BOSTON, June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Bringing a new capability to the online
video boom epitomized by YouTube and others, http://www.scitalks.com is a
focused, searchable repository of video recordings of science lectures from
all over the world. The site launches today with over 1,000 lectures
online, and more are being added daily. Segments range from a series of
hour-long lectures by the late Richard Feynman, to a short, hilarious Ali G
interview with Noam Chomsky, and a fascinating talk on designing a
semiconductor-based brain, by up-and-coming Stanford researcher Kwabena
Boahen.
Access to SciTalks.com is completely free; additionally, users can set
up a free username and password to create their own collection of favorite
videos, which can be shared with students, friends and colleagues.
"Science and scientists are going to be more fun and accessible because
of SciTalks. Students will be able to hear the voices and passion of the
actual discoverers of the subject they're studying in class. Teachers can
assign selections to their students...no matter how limited your school's
resources, if you have access to the Internet, you can now get a great
science education. It's like crack for science geeks," says founder Lee
Vodra.
Users can also submit links to additional lectures to be listed on the
site, search for upcoming science conferences, and even upload their own
video content -- the site has subcategories for academic, business and
personal science lectures. Linked sites for lectures in the humanities,
government and business (http://www.humtalks.com, http://www.govtalks.com,
and http://www.busitalks.com) are planned for launch in the next 3 months.
Unlike most existing sites, SciTalks.com does not attempt to copy
available content but simply provides url links to online sources, so that
copyright holders such as universities and the lecturers themselves are
able to maintain control over how the videos are used. At that level, the
site is a targeted search engine with a user-friendly display that includes
descriptive video captions and screenshots. In addition, the site is
offering file upload and management tools based on SeeFile Software's
SeeFile3 technology, so that scientists who want to put their lectures
online will now have a purpose-built hosted forum to do so. The linked and
hosted videos can be searched together in a consistent way, with pull-down
categories for fields such as physics, biology and space science.
The site's founders, Sam Bogoch, Lee Vodra and Patrice Gouttebel,
developed the site after Mr. Bogoch realized that his wife Ann Senghas, a
psychology professor at Barnard College, couldn't find an appropriate place
to upload and post lectures on emerging sign languages. "Putting them on
something like YouTube alongside a lot of random content seemed silly --
and since many large universities and private foundations have already
started unique repositories online, the best way to go was a site that
referenced all of them," said Bogoch.
Contact:
Lee Vodra, SciTalks
lee (at) scitalks.com
617-262-2421
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