March 10, 2006

The Greatest Speeches of All Time

There’s something mighty powerful about listening to historic speeches. Whether you’re listening to FDR, JFK or MLK (or even someone whose name isn’t an acronym!), there’s a feeling of energy and perspective that simply can’t be duplicated. It’s one thing to read Winston Churchill or read about him. It’s another thing entirely to listen to him.

And there are many other benefits of listening to this type of stuff. You gain a better understanding of rhetoric. It’s a great way to brush up on our English if English is not your native lanugage. And it’s an incredible way to both be inspired and learn more about American and world history.

And you can do it all in your car on the way to work. 🙂

We’re proud to feature titles by companies such as Speechworks on LearnOutLoud and look forward to bringing more and more of this type of content in the future. A personal dream of mine is a service like Real Rhapsody or Yahoo! Music but for speeches like this where you could call up your favorite historical figure or inspirational leader and within seconds be listening to any of the speeches they’ve given. How cool would that be? Maybe we’ll just have to build that…

March 6, 2006

The Top 10 People Who Should Be Podcasting

Yup, there are a lot of cool people podcasting these days. But there are also a lot who haven’t started yet. I realize that a lot of people will never podcast for reasons ranging from a simple lack of time to the fact that a few words one way or another in a podcast could swing their companies’ stock prices pretty radically (e.g., Mr. Gates, Sergey and Larry). But I think there are a bunch of people who out there who could be persuaded into giving podcasting a try. Who knows, maybe if this article gets enough buzz one of them will give it a go. So without further ado, here’s my Wish List of the Top 10 People I’d Love to See Podcasting:

10. Steve Wozniak – One of the co-founders of Apple, Woz is always interesting to listen to. He’s been on This Week in Tech a couple of times and also has the proud distinction of being the subject of the most popular IT Conversations episode of all-time. Here’s one vote for Woz starting a mobile podcast that he’d record while in his Prius or on his Segway.

9. Mark Cuban – Blog Maverick, Cuban’s blog, is among my favorites. He’s got a great perspective on business, sports and entertainment. As those worlds converge at an accelerating pace Cuban’s dialogue becomes more and more relevant. He’s a busy guy these days but sticking a mic on him once a week to get his thoughts on the future of media, his advice on investing and entrepreneurship and the occasional rant about Phil Jackson would be pretty frickin’ sweet. While we’re waiting on the CubanCast check out his interview with John Furrier from the InfoTalk Podcast and his conversation with John Heilemann from the Web 2.0 Conference.

8. Margaret Cho – She has a blog, a My Space site and even a line of belly-dancing clothes. What more could the Notorious C.H.O. want? A podcast, that’s what. Give her an open mic and an RSS feed and just see what happens. I have no doubt that it would be interesting and most likely offensive to at least half of the people listening…

7. Tom Peters – Crazy passionate. That’s the best phrase I could think of describe Tom Peters. He’s been a blogger for a while now but to really experience Peters you need to listen to him. Give an ear to a bit of Re-Imagine! and tell me if this guy isn’t on fire. He’s always on the road giving speeches and presentations. Someone needs to start recording some of them and putting them out there for the rest of the world to hear. Pretty please…

6. The Dalai Lama – The Dalai Lama is the author of dozens of books, many of which have been published on audio and which he has personally narrated. Belief Net has a number of “mini-dharma” talks available but it would be cool to see an audio and/or video podcast feed. No doubt thousands or even millions of people around the world would tune in.

5. Jason Calacanis – I had a chance to see Jason offer up a rant last weekend at BarCampLosAngeles. I love hearing him speak. He’s definitely one of the most opinionated guys out there but he’s on the mark at least 98% of the time. Check out his interview on the Web 2.0 Show for a glimpse into what a CalacanisCast might sound like. No dull moments guaranteed!

4. Guy Kawasaki – The managing director of Garage Technology Ventures and another high-profile author who just started blogging. Based on the volume of his posts Guy either has some time on his hands or types very, very fast. Personally, I can’t keep up. Now if he’d make some of those articles available on audio it might give a guy a fighting chance! Watch his presentation here to the UCLA Anderson School or listen to a chapter from The Art of the Start and see if this isn’t a guy who would be a good entrant into the Podosphere.

3. Andrew Sullivan – Gay? Conservative? Practicing Roman Catholic? Intriguing. I’ve been following Andrew’s blog The Daily Dish off and on for the last couple of years. It’s one of those that I’d like to have the time to digest but never quite get around to. Now if he podcasted it would be totally different. I could listen during my daily jog, when I’m driving around, etc. I’ve never heard him speak but if his podcast would be even half as interesting as his blog it would be worth the subscription.

2. Seth Godin – The author of Permission Marketing, Purple Cow and most recently All Marketers Are Liars has one of the most popular blogs going. He’s an innovate thinker and a dynamic speaker (Godin recently was chosen as on of “21 Speakers for the Next Century” by Successful Meetings Magazine). Check out the recent talk he gave to Google to get a sense of what a Godin podcast might sound like. I’d certainly subscribe.

1. Bill Clinton – He has some spare time on his hands these days right? Well actually he has been quite busy doing a lot of work with his foundation and with former President George Bush raising money for last year’s tsunami and hurricane victims. Even though he is retired from office it would be interesting to see him follow in the footsteps of other political figures like John Edwards and Barack Obama and put out a podcast. For an example of what it might sound like check out an interview of Clinton from this year’s World Economic Forum. It would definitely be interesting to more stuff like that.

Of course one-person podcasts don’t seem to end up working out that well. So perhaps (and I know I’m reaching now) some of these people could team up. A Cuban/Calacanis podcast? (Cuban invested in Weblogs, Inc., the company Jason recently sold to AOL.) How about Godin and Peters? (That would be some good brain candy.) Or maybe we could use the husband-wife formula that worked so well for Dawn and Drew and get Hillary and Bill to podcast together? On second thought…

March 5, 2006

World Economic Forum Podcast and Webcast

Another cool offering: The World Economic Forum that happened in January in Davos, Switzerland is available to watch or listen to online. Some of the people who spoke or were panel members include:

Larry Summers
Michael Dell
Bono
Thomas Friedman
Bill Gates
Bill Clinton

Some heavy hitters huh? Kind of like an international version of the TED Conference.

One of the best things about the Forum is that the audio and video downloads are being made possible by an innovative new company called Red Swoosh. The company has an application that offers legal P2P services to media companies and organizations. I had a chance to chat with the founder Travis Kalanick today at BarCampLosAngeles and see him do a demo. I was very impressed with the technology. You’ll be hearing a lot more about his company in the future.

If you’re looking to feed your head with some good stuff head on over to the World Economic Forum website, download the Red Swoosh client and check out some good stuff.

March 5, 2006

“All Marketers are Liars” – Seth Godin speaks at Google

Cool. We need more of this type of stuff available online. 🙂

“All Marketers are Liars” – Seth Godin speaks at Google

March 3, 2006

Most Teaching Company Lectures on Download

I was visiting the Teaching Company site and most of their courses are now on audio download. When purchased the courses are available for download on both MP3 and bookmarkable MPEG-4 files which is good for people that don’t have an iPod. Also their downloads are contained in a download library so you can always go back and download again if need be. The prices of their downloads are about equal to the price of audio cassettes, which is reasonable if they’re discounted. Here’s the Teaching Company courses on our site updated with the ones that are now available on audio download:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/teachingcompany

March 2, 2006

ITunes Fails to Meet Free University Ideal

Here’s my first gripe: Podcasting is based on open — HTTP, RSS — and vendor-neutral MP3 Latest News about MP3 standards. However, Apple’s iTunes U is, quite unnecessarily, a walled garden. Among mainstream programs, only the iTunes client can download the talks. Among mainstream players, only iTunes, QuickTime and the iPod can play them.

I couldn’t agree more with you Mr. Udell.

ITunes Fails to Meet Free University Ideal

March 1, 2006

Free Audio Bliss

I finally got the sound fixed on my laptop last week (kudos by the way to the fine gentleman at Experts Exchange who provided the fix…love that site!). It’s ridiculous that I went such a long time without it working. After all, I run an audio learning company… But now it’s back and I’m absolutely loving it.

One of the things that I’m growing more amazed at by the day is the amount of ridiculously cool free audio that’s out there. For instance, here’s my playlist for the afternoon:

The latest episode of the Venture Voice Podcast. It’s an awesome interview with John Bogle, the man who started The Vanguard Group. You’ve got to listen to this one as it’s an incredibly story of idealism and entrepreneurship.

The Carson Workshops Summit – Gee, I can’t think of something a lot more fun than listening to guys from Google, Yahoo!, Delicious and 37 Signals discuss the future of Web. Good warm-up for this weekend’s BarCamp here in LA. 🙂

Guided Meditation – I came across this very cool guided meditation from Beliefnet. Almost instantly made me calm. Not bad…

So with this explosion in audio content how do you find the latest and the greatest? While we’ve got a lot of it in our Free Audio and Video Directory and in our Podcast Directory. But my goal is to try to make sure as much of this stuff as possible finds its way into our new Free Resource of the Day newsletter. We’ve got some really cool stuff lined up for that including a lot of exclusive titles. You’ll definitely want to sign up.

And oh yeah, I am listening to a lot more music now too. I’m having a lot of fun trying out new services and sites like WebJay, last.fm and my new favorite MusicRadish.

With all this cool stuff to listen to I’m not sure I ever want to stop working…