June 6, 2005

The First Breakthrough

We found a way finally! June 2nd’s edition of Adam Curry’s formative podcast
the daily source code featured a modest promo for our podcast. I don’t know how many people will listen in now, but if you’re out there, and you’re reading this, I want to tell you that we have something really fun cooking. Thanks go to Adam for giving us a nod, and I hope to see you out there on the Podcast Waves. We should have a chat on the podcast alley forums too, while we’re at it!

Speaking of Podcast Alley, if you’ve listened to the show and liked it, I’d apreciate it a great deal if you’d hop over there and give us a vote. All you do is go here, click on our link, and then click the vote button. We really want to get to as many ears as possible with this thing and that means a collective effort. I gave my vote, but that sort of doesn’t count. Its sort of like when you see those photo ops of the president voting for himself on election day or something.

June 1, 2005

Barnes & Noble’s Portable Professor Series

For those of you who haven’t heard of the Teaching Company I encourage you to stop reading this and visit their site right now: www.teach12.com. For those of you who know of the Teaching Company’s greatness, you may not know of their major competitor Barnes & Noble’s Portable Professor Series. This series was actually originally recorded and published by Recorded Books and called “The Modern Scholar”, and they basically ripped off the concept of the Teaching Company which is not a bad model to rip off. They went around the United States and England and found distinguished college professors on the topics of history, philosophy, literature, and a handful of other college subjects. They then recorded the professors for 14 lectures providing us with an 8 hour course for a given topic on audio. At www.recordedbooks.com you can find all these courses on cassette and CD for $87.75 a course. I guess that price was a little too much, so Recorded Books decided to hand them over to Barnes & Noble to repackage them, rename them, and resell them on CD for $39.95 per course.

Now Barnes & Noble has 24 of these courses in their Audiobooks Section. They’ve spiced up the titles a little so what was labeled on Recorded Books as “Rethinking Our Past: Recognizing Facts Fictions, and Lies in American History” is now called “Everything You’ve Been Taught Is Wrong” for Barnes & Noble’s Portable Professor Series. We have all their titles up on LearnOutLoud.com and you can browse them here:

www.learnoutloud.com/portableprofessor

They have audio samples and before you buy you might want to check out the Barnes & Noble course pages because they have quite a few reviews to help you decide. For example I was looking to buy “Altering the Blueprint: The Ethics of Genetics” but after reading three scathing reviews I decided against this. They just added four courses, but there’s still about twenty courses that Recorded Books has published that haven’t made the leap over to Barnes & Noble and are only available at www.recordedbooks.com for he $87.75 a piece.

Also now Audible.com has 7 of the Portable Professor courses available for digital download:

One God, Three Faiths
Benjamin Franklin
Six Months That Changed the World
To Rule Mankind and Make the World Obey
Shaping Justice
April 1865
Altering the Blueprint

This is surely the best deal if you’re an Audible member because you each course is one book credit, but for Non Audible subscribers they cost $27.97. There’s many reviews on Audible for these products and you can also download the course guide in pdf format for free. I bought “To Rule Mankind and Make the World Obey” with professor Frances Titchener from Utah State University. I would rate it as an average college course, but it was definitely entertaining and worth the price of tuition. I just started listening to “Benjamin Franklin” and it’s very informative and interesting.

I don’t necessarily think that the professors for these courses go through the rigorous evaluations and auditions that the Teaching Company puts their professors through. Nevertheless these courses seem like very accessible lecture courses that would cost you ten times the amount if you took them at a university. And with these you can listen to them on your own time in your car or anywhere now that they’re becoming available for digital download, and there’s no arbitrary multiple choice test at the end. It’s a great way to learn.

June 1, 2005

I love reading this stuff…

Just read a great article on the growing cult of audio book lovers that is coming out of the wordwork lately. It gives a great rundown on why audio books are becoming more popular lately and how people are reacting to this change in how we consume information. It seems we’re living in a time where spoken word audio is getting to be more in vogue, especially now the mp3 players have made it easier. Take special note of how the article mentions how regular book readers are inclined to marginalize audio books as something less than literate. This sort of thing is going to go away after people realize not only are they retaining the books they hear but they’re also saving time. Anyway, this one is worth taking a look at.

May 27, 2005

Freakonomics

It’s fitting that the first blurb over on Audible.com for Freakonomics was by no less than Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink. Like those two titles, Freakonomics is an interesting journey through some amazing stories and statistics. It doesn’t get into the meat of the issues and while Levitt and Dubner seem to aspire to not much more than impressing us with some cool, real world applications of economics, the result is nonetheless engaging and highly listenable.

If you’re the type of person with a strong logical inclination, you’ll almost certainly fall in love with this book. The reasons why realtors almost always sell their own homes for more and why drug dealers often live with their parents are startling and not soon to be forgotten. Freakonomics will definitely change the way you look at the world. Even though the book lacks a cohesive theme and is a bit self-indulgent at times (Levitt is smart, we get it!) you’ll still find yourself challenged and enlightened by what Levitt and Dubner have to offer.

To find out more about Freakonomics, click here.

May 24, 2005

Podcasting and the New Radio

We’ve been sort of bashing radio a little too much without giving a good alternative. Well now we can give you one. Take a look out our very own podcast page. Here you will find out what we’ve been doing in the world of podcasting and will be provided with links to listen to it all. These always fun to make and the results are getting better and better with each ‘cast. We are always looking for comments on our podcasts and welcome your thoughts. Also, if you like our podcast, we suggest voting for it over on podcast alley. Have a good one!

May 19, 2005

The Technology Fuels the Service

Read this short story about what’s happening at the Algonquin in New York and consider this: has there ever been a hotel in the history of ever that offered walkmen or a cd boombox in a similar manner? The Ipod’s information dispersal capabilities are becoming more apparent every day. So much so that the device’s popularity is actually INFORMING the way several industries are engineering new business models. I never would have thought about listening to audio books at a hotel, but the chance to try out an ipod and listen to books while I’m on vacation is a great idea. THe only problem is that ipods will get so affordable as the market gets flooded that the freshness seal on a service like this is limited. Then again, when EVERYONE has an ipod, I envision kiosks all over the place where you can jack yourself in and download information on almost every business or service imaginable.

Think about it, not only will you be able to hook up your ipod into the Algonquin terminal and hear a bunch of history on the place, you’ll also be able to go to a museum, mall, park or whatever, download information and use it for whatever purpose you need. Libraries may even be replaced by a huge room of terminals with which people can download their books (or ebooks if you still like reading) directly, and for free. You’ll go to an airport and get automatic downloads of any weather or flight updates you need (which is more convenient then nervously checking a screen every few minutes). We’re living the Will Gibson future more and more every minute of every day. Information will be so available and so portable that the sense of empowerment will be insane!

May 19, 2005

A Fresh View of the Catholic Church has Emerged

I wanted to make mention of a podcaster that I recently got the chance to finally hear. As we all now, the new Star Wars movie is obliterating the minds of every male born between 1965 and 1981 (my guesstimate of the “star wars generation”). I was listening to the Daily Source Code today and there was a blurb for a one Roderick Vonhögen, catholic priest and collossal Star Wars fan. I remember Roderick the most from his old website The Virtual Edition which tried to create Episode One wholly from spoiler information leaked on to the net. It was a fun site back in 98 and its good to see how this guy’s use of the internet has morphed. Now he’s a full blown priest and an accessible entry point into the world of catholicism. I’ve listened to a few podcasts and this guy’s attitude and enjoyment of what he talks about, whether it be Episode III or Benedict XVI, is what I like the most about him. Seriously, the Vatican could use this guy for their PR Machine, he’ll turn all the bad press they’ve been getting around in no time. He may repeat himself alot during his podcasts, he may even be annoying to some listeners, but I truly think he is probably the first real podcast celebrity besides Adam Curry. He’s been so popular that the vatican radio is now doing a podcast thanks to his efforts and you can probably expect more innovations to from this young priest. Give him a listen, it would take a real cynic to not acknowledge that this guy has a ton of heart.

May 17, 2005

The Idea is Catching On

Looks as though Audible is figuring out what a learning resource spoken word audio can be. I just read this article on the deal they’ve recently struck Pearson Higher Education. The idea is that Audible will be releasing audio versions of their college text book curriculum. This is only the beginning of something that is going to explode on the internet, mark my words.

May 17, 2005

Focus on Zen

We’ll be recording a podcast on audio religion soon, and I’ve been focusing on Zen Buddhism for this endevour. With that in mind, I’ve created an author page for Thich Nhat Hanh. Hanh came to world renown in the Vietnam-era when Martin Luther King nominated the quiet monk for the Nobel Prize. Since then, Hanh has been traveling the world and writting TONS of books on Mindfulness, Peace, and Zen in general. If you want to start anywhere with zen, this is the guy to look at first. Personally I’ve put down some of his books as must reads for the future. Enjoy the page!

May 17, 2005

The End is Only Just Begun

There has been an interesting discussion going on about the state of radio over at Slashdot. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, radio will continue its decline due to its lack of diverse programming. Sometimes I forget to bring my mp3 player in the car and am forced to listen to the radio for a few nanoseconds. There’s absolutely nothing on. NOTHING. It’s the same music with what amounts to same DJ shouting the same boring soon-to-be-dated slang. I want information, I want a variety of music, I want new voices, unfiltered thoughts, etc, etc, etc. Modern radio simply isn’t giving me what I need and so I will continue to get what I seek elsewhere. Hang the DJ, indeed.