How to find the good stuff on iTunes U

Some of you have asked how I find the good stuff on iTunes U. After all, a lot of colleges offer mainly PR fluff, like virtual campus tours and welcoming speeches by the dean of students.
So, here are my secrets. Every few days I do some of the following.
1. Survey the main iTunes U [...]

Thousands of free books in your pocket

Over the past few months I have become quite addicted to my silvery iPod Touch, Apple’s palm-sized iPod with a 3 x 5″ video screen. My iTouch was a freebie bonus when my husband bought an iMac and the big surprise for me was how much I enjoyed reading books on its tiny screen.
While it’s [...]

A nifty download manager

Suppose you’ve landed on a website with links to lots of audio or video files. Here’s an easy way to locate the files and begin downloading a bunch all at once. This trick works with the free Firefox web browser, available at the Firefox website.
You will also need a free plugin: DownThemAll. This example [...]

Academic Earth makes debut on the web

Here’s a cool new way to get your fix of university courses and lectures–Academic Earth, a YouTube for the egghead set, is featuring videos of courses and lectures from top universities. Universities on the menu right now: UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale.

All of this material is already available on other websites [...]

You are invited to the Podcast Parlor

University lecture courses usually come packaged with seminars or discussion sections where students can ask questions and kick around ideas.
Wouldn’t it be nice for us cyber-students if we could have something similar? Well, thanks to the work of blogger Anne at Anne is a Man, we now have the Podcast Parlor. The idea is to [...]

How to download streaming audio and video/ Part 2

This is a continuation of How to download streaming audio and video/ Part 1, where we looked at using the Firefox web browser and an add-on to save streaming and audio video files to your own computer.  In this tutorial, we will look at how to use free Windows software to convert these files [...]

How to download streaming audio and video/ Part 1

It’s actually pretty easy to download streaming video and audio files from sites like YouTube and save them on your computer. And there are quite a few free software tools to help you.
In this tutorial, we’ll look at the first step, capturing the streaming audio or video file and saving it on your computer. In [...]

Tech tips for Linux users

Reader H. Gregor wrote in with some tech tips for Linux users who want to listen to podcasts and download courses from Apple’s iTunes software, which does not run under Linux.
An issue you might like to cover in your ‘Tools’ section is how to access iTunes material on a Linux computer without resorting to [...]

How to subscribe to a Stanford podcast

Here is a great tip via podcast review site Anne is a Man!
Although there is no obvious way to subscribe to a Stanford University podcast via iTunes, you can get all the advantages of subscriptions (ie automatic downloading of new episodes and automatic bookmarking) if you go to this Stanford iTunes webpage.
Just follow the instructions [...]

How to speed up professors who speak too slowly

Stanford Professor James Sheehan’s History of the International System is a fascinating overview of the history of the 20th century, with a focus on the emergence of our current international system. However, Professor Sheehan’s lecture style is to speak v e r y s l o w l y. This is probably an [...]