January 12, 2006

Google Video

Took my first real look at Google Video last night and I have to admit that I’m very impressed with it and with its potential for video education. When Google Video first launched it just seemed to be a random hodgepodge of videos like this. Funny perhaps but not a lot of learning going on there.

But over the last few months Google quietly amassing a fairly cool stockpile of content. As outlined in this blog post on the Google Blog there’s a lot of interesting stuff up there right now. When it comes to video learning the following are worth a look:

• Aquarius Health Care Media: A leading producer and distributor of healthcare-related videos will pilot with Google Video using a variety of titles covering SIDS, diabetes, and blindness, among other health issues.

• CLEARVUE & SVE: A leading provider of educational K-12 educational video content. They sell DVDs and run a subscription media-on-demand website with video, audio, and images. CLEARVUE & SVE primarily serves large clients such as schools, school districts or entire states. Leveraging Google Video, they have embarked on a new and bold strategy to target individual customers directly. Among the hundreds of videos you will find on Google, topics vary from classic children’s literature to detailed explanations about the workings of the human body.

• Kantola Productions: Captures unique speaking events given by well-known experts at Stanford University. Topics focus on innovative and practical business advice, such as How Leaders Boost Productivity by John H. (Jack) Zenger and Mastery of Speaking as a Leader by Terry Pearce.

• LIME: “Healthy Living with a Twist” offers entertaining and revealing programming focused on a greener, healthier, more balanced lifestyle. Programming features inspiration from leading experts, authors, and pop culture icons and covers topics including the environment and sustainability, personal growth, alternative health, healthy foods, and business ethics.

• Nobel Video Library: A library focused on the achievements of individual Nobel Laureate. The series was developed to introduce students to the work of the laureates as well as to support classroom discussion regarding important issues addressed by Nobel Prize winners in recent decades.

I particularly liked a show from Plum TV called Open Exchange which consisted of a CEO (Jonathan Tisch of Loews Hotels) interviewing other top CEOs.

While you have to pay for some of the content there is a good chunk of it up there for free right now. I’m not sure if that will last but my guess is that there probably will always be a fairly sizable wealth of free educational content on the site.

The biggest question in my mind is how Google will properly showcase this content. To be honest, had I not stumbled upon the post on the Google Blog I don’t think I would have found this stuff. Because Google is allowing anyone and everyone to upload content, it’s going to be increasingly important to have solid filtering mechanisms in place. If they’re able to pull that off this is going to be a really resource. If not, it could turn into a mess.

One more nice feature to mention is that they give you the ability to add code to your site such that you can play video directly within the site. For example, you can check out the Open Exchange interview with Ace Greenberg (CEO of Bear Stearns) below:

(Thanks to Wynn over at the Stingy Scholar blog for his heads up on this feature as well as the LearnOutLoud mention in his blog post about Google Video.)

One last comment and then I’ll sign off for the night.

What is Google Video’s monthly bandwidth usage?

It must an insane amount. And that’s going to be the interesting thing to watch with Google Video (as well as the other video sharing services that are out there). If you’re charging for something you can pretty much be assured that the revenue will offset the costs, even if you’re only selling something for 99 cents. But if Google allows people to post tons of free video and doesn’t charge them to do so you’d have to imagine that will be pretty costly for them. But I guess they can afford it.

After all they are Google.

January 11, 2006

Video: Getting Started with LearnOutLoud

You may have noticed a new icon on our homepage today. Seth put together a great video overview of the LearnOutLoud site. If you’re new to the site or feel like you haven’t gotten a chance to fully explore it yet I’d strongly recommend that you check it out. Here’s the link:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/#Quick

Enjoy!

January 6, 2006

Peaceful Warrior The Movie

I had the distinct privilege of being invited to attend an advance screening of the new movie Peaceful Warrior which is based on Dan Millman’s book Way of The Peaceful Warrior. The movie comes out in June and you’ll definitely want to check it out. It’s both a touching story and very thought-provoking. And I would highly recommend reading the book or listening to the audio book beforehand. As with any movie a lot gets left out but I thought they did do a pretty good job in sticking to the theme of the book.

If you’re interesting in catching a little of Dan’s work for free you can take a listen to the Dan Millman Podcast which we host on LearnOutLoud. We’ve only got one episode currently up but more will be on the way soon.

Thanks to Dan for the invite and kudos to him and everyone at Lion’s Gate for their work on the film. It may or may not be the next Hollywood blockbuster but the inspiration it will provide for many will far outweigh any dollar figures.

January 6, 2006

Two More Broken Records

I’ve added a couple more titles to my list of broken records: Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles and Mark Victor Hansen’s Dreams Don’t Have Deadlines. These are two excellent titles that will get you thinking a little bit larger about your life and your goals. Great listening for the New Year!

By the way, it’s interesting how so many people deride “self-help” and would steer away from titles like this. In actuality, many of the people who would shy away from books from people like Canfield and Hansen are probably the people who most need to be listening to them. The stuff we surround ourselves with has a bigger influence than we realize. Challenge yourself to turn off the talk radio on the way into work in the morning and throw one of these audio books. Notice the difference that it makes in your attitude and demeanor.

Now lather, rinse and repeat. 🙂

Have a great weekend everybody!

January 4, 2006

Five Things That Make It Easy To Get Up In the Morning

Why do you get out of bed in the morning?

It’s a question worth asking often. Last night I was reading a quote I have on the wall at home. It’s from a commencement address that Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave to Stanford students last June.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

The answer for me is “Yes” and I thought I’d share with you five reason why. Five reasons for being (I thought I’d dress it up with a bit of French). Bear with me. I think you’ll see my point by the end. 🙂

Raison d’etre #1 – I want to learn from the world. Today, around the world, there are thousands of people teaching. Scratch that. There are millions of people teaching. I want to learn from them. I don’t want to be limited to learning from the minute percentage that broadcast media gives to us. The few talking heads that say the same things in the same way. That doesn’t do it for me.

Tomorrow somewhere someone will give a talk on some niche topic within the world of search engine optimization (or any of thousands of other subjects, take your pick. This person will know more than 99.99999% of the planet on the subject. His talk may reach 30 or even 300 people. Yet there are thousands of people around the world who could benefit from that talk. How do we enable that?

That’s my raison d’etre #1.

Raison d’etre #2 – I want to teach the world. Maybe I have a message. Maybe I’m an expert in a particular area. Maybe the words that I spoke two days ago or two hours ago could add value to someone’s life. Maybe I’m that guy or gal teaching that search engine class. Why should I have to limit my message to just the people in the room at the time of the class. In this era of technology and new media that makes no sense.

There’s a reason why college professors are relatively underpaid (IMHO). It’s because of leverage. Professors typically only reach a few dozen people at one time. They could be reaching hundreds, thousands or even millions. A child growing up in Africa could have the finest education in the world if the technology enabled it. And the people who are the best teachers of our era could at last become the rock stars that they truly are.

That’s my raison d’etre #2.

Raison d’etre #3 – I want to immortalize wisdom. On the way to the office tonight I was listening to Martin Luther King Jr. (A Knock At Midnight is one of my “broken records“). Every time I listen to that I am so thankful that someone took the time to record his voice so that we have it for future generations. I’m glad that my children will one day listen to MLK’s sermons and that they’ll be able to pass them to their children.

But I also get sad when I think of all of the wisdom we have captured and that we’ll never be able to go back and get. People who had incredible things to share with the world that we’ll never be able to hear. So I plan to do my best to tell everyone to record everything. Not only will digital audio and video content have increasing monetary value in the upcoming years, it’s also a tremendous legacy to leave to future generations.

That’s my raison d’etre #3.

Raison d’etre #4 – I want to help the diamonds in the rough to be discovered. There are so many people out there who have incredible things to share with the world. They just need a little help to get that voice heard about the crowd. My buddy Brian Johnson is a great example. He has some incredible wisdom to share with the world.

In the past he would have had very limited options for sharing his spoken message with the world. But we’ve been able to post his content here at LearnOutLoud and now people are saying stuff like this:

Brian’s reading of this collection of quotes on courage helps to enliven them for us – thus, giving us a greater chance of learning and mastering the courage we need in order to maxmize our lives.

There might not be anyone just like Brian out there but I guarantee there are a ton of people who have some awesome content out there and just need a little incentive to get it captured and online.

That’s my raison d’etre #4.

Raison d’etre #5 – I’m frickin’ selfish. 🙂 The reason I love audio and video learning is that it gives me options for learning at all times throughout the day. Out for a run? I can throw on a pair of headphones and listen to an audio book or podcast. Need to veg on the couch for bit? Give me a cool video course or documentary to watch.

A big factor in the quality of our lives is the quality of the information we’re exposed to. The better the information, the better our lives are. I want more choices. Audible has 5,000 audio books. Great. I want 50,000. iTunes promises 20,000 podcasts. Cool. I want 200,000. I want to give people the incentive to bring the absolute best possible content to market and share it with as many people as possible.

That’s my raison d’etre #5.

So why do I bring all this up? Well, last night I had the opportunity to see a sneak preview of LearnDirect, the new service we’ll be rolling out in a few weeks. It might be a bit presumptious to say this but LearnDirect (and other services like it that will no doubt follow) will. change. the. world. Sure, it won’t happen overnight but when it comes to opening up the flow of information I think it has tremendous potential.

Let me go back to a quote from Jeffrey Sachs that I posted last week:

I believe that the single most important reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them.

We here at LearnOutLoud are incredibly excited to help with this “transmission.” We hope you’ll join us.

For more information about LearnDirect, please send an e-mail to learndirect@learnoutloud.com.

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January 3, 2006

Dylan Out Loud

Bob Dylan = Absolute Genius. That was first and primary reaction after watching No Direction Home, Martin Scorcese’s film biography of the man who defies labels and has transcended generations. I’ve been a big Dylan fan for years (got hooked on Blood on the Tracks my sophomore year in college) but I didn’t really know a lot about his life until recently.

In addition to the movie I’ve also been listening to Chronicles Volume One, a sort of rambling autobiography which is poetic and cryptic and engaging at the same time. Read by Sean Penn, this audio book is a must-listen for Dylan fans old and young.

What so impressed me about Dylan was his incredible focus for his craft. No Direction Home spends a lot of time covering the period in Dylan’s life when he went “electric” which caused an incredible amount of consternation among the fans of his folk music. They even went so far as to boo him on stage and walk out of his concerts. Dylan’s response? To keep on doing what he wanted to and not compromise his integrity to appease what other people wanted out of him.

No Direction Home was an amazing look at Dylan’s life and I sat there spellbound through a good chunk of it. Not only is it a wonderful journey through musical history but it’s also a compelling look at a man who has done so much and experienced an incredible array of highs and lows throughout his life. I think Bono expressed it best in a recent interview:

I mean, Bob Dylan is much more interesting with age, not less interesting. Some pretty boy face on the cover of a style magazine, or him! I want to stare at Dylan’s face and I want to hear what he has to say because he has travelled a long road and he’s got something worth hearing.

Indeed.

(And if you’re interested in learning even a bit more about Dylan you may want to check out Bob Dylan: A Tribute or Bound for Glory, a book not about Dylan but about his biggest influence Woody Guthrie.)