October 21, 2005

• cool, but what if I don't want iTunes, just the free .mp3 lectures?? *suspects chicanery*
• Holy crap! As a multimedia specialist for a small university's I.T. department, let me be the say that this is going to be SIGNIFICANT. I now see where Apple is going with all of this (iTunes on Campus, iTunes Affiliate Program, incorporating podcasting into iTunes, VIDEO podcasts, building cameras into iMacs/Powerbooks, etc.) It becomes pretty easy to connect the DOTS. I'm also starting to realize why the guy who started Blogger is now working on Podcasting for the masses (Odeo ) "Dis is gonna be big" and I thank you for the link!
• any teacher with any ethics wouldn't participate in this. It's one step away from handing out lecture notes with a huge Pepsi logo stamped on them.
• Nah, I think it's more like handing out lecture notes that were all printed at the same copy-shop. C'mon, it's free!
• More about Stanford's relationship to Apple.
• For those who aren't seeing it yet — hello, Jimmy — the phrase I think you want to ponder here is "iTunes as distance-learning platform." The buzz around distance learning died an ugly death in the late 1990s because it was simply too expensive to deploy the massive hardware and software infrastructure required for even a modest distance-learning application. Now the potential exists to deliver educational materials like audio and video recordings for free via a mature and pervasive (if not quite ubiquitous yet) platform that just happens to be paid for entirely by the sale of music and videos. So don't be too quick to poo-poo the entire idea with absurdities like "Any teacher with any ethics wouldn't participate in this." Because the simple fact is, yeah, they would. And a good thing, too.
• yeahbut . . . they could do the same with just .mp3's
• Much as I would like to think of this in the vein of "iTunes as a distance-learning platform", all I can see is yet one more reason for students who are *not* participating in a distance program to skip class. Maybe I'm behind the times, but I teach my courses with interactive discussion as a core to understanding the material. I'm sick of the students wanting to be able to download everything-- from the digital images (which I give them), to the digital readings (which which I give them, but which they don't read anyway), to my personal lecture notes (which I don't give out-- ever) so they don't have to disrupt their day by actually coming to class and participating in the education process. Whatever happened to going to class and taking notes with pen and paper? /crotchety old bag
• yeahbut . . . they could do the same with just .mp3's There is an important difference. You can subscribe to a podcast and your client can automatically download podcasts to which you have subscribed. The new iTunes is ideal for this. It's like saying "why do we need RSS (or blogs), can't we just update a web page?" Podcasting is entering the "lower the bar" phase right now. It's moving off the iPod-dependency and onto the desktop/laptop/pda. Soon it'll be available on your phone. It's also becoming easier and easier to produce them.
• hello. Um, it's product placement. Forcing people to download a certain software to get the class notes? A software designed to make money for a certain company? A software designed to sell that company's hardware, as it that piece of hardware wasn't ubiquitous and overrated enough yet? I remmeber "podcasting" c. 1982. We called it "taping stuff off the radio." But hey, buzzwords are fun!
• And ps I cant wait for "microsoft.harvard.edu" or some such place to start offering free downloads, all you have to is install some of their software, and see what the reaction is...
• It's like saying "why do we need RSS (or blogs), can't we just update a web page?" It's even worse. It's like saying "Why do we need the Web, can't we just put text files on an FTP site?" That analogy is more apt, I think, and gets around the messy and inconvenient fact that Jimmy apparently doesn't know what podcasting is and how it differs from time-shifted broadcasting.
• of course not. we can dismiss it as simply being a "buzzword". fortunately, a technology is capable of moving forward despite the many who don't understand all of its implications at first glance
• Such anger. I do think it's an issue that Apple's protected AAC files won't play on portable devices other than their own -- but Apple's still leading here, until someone else can offer a more elegant solution to aggregate this sort of material.
• Can someone confirm that this uses apple-format files only? Don't want to install itunes if it does.
• "Why do we need the Web, can't we just put text files on an FTP site?" That's a good analogy. As long as you remember that half the people out there are only using FTP. A significant fraction (non-windows/mac folks) can't get it at all, and the rest have to download proprietary software which is primarily a storefront for a private company. If that's what the web was like, we'd still be using gopher. Look, if they want to use itunes, good for them. But why not offer an option for those of us who aren't interested in dropping a few hundred on a new mp3 player right now?
• There's this application that offers a non-iTunes way to access their Music Store - haven't tried it myself so don't know if it would work with this.
• A significant fraction (non-windows/mac folks) can't get it at all I think it's pretty safe to say that the number of people who are using a computer who aren't using either Mac OS X or Windows is not, in fact, significant. Not by any reasonable definition of the phrase, I mean. the rest have to download proprietary software I don't even know what "proprietary" means in this context. If we're going with the literal definition, it means that iTunes is in some way related to property. Which … um … everything is. So what the hey. Bear in mind that this "proprietary software" is entirely free and available for virtually anybody with a computer to download and use with no strings attached at all. And oh by the way, this "proprietary software" is something you already have if you've got an iPod, which is clearly the target audience for this venture. Not to mention that this software does lots of terribly useful things unrelated to the music store in question here. Again: for free. So what's the bitch, exactly? One would think that the consensus response here would be "Mmm, free." why not offer an option for those of us who aren't interested in dropping a few hundred on a new mp3 player right now? This is that option. Just download iTunes. It's free. The answer to the question you really wanted to ask — why doesn't Stanford just write their own Web application to do this — should be self-evident, but in case it's not: cost. Setting up and maintaining your own Web application is a heck of a lot harder than just piggybacking on Apple's existing network. I will assume that the "bunch of MP3 files on an FTP server" idea was facetious, because something like that would obviously be useless.
• OED: In mod. use applied esp. to medicines or other preparations of which the manufacture or sale is, by patent or otherwise, restricted to a particular person or persons. proprietary name or term, a word or phrase over which a person or company has some legal rights, esp. in connection with trade (as a trade mark). But you knew that, sir. Or else you were just flamebaiting. Send in the angry 'nix users in 3... 2...
• [iTunes] is primarily a storefront for a private company. I don't get this. Before the music store, no one would have said this about iTunes. The only difference between then and now is a small link in the main menu that you can choose to click on or not. Forget about the Internet for a moment. Suppose Stanford wanted to offer free lectures the old fashioned way in brick 'n mortar locations. Would it be offensive if they did this in stores that happened to sell stuff?
• I understand that iPod owners are the target audience, and I understand that the motive is money. I'm just disappointed that Stanford would agree to make it ipod-exclusive. I don't like advertising in schools, and I especially don't like it when advertisers are allowed to influence how the curriculum is presented. I don't get the "obviously useless" comment, either. I mean, these are lectures, right? You'd have some html with descriptions and links, and maybe an RSS feed to inform people of updates. Proprietary-- in contrast to the web, which is an open protocol, itunes is proprietary. And there are some 32 pages of strings attached (and another six pages on startup). I did install it, though, as you can tell. And there are some neat lectures. Looks like Winamp's diskwriter plugin will happily convert the files, so I can take them with me on the commute after all.
• Smo: no, in a brick'n'mortar world, that would make sense. I'd prefer it if they distributed it through libraries or schools, but it might be easier for Stanford to deal with a monolithic entity like Barnes & Nobles, particularly if it paid for the duplication and shipping. But this is the internet, and http://www.stanford.edu/freelectures is more easily accessible than itmss://deimos.apple.com/etc. Maybe they're gearing up to charge for them.
• You'd have some html with descriptions and links, and maybe an RSS feed to inform people of updates. And who's going to pay for that? We've been over this before. Building custom Web applications is why distance learning died the first time. I'm just disappointed that Stanford would agree to make it ipod-exclusive. It's not. The lectures are totally standard MPEG-4 files. You can play them back on any device or with any program that can play MPEG-4 files. Your whozit can't play MPEG-4 files? Tell the manufacturer to get with the program. http://www.stanford.edu/freelectures is more easily accessible than itmss://deimos.apple.com/etc. Except http://www.stanford.edu/freelectures goes not exist, and demanding that Stanford create it first establishes an insurmountable barrier to entry that guarantees that this content will not be made available at all. We know that because we all saw it happen in the late 1990s, remember? Remember MediaBase? Huge distance learning project started at SGI, spun off into a separate company that went nowhere and hasn't been heard from in years. OVS did modestly better — at least some schools deployed it — but in the end, it still sank without a trace. Here we've got a solution to the distance-learning problem that looks like it might actually work, and some folks feel the need to crap all over it because it's "proprietary," an objection which doesn't even make sense because the required software runs on practically every computer in the world and is absolutely and totally free. And oh by the way, the content's totally free too. Doesn't that suck. Some people just aren't thinking, apparently.
• I don't believe this is a distance learning project at all. All I can see is the audio-download aspect. That's why I don't think you'd need an application, since what's currently there is several lists of links to files-- no more and no less. Here is a script which will auto-generate such lists. Perhaps they have plans to use iTunes' other capabilities to greater effect. I don't know. I wish the BBC didn't use Realplayer, and I wish Stanford didn't use iTunes, but I like their content and I will jump through the hoops in order to listen.
• Wow, have any first-hand knowledge of distance learning failures Jeff?
• Yes, Pete. I do have first-hand knowledge. I worked on MediaBase for two years in the late 1990s, and I co-founded a company in 2001 to deploy infrastructure for, among other things, distance learning applications.
• Ah. There you go, then.