Listening & Watching

Tue - April 10, 2007

Learn English through Podcasts: Open Culture is Awesome

http://www.oculture.com/weblog/2007/04/learning_englis.html
...
The most obvious podcast to start with is the aptly titled English as a Second Language Podcast (iTunes - Feed - Web Site). Put together by two former professors, this very rich and deep collection teaches students proper pronunciation, idioms and slang, and it generally gets high marks. These guys seem to have a good corner on the market, and they're worth your time.
...

Posted at 03:03 PM Read More

Fri - December 15, 2006

How to Videos of just about everything

Videojug,com

This site is a treasure of videos explaining how to do things. Categories include Christmas, Food, Drinks, Health, Beauty, DIY, House & Garden, Pets, Leisure, History. Phew! The top ten videos when I visited included "Hot to be the Perfect Boyfriend/Girlfriend" and "How to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds."
The resolution is YouTube-size, so don't expect full screen action but the sound quality of the ones I viewed were quite good.

Also, all videos are non-downoadable so you can't take them away from the internet and share with your class or colleagues offline. Unless of course you do a little bit of dumpster diving in Safari's activity window and copy/paste the bugger (.flv) to downloads.

Posted at 07:59 PM Read More

Tue - December 5, 2006

Open Culture's podcast directories

Outside of iTunes, Open Culture has the best lists of neatly categorized podcasts. Check it out at http://www.oculture.com/.
They include: University Podcast Collection / News Podcast Collection / Foreign Language Lesson Podcasts
Cultural Podcast Collection / Audio Book Podcasts / All-in-One Podcast Collection
(Hmm let's see, where do they keep the "Podcasts with Text Transcripts?")

Posted at 09:21 PM Read More

Sat - November 18, 2006

BMW Audio Books - Free short stories

http://www.bmw-audiobooks.com/
Put on your seatbelt and prepare for highs, lows and plenty of twists and turns. BMW, in conjunction with Random House, brings you BMW Audio Books, a unique series of specially- commissioned short stories showcasing the work of some of the finest contemporary writing talent. Each gripping audio book is yours to download for free. Listen to them on your MP3 player, your laptop or ideally, in the car. So sit back, hit play and enjoy the ride.

Currently stories offered include Don Winslow's Beautiful Ride, James Flint's Master Of The Storm, Simon Kernick's The Debt and Cold Cold Heart by Karin Slaughter.

Posted at 03:22 PM Read More

Mon - October 30, 2006

Miyu Subtitler - Advanced subtitling for MacOS X

http://www.fluffalopefactory.com/miyu/
MIYU: Your all-in-one solution for video subtitling and translation management on Mac OS X. Miyu provides you the tools for scripting, timing, typesetting, and export - in one compact software package. Whether your project is foreign language epics or just home movies, Miyu can get you there with a fully featured, intuitive user interface.

Features: Playback with real-time preview Full screen playback WYSIWYG Typesetting Exclusive SnapTiming for rapid subtitle timing. Video scrubbing with audio Anti-aliased or aliased text rendering Flexible subtitle positioning Subtitle Stylesheets Character Assignment

Posted at 11:21 PM Read More

Get a free college education online?

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/education/technophilia-get-a-free-college-education-online-201979.php

http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/Online_Education_Free_201_2006.php

Here's a couple more articles on online educational offerings. My brain hurts.

Posted at 11:23 AM Read More

Sat - October 28, 2006

English4Fun

http://www.asram.org/texts/softEn.html

English4Fun is designed to improve one’s listening- and comprehension-level. Check-Spelling: besides the default English Dictionary, custom Dictionaries may be created/added by the user. Included is a tutorial to learn how to write your own play and listen to it. American-English and Spanish-Mexican pronunciation supported.

Posted at 10:14 AM Read More

Sat - September 9, 2006

EZTakes: Legally Download and burn Films to DVD, now for Mac but U$ Money need only apply

http://www.eztakes.com/

I can't wait until content producers / distributors get their collective licensing acts together so they can make more money in the untapped overseas market. (sheesh, sounds like a no-brainer to me. )

Posted at 10:42 AM Read More

Sat - August 19, 2006

Language Games CDROM

http://www.macmillanenglishcampus.com/games/
Online demo availabler at the link above

Challenging to play, highly motivating and lots of fun!

Language learning with a difference!Language Games features over 150 games
selected from the award-winning
Macmillan English Campus.*Developed by Macmillan’s leading ELT authors*Ideal for all language learners from teenage to adult*More than 54 hours of game-play in total*Great value for only £19.95*A network edition is also available for schools and universities (1-25 users)

Posted at 09:16 PM Read More

Thu - December 15, 2005

STORYNORY - FREE IPOD-READY [MP3] CHILDREN'S STORIES FOR YOUR IPOD.

http://storynory.com/

You can listen to all their classic and original children's stories for free. Scroll down the home page for stories. Click the little blue icons to listen now, or follow the links to download.

Stories include A Christmas Carol, Hansel and Gretel, The Three Little Pigs, The Snow Queen Part Two, No Room at the Inn, Little Red Riding Hood, The Frog.

Posted at 09:00 PM Read More

Fri - October 7, 2005

PBS TAKEAWAY TV: NERDS ONLY NEED APPLY

I, Cringely . NerdTV | PBS
NerdTV is a new weekly online TV show from PBS.org technology columnist Robert X. Cringely. NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. Guests like Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy or Apple computer inventor Steve Wozniak are household names if your household is nerdy enough, but as historical figures and geniuses in their own right, they have plenty to say to ALL of us. NerdTV is distributed under a Creative Commons license so viewers can legally share the shows with their friends and even edit their own versions. If not THE future of television, NerdTV represents A future of television for niche audiences that have deep interest in certain topics.
NerdTV is MPEG-4 video. You can download the shows and play them with any MPEG-4 player you like, most likely QuickTime. Still in development but coming soon is a Mediaframe Open Source Java applet player, which will play NerdTV video right in your browser without any plug-ins.
There are two versions of the complete show -- one with subtitles and one without -- and three audio-only versions for those who prefer to compute by radio. Yes, NerdTV is a Podcast, too. Ogg Vorbis plays in WinAmp or Sonique with a special plugin. AAC plays on an iPod or in iTunes. MP3s play in most media players.
And for those who remember books, we have included a written transcript of each show. Enjoy.

Posted at 09:05 PM Read More

Mon - March 7, 2005

55 hours of audio documenting British spoken English

I found this on while listening to the National Public Radio's Weekend Edition. (You can hear the excerpt here.)

The British Library has released their archives as part of their COLLECT BRITAIN website.

The good news is that you can sample the many accents and dialects of (British) English accents and see how they've evolved in different areas in the last fifty years. Each entry's page also lists extensive explanation on what's being heard etc.

The bad news of course is they've chosen a non-downloadable version of Windows Media Player media to serve the audio.

And why is this bad? Well speaking for me, I am still VERY hesitant to rely on 'live internet' connections for classwork. To say nothing of the fact that much of my work occurs in businesses and such where no internet connection is available, Murphy's Law will dictate that even the fattest pipe will clog to a trickle when attempting to use it in class for major presentations. If I can download it, then I can work with it and use it offline. I guess Collect Britain is for reference use only and is not into lending.

Pity that.

Posted at 08:44 PM Read More

Mon - February 28, 2005

White House Recordings on the Web

5,000 hours of presidential recordings available online.
http://www.whitehousetapes.org/ .
Information grouped by president and by topic (transcripts, recordings, etc.)

Posted at 05:18 PM Read More

Thu - February 24, 2005

Vimeo: Video clip organizing and sharing

http://www.vimeo.com/
Automatic Movies
This is a site for organizing and sharing your video clips. Vimeo also makes it easy to watch your friends' video clips, or to view clips that have common subject matter.

Aside from watching single clips, Vimeo can assemble multiple clips into automatic movies. For example, you could watch an automatic movie about concerts, or an automatic movie about funny things.

We are presently in closed beta, so you can't add your own clips, but we will open the site up as soon as we've worked out some more of the kinks. Have fun!

Posted at 11:43 PM Read More