Another thing I’ve been getting into are “books on tape” (or books on mp3?) and podcasts. Everyday one thing is certain: I’m going to be driving to work. Usually during this time I’ll use it to listen to both old and new bands. Instead, what if I could use this time to do something a bit more productive? I started with the audiobook version of “Survivor” by Chuck Palahniuk and then David Allen’s seminar “Getting Things Done” (which I’m sure I’ll dedicate a few posts to).

Podcasts of lectures from UC Berkeley have now caught my attention. If you go into the iTunes store and type in “Berkeley” you will find full lectures of actual classes from UC Berkeley. To be more specific, you’re getting every single lecture of classes that decide to do webcasts. You can find lectures from subjects such as Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Economics, History, Physics, Political Science, and Psychology. So now when I’m driving to work I’m listening to the class “CS 61C – Machine Structures” and when I’m at the gym, I’m listening to “CS 162 – Operating Systems and Systems Programming” on my iPod. These podcasts are already mp3s, so they’re ready to be burned onto CD if you have an mp3-cd player in your car. MIT has a similar program called “Open CourseWare,” but I like the convenience of a podcast.

Today I also stumbled upon “TED Talks.” TED is an invite-only conference held in Monterey, CA and feature lectures on a broad range of topics. The one that piqued my interest was a talk by Ken Robinson in which he discusses overhauling our education system. This topic has been of interest to me, so I investigated further. I found out that TED Talks were a podcast featuring nearly 100 (if not more) lectures from people such as Chirs Anderson, Sergey Brin and Larry Paige, Al Gore, and Jimmy Wales. After I load them onto my AppleTV maybe we can make a day of it, similar to Jeff’s Inspirathon.

Update: Just found this story regarding apple announcing iTunes U. iTunes U is an area of the iTunes store featuring lectures from unversities such as Stanford and of course Berkeley.