ Hiking with Deborah lets you take a tour with an avid hiker from Arizona. On each Podcast Soltesz takes listeners on sound seeing tours as she hikes various sites throughout the American Southwest. Deborah talks about what to expect when visiting a particular site, what weather conditions are like, and other details that any avid outdoors person would need when they think about roughing it in the desert. Deborah speaks with the kind of confidence you can only get from a seasoned hiker, and honestly I wish we could get a version of this Podcast for natural location. Imagine a Podcast that takes you Mountain Climbing or one that is recorded from a tree in the Rain Forest. Food for thought.

For something with a quirky bent, take a look at Mark Peacock’s TravelCommons. A frequent traveler, Peacock records his thoughts on a given location from hotel room bathrooms. That’s right; every Podcast comes to you from a different hotel bathroom. He figures the sound is best there I guess. In any event, this Podcast is a humorous look at what we all go through when we travel, and it gives insert here a chance to rant about things that excite and sometimes annoy us all when we visit new locales. It also brings in to focus the fact that when we are away from home, the most intimate places we can grab on to are hotel rooms, and what could be more specifically intimate than a bathroom?

Oh yes, on a related note, I just want to wish my parents a happy 27th anniversary as they travel through Alaska for the next two weeks. I wouldn’t be anything without you!

August 9, 2005

(Very) Beta Podcast Directory Live

I wanted to invite all of you to check out the beta version of our new podcast directory. Here’s the link:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory

We’re planning to go “public” with this next week so please feel free to give us your feedback. It’s definitely a bit rough around the edge but you should see some major improvements in the next week.

What’s different about our podcast directory that separates it from the numerous other podcast directories on the Net? I’ll offer a few things:

1. We only list educational and self-development podcasts. Like I blogged about last week, we’re not trying to be everything to everybody. Rather we’re trying to find the cream of the crop in terms of podcasts that are not only interesting to listen to but also informative and fulfilling. I don’t know of anyone else doing this.

2. We’ve hand-selected all of these podcasts. We’re not just listing anything everybody sends us. We’ve literally listened to hundreds (is it up to thousands yet?) of podcasts to find the “best of the best.” So the total number of podcasts is a good deal lower than most of the directories. That’s by design. As one of our current ads states “We cut through the crap so you don’t have to.”

3. We’re the first people (that I’m aware of) who are tying together podcasts and audiobooks. We figure this makes sense since a person interested in a podcast about wine is probably also interested in an audiobook about wine. At LearnOutLoud.com that’s only a click away.

So that’s our secret sauce. We hope you enjoy. So here’s the link again:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory

Please give us some feedback by posting in the forum link below. Thanks!

August 7, 2005

PodTech.net: An Outstanding Podcast

I’ve probably listened to a good 100 different podcasts or so by now. The majority are OK but nothing to really write home about. And I’ve probably subscribed a good dozen or so of them that I enjoyed. But only a couple of times have I listened to a podcast that was so good that I went back and listened to every single old episode. And that’s exactly what I did for the PodTech.net podcast.

The Podtech.net InfoTalk Series podcast (that’s a mouthful!) covers a lot of the happenings in Silicon Valley including who is investing in what and where technology is headed. If you have any interest in technology or business I think you’ll really dig this one. The host (John Furrier) has managed to get some amazing guests on the show. I recently listened to episodes where he interviewed Mark Cuban, founder of Broadcast.com and current owner of the Dallas Mavericks. There’s another podcast with former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger that I’m looking forward to listening to.

Anyway, I just had to pass this along because it’s the perfect example of the power of podcasting. When I can fire up the iPod in my truck and listen to people like Cuban and Berger and Adam Curry and Robert Scoble talk about what’s coming dow the pipe in technology then I’m a pretty happy camper. Sure beats crap talk radio…

August 5, 2005

Three Leaf Group

Stumbled upon this article today about Three Leaf Group, a company that rents motivational and training audiobooks to corporate businesses. This is an interesting idea and something that we’ve contemplated doing in the future. Companies spend billions of dollars each year to train their employees but a huge untapped potential for development exists in commute times. To allow salespeople, executives, etc. to get “trained” on their way to and from work seems to me like somewhat of a no-brainer.

It’s truly a win-win. Audio courses are cheap enough that the company gets a lot of bang for the buck. Employees get something to listen to that they might not normally shell out the cash for and that helps to make their commute more enjoyable. Companies have been buying books for their employees for years. Why not do the same with audio?

To read the entire text of this article, click the URL below:

Audio books thrive in downsizing economy

August 5, 2005

Unabridged Classic Literature on Audio

For those of you who love classic fiction audio books I figured I’d point out some places to find classics unabridged. Three places where you’ll find just about all the seminal classics unabridged are Recorded Books, Blackstone Audiobooks, and Books on Tape. Blackstone and Recorded Books offer their titles for rent, and all these publishers have their titles on Audible.com and iTunes available for audio download. In Audio and Tantor are two other publishers that pride themselves on unabridged editions of classic literature. Penguin Audio and NAXOS Audiobooks offer some unabridged literature in addition to many abridged works of literature.

August 4, 2005

The Whole Foods of Spoken Word Audio

I had dinner a couple of nights ago with Asher, a great guy who is going to be doing some marketing stuff for us. We were talking about LearnOutLoud and the word that he kept using to describe our business was “organic.” He was referring to the fact that we’ve made the conscious decision not to sell all audio and video products under the sun but rather to concentrate on educational and self-development material.

The analogy that we drew at dinner was to Whole Foods, the natural and organic foods supermarket chain that is very popular here in California and catching on around the country. Whole Foods is very different from most other grocers. You won’t find Cap’n Crunch or Twizzlers there. And there are many people who won’t shop there precisely for that reason.

But what you will find at Whole Foods is a hand-picked selection of merchandise that’s not only good but (in most cases) good for you too. And that’s why Whole Foods is doing as well as they are. Because they’ve found grocery shoppers who are interested in improving their diets and in turn, improving their quality of life.

That’s what we’re striving for at LearnOutLoud.com. We’re not carrying the Hollywood blockbusters or the latest best-selling audio fiction (even though we probably could have made a lot of money selling Harry Potter…). Instead, we’re stocking stuff that is fun and entertaining but also is educational, inspirational and ultimately fulfilling.

In the past couple of weeks we’ve put up over a hundred educational and self-development podcasts in our catalog. We’ve spent a lot of time listening to these and reviewing them to ensure that we’re giving you the best of the best. There’s so much “noise” out there in the podcasting world that we think you’ll find this helpful. By the end of the month, we’ll be launching podcast.learnoutloud.com which will be a complete directory of high-quality podcasts. We’re very excited about that. (In the meantime, search our site using the word “podcast” to see all the titles we have listed.)

So we’ll continue our work here picking out the best produce…er, audio and video content for you. If that’s what you’re looking for we hope to become the one-stop shop for you. Please send me an e-mail if there’s anything more we can do in this regard. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the site!

August 3, 2005

” I can’t see myself without it…”

Here’s a great article on audio learning (and audio books in general):

Downloadable files have ear of the audio book industry

I love this passage:

(An audio book fan talking her experience with listening while commuting)

“Right now I can’t see myself without it because it has made my commute from something I hate to something that is quite enjoyable,” she said. “Sometimes when I get home, I’m sitting in the driveway for another 10 minutes because I’m listening to a book that I’m really interested in, and my family is wondering what I’m doing.”

And this one as well:

“I think what has happened in the last five years is that people are finding there are more and more responsibilities in their day, and their traditional reading time is being squeezed out,” Thomas said. “Everybody has made their life about multitasking, and audio books is the ultimate multitasking medium.”

And one more:

“If you hear Frank McCourt read ‘Angela’s Ashes’ or Jane Fonda read her memoir, there really is nothing else like that,” she said. “Once people try audio books, they can’t believe they never tried it before.”

Mmm…those quotes pretty much sum up the reason why we started LearnOutLoud.com. It’s fun to see the world get hooked on audio learning…one listener at a time.

August 2, 2005

Memory Palaces

A lady named Nancy who is working with us passed along this article to me about “memory palaces.” Here’s a brief blurb:

The memory palace was the foundation. Once that is in your head, you can begin practicing the science of memory. (See “The Science Of Memory,” at right). While the palace never changes, the objects inside of a room certainly can change. The strategy, when presented with a large text to memorize, is to walk into the first room of your memory palace and place the first stanza of your address next to a distinctive object, the second stanza next to another object, and so on.

What’s the application to LearnOutLoud? Well, let’s imagine that you’re listening to an audio course from someone like The Teaching Company. Let’s say you are listening to their excellent Great Minds series on your commute to work each day. The concept of memory palaces suggests that when you learn about certain philosophers your memory will associate what you’ve learned with where you are geographically. So if you’re learning about Aristotle while passing a bridge, in the future your mind might recall what you’ve learned each time you pass that bridge.

This begs the question of what you might want your mind recalling each day on your commute to work. By listening to really cool educational and self-development material (we know a great site for that…) you can theoretically tie your mind to teaching from some of the greatest individuals in history. Not a bad way to start your workday huh? To read more about memory palaces, click the link below:

Memory Palaces

August 1, 2005

Focusing

Ever heard of focusing? I hadn’t either until my Uncle Paul turned me on to it a few months back. It’s form of therapy that involves going “within one’s self” to pick up on feelings that might not be readily apparent at the surface level. The Focusing Institute’s website does a much better job of explaining this than I could.

Focusing is direct access to a bodily knowing.

As in ancient times, philosophy now has a practice derived from it.

With training you can find the entry point to your embodied knowledge. After that, you can become able to stay long enough to interact with it. Then you can do many different things when you reach a profound level.

I tried a focusing session and it was pretty cool although I definitely had the feeling that you would need to do multiple sessions to derive the full benefit. Focusing is a great subject to learn about through audio and video because at it’s heart focusing is very much an auditory activity (focusing partners often conduct sessions via the telephone). Seth just put up some of Ann Cornel’s focusing titles up on our site. If you’re interested in learning more about focusing I would encourage you to check them out.

Introduction to Focusing – A great one to start with if you’re new to focusing.

Learning Focusing – A two CD set that goes a little deeper.

The Power of Listening – A videocassette that seems geared a bit more towards those conducting focusing sessions.

The Return of the Soul – Another of Ann’s videocassettes. This one looks somewhat autobiographical in nature.

If you’re interesting in finding out more about focusing, please visit the website of The Focusing Institute at http://www.focusing.org.