The Mediasite Library of Expertise

Remember a couple weeks back when I mentioned that Blinx.tv was going to present streaming videos for great academic lectures? Yeah, what ever happened with that? I've searched their site a number of times, but I still don't see where they've posted these lectures.

Well forget 'em. Mediasite contains nothing but video to great lectures and presentations - 7,376 streaming videos at the time of this post. The search function works well, and I like that you can filter by Higher Ed, Government, and Corporate. Since the site links as pop-up windows and since the search results don't change the URL I can't directly link to some of the great videos on the site (hopefully they'll fix that during beta testing). But try some searches for "resume" or "outbreak" or "Jack Welch" (former CEO of General Electric) and you'll find some interesting presentations. Mediasite also offers tools for universities and businesses to record and publish presentations on their servers.

Thanks to Rosa for sending me the Mediasite link as well as the link to The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog, who first mentioned Mediasite. As for Blinx.tv, it's still a cool page, but that's the last time I mention something yet to happen.

TBR is Red Orbit Site of the Day

Thanks to RedOrbit for naming Textbook Revolution their site of the day. Red Orbit is a site devoted to space, science, technology, and health. Here's what I like about it:

(1) Depth and Balance- Unlike some overly technical science and technology sites, Red Orbit is accessible. They manage to maintain the feel of a Google/Yahoo general portal - complete with breaking news and video - without losing their focus.

(2) Blogs and Sites of the Day - The Red Orbit editors do a great job of picking out interesting sites and blogs. Some of the many sites that I discovered through their archives are: Corporate Watch, BigHairMetal, Inside HigherEd, Watered Down Physics, 3 Quarks Daily, and GeekPress.

(3) Variety of RSS feeds - I like the option to subscribe only to the topics that interest me, such as their Space feed or Technology feed. In fact, I think Red Orbit should offer even more feeds. Maybe they could add RSS subscriptions to their sites/blogs of the day or RSS subscriptions to updated search results (as with Digg).

(4) Shop - Looking for a telescope? Anti-gravity air boots? A floating executive globe? The Red Orbit shop is like a cross between Edmund Scientifics and Johnson Smith. Very fun to browse through.

Darwin and Spaghetti Monsters

I've received a couple comments that I may be including too many links for my readers. I'm going to think about how to better organize links - maybe I can use a classification code. In the meantime, note that today I only included my favorites of many, many Darwin-related links. If you are looking for more on this topic, check out the (no joke) hundreds of great links in the AskMeFi post.

(1) British Library's Complete Writings of Charles Darwin
(2) Berkeley's Guide to Understanding and Teaching Evolution
(3) Logical Fallacies in Creationism and How to Spot Them
(4) Harvard Magazine: Intelligent Evolution
(5) Ask Metafilter: Help Me Introduce Evolution to My Parents

Also, just for Fun:
The Brick Testament
Charles Darwin Has a Posse
Flying Spaghetti Monster

Thanks to Brendan for letting me use one of his Brick Testament pictures in this post. Check out his site. It's friggin' brilliant.

You may have noted that I am no longer calling the Friday science posts "Science Fridays". This is because my wife - who otherwise loves the blog - says that the prefix is too "Ross Geller". Well, I definitely aspire to have a Joey-caliber blog...or at least Chandler. So, it's gone. (And yes, I know all the Friends references - I am married and have three sisters-in-law. I also know that Aiden was the best boyfriend, but Carrie probably deserves Big).

Rapidshared = 2038 eBooks (and growing)

Rapidshared.org lets you access all of the ebooks on the Rapidshare.de fileservers. From their site:

RapidShared.ORG is a catalog of materials, hosted on the servers of rapidshare.de, the world leading file hosting service. Aim of this project is to gather links spread all over the net in one single place and to structurize them in a user-friendly way. All links get checked (if valid, for duplicate entries, etc) to make everything even more comfortable!

I think their servers were overwhelmed the other day, but everything seems to be working now. When I find more ebook links (such as this), I'll always include them on my previous ebooks post.

Purple Slurple: Find a Needle in a Haystack

How do you point out a single paragraph on a page when whole chapters (or even books) are under one URL? Some webdesigners place anchors, but let's face it, most academics aren't that tech savvy. You're lucky to have the text online.

In cases like this, Purple Slurple can be a real life-saver. Let's say you are reading chapter 2 in Derrida's Of Grammatology. You want to point out the paragraph that begins, "In short, if the Jakobsonian analysis is faithful to Saussure in this matter...".

Here's what you do:
(1) Copy the page URL and paste it over at the Slurple-maker page. Hit "Submit" and you will see the same page with a new URL.
(2) Scroll down to the paragraph of interest and you will see that it is now preceeded by number 889. Click on that number and you will have second new URL. This new URL opens directly to the paragraph of interest.
(3) At this point you could stop, but wouldn't you prefer a shorter URL? Go to TinyURL and paste the long URL. TinyURL spits back this short link: http://tinyurl.com/8vzcg. Now share with your peers and loved ones.

This is a very handy site. Thank you Matthew for creating (and posting) this javascript.

Grammar Shack

Are you looking for answers to your grammar-related inquiries? No? Well, I'll pretend you are:

Q: I would like a good, thorough overview of English grammar and style, but my attention span isn't all that...hey, isn't Lost on tonight?...wait, what were we talking about?

A. The champion is still Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. It is short. It is concise. I don't think anyone has ever written a better guide. Best of all, it's online everywhere for free - snatch it up now before congress extends copyright law retroactively. If a 60 page book is too much for your attention span, go to BBC Skillwise to play grammar computer games. If you are just looking for short, basic pointers on how to write better academic papers, check out these guidelines from Jack Lynch at Rutgers University: Getting an A on an English Paper and Guide to Grammar and Style. Two other useful sites are these Economist guidelines originally prepared for their journalists and these 11 rules of writing. Finally, How to Write More Clearly, Think More Clearly is a power point presentation that can help you organize your thoughts in order to write more clearly.

Q: I mainly often have questions on specific grammar errors. Who can I axe 'bout these?

A: The Columbia Journalism Review's Language Corner has great summaries on various usage topics. Two other detailed archives are Grammar Slammar and Dr. Grammar. To check fine distinctions between similar words in English (such as affect/effect), go to Common Errors in English. To practice these skills with some short exercises, check out the CCC Guide to Grammar and Writing.

Q: I just want to suck up to my English teacher. Can't you give me some cool sites to show my teacher so she thinks I care?

A: Try some of these. 50 Writing Tools is a good list of basic writing tools that you can incorporate to become a better writer. You can suggest that your teacher print one tool each day to share with the class. You will be very popular with your peers. The Word Detective contains an archive explaining the origins of many English words and expressions. Try also the Online Etymology Dictionary. Finally, here is a good starting point for many English-teaching resources.


Q: ...I think you misunderstood. I don't have one of the old, cranky English teachers. She's more like one of those directionless, recent liberal arts graduates who thinks she is "making a difference" by teaching me English.

A: Try some of these sites instead. Urban Dictionary will help her feel "hip" and you can laugh as she uses "street slang" to connect with the class. Pain in the English is a site that discusses some of the gray areas in English usage, particularly in regional dialects. Also on this topic, Wikipedia has an interesting list of words that mean different things in American and British English. Onelook Reverse is an interesting dictionary that lets you enter the concept to find the word. Onelook Reverse search results aren't always perfect. For example, if I enter "something that makes your job more difficult", I get "handicap," but I also get "oral hypoglycemic agents". Want some blogs? Literally, a Web Log tracks misuse of the word literally. and Eek, A Typo! tracks typos. Language Log is a hardcore language observer blog, with an incredible list of links to other language site.


Q: I 4m 1337, ph34r my skillz. I taught myself C at the age of 5. I mastered Ruby in 2.5 hours. Aren't there any programs that can do all this grammar stuff for me?

A: Why yes there are! Here are two open source grammar-checker programs: JLanguageTool and QueeQueg. Check out the Passivator, a javascript bookmarklet that flags passive verbs. This script is based off the ly detector, which flags verbs ending in "ly". Also see the forbidden word flagger. You might also enjoy playing around with Gramster.


Q: Why is this post called Grammar Shack?

A: I had Love Shack stuck in my head this morning. Don't judge me.


Special thanks to Stephen Notley for letting me use his comic "Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiot". Visit Bob, the Angry Flower for more fun and anger.

War of the Worlds

Here is the audio to the original Tom-Cruise-free War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Also check out this Wikipedia article on the chaos after the infamous first broadcast. The article lists a number of good links including this free Darkhorse e-comic adapatation (my update).

I know that I have been a little hard on Tom Cruise this week, but I recently saw Elizabethtown and I am holding him personally responsible. Maybe he liked Garden State, but thought it needed a 25 minute phone conversation in the middle. Or maybe he thought Zach Braff was too much of an alpha-male and wanted to soften the main character.

Flipbooks, Sodaplay, Art Games, and ZeFrank

Flipbooks
Drawn! first drew my attention to this massive flipbook site. FLIPBOOK.info is a french site, it's not hard to get the gist of the content and to enjoy the innumberable flipbooks in their archive. One annoying thing about the site - it can be difficult to figure out which flipbooks have video of the flipping. You just have to browse around and click alot.

So if this site has gotten you in the flipbook mood, try downloading this software to make your own flipbook from avi video files. Looks like a neat Christmas gift idea. (Note that although the software is free, you will have to request a license key).

Sodaplay
Sodaplay is an extremely odd site that allows you construct an animated critter and watch it walk (or drag it) around while modifying direction, gravity, and other variables. Check out some of the best examples in the Soda Zoo. Sodaplay is actually a joint project with Queen Mary University of London and has information on the project, including lesson plans on modelling and variables. Also check out Soda Race which pits the human modelled critters against those designed by computer algorithms.

Videogame Art
Check out this awesome collection of art video games from artificial.dk. I particularly like the nerve game, which presents daily situations that aggravate your character, and average shoveler, which puts you in control of a snowshoveler who wanders around and picks up "snow" containing bad news from actual current events.

zefrank
No round-up of web visuals would be complete without mention of zefrank. From his talking aliens presenting Tom Cruise's anti-psychiatry rant, to the really cool string spin, zefrank is one of the best known and widely adapted in...whatever it is he does.

More:
Draw.ca
We-make-money-not-art
No Garlic Please
Design Online Archives

Joining Forces with Textbook Revolution

Jason Turgeon, founder of the excellent Textbook Revolution, and I will be joining forces. This is very exciting, as Textbook Revolution is hands-down the best archive of free textbooks and educational materials on the web. So what does this mean?

(1) Shared resources - Jason will link to me and I will link to Jason. Check out the TBR homepage and you will notice a Blog tab that links to this site. Over here, you will notice that Textbook Revolution is the top link.

We will also help each other find sites and improve our records - for example, Jason reminded me that I forgot to include the Internet Archive as a source for ebooks in yesterday's post. Whoops!

Part of the goal of TBR is to maintain mirrors of sites with free textbooks and educational materials. Since these sites usually don't make much money and can easily exceed their bandwidth, this is extremely important. If I find a good site, I'll provide the link to the TBR mirror so that readers browsing Stingy Scholar archives will be able to find materials from sites that may no longer exist.

(2) Announcements - If something big happens at TBR, I'll announce it here. If something big happens with the Stingy Scholar, Jason will announce it on TBR (like his post that we are teaming-up). Time-to-time, Jason might also come by and post something here on the Stingy Scholar blog.

(3) Future projects - Who can rule them out? We share a common goal to find free, high quality educational materials on the web and to make them easily accessible. Anything that can further this goal is a possibility.

Singing Science Professors

Wired has an article today on science songs written by professors and other groups. Here are sites with full mp3's: Craig Growther, Food Safe, Jim Webb, and Science-Groove.

And here are the sites with samples: Edutunes, Sing-Smart, Joan Maute, Kathleen Carroll, Monty Harper, Professor Boggs, Science Explosion, Science in Song, J.P.Taylor, InYour Backyard, Teacher and the Rockbots, and Why Does the Sun Shine? (though I prefer the TMBG version).

Bear in mind that these are all horrible (but educational!).

Best NASA Sites

NASA.gov is a huge website with tons of great information and pictures. For example, check out the Astronomy Picture of the Day. In addition to great telescopic photos, the Picture of the Day includes detailed explanations full of useful links. Check out this close-up picture of the sun. This is a great daily feature and I wish they had an RSS feed. For more space and space-voyaging pictures, visit GRIN (Great Images from NASA), which archives tons of contemporary and historic photos. Some of my favorite pictures are these shots of the world lit-up at night, the crab nebulla, and this high resolution photo of Mars' surface. Another great NASA page is their searchable space mission archive complete with images, audio, and video. Finally, I'm sure that most of you guys are familiar with Google Earth, but NASA also has a satellite imagery open source program called World Wind. Although it's a big, heavy download, the images are fantastic and the program is a lot of fun.

Also, in recent news, scientists believe they may have just discovered the birth of a tiny solar system. To the left, you can see a NASA artist's conception of the baby solar system.

Bookmania

It's December and getting cold outside - what better time to curl-up with a good book? Over the past couple weeks I've been finding a ton of ebook and book-managing sites. I've held off on mentioning them in order to do one big post. Well, today is the day. I've divided the sites into content (actual ebooks) and management (tracking your books, finding new ones, getting them on your iPod, etc.) So with no further delay, here is the list:

Content
ManyBooks has the best combination of selection, design, and features. Best of all, they provide different download options so it is easy to get the text onto your iPod or the pdf onto your PDA. (For more info on reading ebook text on your iPod, check out this site).

The famous Project Gutenberg has over 17000 free ebooks. Be sure to check out their Top 100.

Open Library is probably the most beautiful ebook site. Check out the high quality resolutions of all these old prints. If you are interested in lithographics, also check out all of the images over at Bibliodyssey.

Bartleby's is a good collection of great literature and non-fiction.

The UPenn on-line library is another well-known archive, especially for their collection of banned books.

Planet Zikri has a ton of networking and programming ebooks. If this is a topic that interests you, be sure to check out the programmingebooks.tk site that i mentioned the other day and this russian site, which is rapidly increasing in size. Also check out the O'Reilly archives that I previously listed and O'Reilly's own open book project.

Bibliomania and Planet PDF's are also decent sites, although much of their content is duplicative to that of other sites mentioned above.

I've also come across a few good pages with links to other ebook sites. Be advised that some of their links might be dead:

An edaboard post has a very long list of sites with content ranging from the Dead Sea Scrolls to Winnie the Pooh. The start of the list is very programming heavy, but scroll down and you'll find some good literary links. Note that not all of the sites listed here are free (such as the excellent but pricey Octavo collection of rare books).

e-book.com.au also has a very long list of recommended sites, including a good list of non-English sites.

SnakeOil Labs list their favorite 10 ebook sites. Some of them are already mentioned above, but this is a nice summary.

Textbook Revolution, of course, also has a great list of sites with free ebooks. While you're at it, it's always a good idea to see what's new at Textbook Revolution (or subscribe to the feed for regular updates).


Management
Get Cheap Books runs a meta book-search over multiple sites. Think of it as a Kayak or Orbitz for book-sellers.

Literature Map is a fun site where you can enter a book or author you like in order to find recommendations. The search results appear as a screen (pictured) with books and authors floating in proximity to your query based on the degree of similarity.

What should i read next is another book-suggestion site with an ever-growing recommendation database.

Library Thing has been heralded as the del.icio.us for books and has many fervent supporters. I'm not so interested in cataloging my books, but it is a nice way to explore other readers' libraries.

Alibiris helps you locate out-of-print books that are hard to find. I have used it on several occasions and it works very well (especially if you have patience and can give the search a few weeks).

If you need to make a proper bibliographic citation, go to Easybib . They have a paid, pro-version, but the free composer works well-enough for me.

And finally, Levenger has "tools for serious readers" including leather book-covers, elegant pens, and other reading related tools. A good source for Christmas lists.

With all these free options, it's hard to know where to begin. I can't answer that question, but I can relay you a warning courtesy of Sherlock Holmes:

"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." - A Study In Scarlet

But, hey, if the facts are going to be useless and elbowing, at least they were free.

Content Updates
1. Jason at TBR points out two other sites that I should have mentioned. The first is the Internet Archive. You may or may not be able to find audio of Grateful Dead live shows, but they still have a ton of ebooks. Another good site that Jason brought to my attention is the ebook and etextbook list at the e-learning centre. Thanks, Jason!

2. Rapidshared.org lists all the 1000s of ebooks stored on the Rapidshare.de fileservers.

3. Check out Hackemate.co.ar for ebooks in various formats in Spanish.

4. Hermetic Library of Magical and Mystical ebooks.

5. University of Virginia's eText Library

Everything Mazes

Here is an awesome site devoted to mazes. Not only does it contain a tremendous amount of information on maze definitions and algorithms, but it also lets you play with some 3D mazes and design your own. Also, check out these life-size mazes.

Powerpoint Tips: Jobs vs. Gates

Presentation Zen has a great post comparing the PowerPoint styles of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. More than poking fun at poor, awkward Bill, the comparison really makes the point that PowerPoints must (1) complement the speaker, and (2) look different to audiences. People have sat through so many PowerPoint presentations that they despise the typical templates and bullets. However, audiences are also so accustomed to multimedia presentations that the "no powerpoint" approach can be even more risky (TWIT had an interesting discussion on this topic during last week's show). Presentation Zen emphasizes that the speaker should use PowerPoint to enhance a natural, relaxed presentation. The PowerPoint should never be a crutch to lean on.

Presentation Zen has tons of pointers and plenty of helpful links. If you regularly have to do PowerPoints or think you may need to in the future, consider subscribing to their feed.

Also, check out these excellent presentation posts from Particle Tree and Michael Hyatt.

UbuWeb: A Fantastic Avant-Garde Collection

If you are looking for avant-garde historical and contemporary artistic pieces, check out UbuWeb. Their vast content includes pdfs, mp3s, and video files from authors such as Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, Jean Genet, Phillip Glass, Luis Buñuel, Charles Bukowski, Salvador Dalí, etc.

"UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. All materials on UbuWeb are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights belong to the author(s). UbuWeb is completely free."

Find out more here.

Learn Out Loud

Learn Out Loud is one of the first sites I discovered with a catalog of free educational audio and video materials. Their library and their directory of podcasts have recently gotten much broader - certainly worth checking out. For those of you even marginally interested in issues of copyright problems and protections in digital media, this is also a good place for you to pick up a copy of Free Culture from Lawrence Lessig (pictured).

Free Knitting Videos

I don't knit, and I don't plan to start any time soon. However, if I had a knitting inclination, Knitting Help's 150 free tutorial videos would certainly help me learn. Just don't make any of these.

Textbook Revolution

Textbook Revolution is a fantastic web resource for free textbooks. There is so much in here - even more than first meets the eye. For example, check out these 169 e-books on programming or this library on business management techniques. Teachers definitely might want to consider browsing this archive when choosing books for their classes. While we're on this topic, also check out this excellent physics book, available in dozens of different languages.

Green Solutions

This Friday, we focus on a number of interesting environmental sites. I tried to select groups that indentify and laud progressive environmental actions already occurring rather than the gloom-and-doom guilt-trip sites:

(1) WorldChanging.com
World Changing.com has been around for a while, and they describe their mission succinctly:

"WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it's here. We only need to put the pieces together."

Their blog is full of many interesting devices from Street light/solar power generators/wifi networking to waterless washing machines.

(2) The Watt
The Watt is an interesting forum on alternative energy. Their site also hosts an interesting weekly podcast.

(3) Grist
Grist.org is one of the most popular environmental focused sites - sort of the Slate for environmental issues.

(4) Leicester city thermal imaging
Here is an interest site found my We Make Money Not Art. Leicester city council is using thermal imaging to target homeowners releasing excess heat and offer them free cavity and roof installation.

(5) PVC Greenhouse
An interesting blogspot site that shows you how to make a greenhouse using - you guessed it - PVC piping.

(6) Forests Forever
Last, but not least, here is a site full of great photos of forests around the world. The bad translations and apparent Fuji sponsorship leads me to believe that this came out of Japan. Definitely worth exploring, but only if you have a fast internet connection.

The Talent Myth

Here is an interesting article from the New Yorker back in July 2002. It discusses the "Talent Myth" propagated by McKinsey & Company and suggests that companies might error in recruiting smart, talented, and reckless employees rather than making a well functioning organizational structure. Gladwell considers this error to have contributed to the downfall of Enron. The brief article is full of many observations on varying corporate cultures, psychological studies, and historical events. One particularly interesting analogy compares the British success to American troubles defending against German U-Boats in World War II:

"Throughout most of 1942, the Navy kept trying to act smart by relying on technical know-how, and stubbornly refused to take operational lessons from the British. The Navy also lacked the organizational structure necessary to apply the technical knowledge it did have to the field. Only when the Navy set up the Tenth Fleet--a single unit to coördinate all anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic--did the situation change. In the year and a half before the Tenth Fleet was formed, in May of 1943, the Navy sank thirty-six U-boats. In the six months afterward, it sank seventy-five. "The creation of the Tenth Fleet did not bring more talented individuals into the field of ASW"--anti-submarine warfare--"than had previous organizations," Cohen writes. "What Tenth Fleet did allow, by virtue of its organization and mandate, was for these individuals to become far more effective than previously." The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around."

By the way, the link has the New Yorker print version available as a free pdf download. I found the article more readable in that format.