John Boswell’s Symphony of Science project takes excerpts from famous science videos and converts them into song via Autotune.
The Unbroken Thread features Carl Sagan, David Attenborough, and Jane Goodall:
A Glorious Dawn features Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Stephen Hawking’s Universe:
I thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining reminder of some of the memorable parts of Sagan’s great work, which influenced my junior high self when it aired back in 1980. And the next year I watched all of Attenborough’s Life on Earth series in my high school sophomore Biology class. That reminds me…I really need a bigger HDTV to fully appreciate Attenborough’s spectacular Planet Earth series…
Nerd alert! It is painful to watch some folks interact with their computers so inefficiently. I like this short video from Tom Merritt of CNET on the 15 best keyboard shortcuts. I use all of these on a daily basis and highly recommend them, although I know they’re old hat to power users.
Instapaper is the best way I’ve found to save links to web articles and quickly pull them up for later leisure reading on my Kindle, iPhone, netbook, or desktop computer; here’s an explanatory video. I keep its “Read Later” bookmarklet on my computers and iPhone to quickly save articles for later reading.
The Instapaper iPhone app is splendid, and you can also send a digest of articles to your Kindle (Amazon charges a small fee for the conversion). But I prefer to access my RSS feed of Instapaper articles on my Kindle and pull each one up that way (establish an account and copy the RSS link from your main page into a Kindle Basic Web bookmark).
Readability is a great bookmarklet for ridding a website of the clutter; here’s an explanatory video. It reformats a site into a single column of text and pictures in the font and format you select when you create the bookmarklet. I especially like using this tool on my netbook, which has limited screen space.
Of course you need some content on which to use those tools. Here are my most reliable sources of articles:
Give Me Something to Read – From the maker of Instapaper, this provides several links each week to interesting long-form articles on the web
longreads on Twitter – just follow or access this Twitter account for links to mostly long-form web articles
Salon – good book and movie articles of medium length, plus much more on this liberal-slanted site
The Atlantic – online version of a venerable American magazine with occasional long articles in its magazine section
The New Yorker – online version of another notable magazine, featuring some of the most lengthy articles, including the fascinating but fallible Malcolm Gladwell
Vanity Fair – more gossipy than the others, but far better than People and its ilk
The New Republic – some long articles, with a liberal social, social democratic economic, and hawkish foreign policy slant
Wired – very nerdy mixture of both short and long articles
Wow! I just saw one of the most delightful animated films ever, Sita Sings the Blues, which is the handiwork of artist Nina Paley. She uses creative two-dimensional animations, in a variety of styles, to tell the story of the Indian epic the Ramayana with the help of 1920s torch songs by Annette Hanshaw. Yes, it is in English, so don’t worry about a language barrier.
I know, the description makes this film sound weird and artsy. I heard about it a few months back, when distribution was blocked due to our ridiculous copyright law. And even after I found out it had been finally released for free viewing, I still took a few days to work up the nerve to sit down and try it out. But, oh my goodness, I loved every minute of it.
I’ve put the YouTube link below so you can sample it, but you really need to go to sitasingstheblues.com and burn yourself a DVD so you can see it in comfort and with superb picture and sound quality.
[3/31/2010 UPDATE: Good news! You can now rent Sita Sings the Blues from Netflix!]
Anticipation is building for what will likely be the announcement on January 26 of Apple’s new iSlate tablet, which may be available in the second quarter of 2010. Described as a “Kindle Killer”, the iSlate may be the device to help magazines and books negotiate the digital switchover. The Kindle has very limited formatting capability, so it is great for reading a regular book yet far less appealing for the magazine-length and interactive-web articles which dominate modern reading.
Apple has a history of creating compelling mainstream products out of niche devices – the MP3 player took off with the iPod and iTunes while the iPhone and its later App Store revolutionized smartphones. Speculation runs wild about the type of interface they will debut with the iSlate.
Is this a preview of how magazines and newspapers might migrate paid value-added content to the iSlate and similar devices? I love my iPhone and my Kindle, but the iPhone’s tiny screen is difficult for me, especially with my worsening presbyopia. And while I like how the Kindle’s E Ink screen causes less eyestrain, I do miss having a color touchscreen with video capability. I’ve caught myself swiping my fingers across the screens of the Kindle and my netbook, to no avail. And increasingly I find myself debating whether to rely on the iPhone or the Kindle for reading articles while out and about.
So I’ll definitely be watching and analyzing Steve Jobs’ presentation next month with avid interest, and saving my dimes for the next must-have technology gadget. I was amazed by the iPod when I bought my first one back in 2004. Having all of my music at my fingertips was liberating, although I would later switch to lower-capacity but solid-state iPod Nanos for music, podcasts, and audiobooks. The Apple TV brought all of that, plus rented movies and television shows, into the living room and also continues to improve.
The iPhone was another revolution, making the internet portable and greatly improving my travel experience. And the iSlate certainly won’t replace the iPhone for car travel, while my iPhone will replace my dedicated GPS unit. I first used a Garmin Quest and later the V7 NAV740 GPS units, and they were wonders. But the other day I bought TomTom’s iPhone GPS navigation application while it was on sale for $50. Its maps aren’t as good as those on my dedicated V7 unit, but the iPhone app’s lane guidance feature is a boon and its interface is far easier to navigate. Since I already have my iPhone sitting in an air vent mount when I’m driving, I’m reluctant to also muck about with the suction-cup holder and cord for the V7 unit.
Meador Manor 
