Academic Earth

So, it's late Sunday afternoon in Japan. I'm exhausted from a day of sightseeing around the city. I'm saving the novels I brought for two-day chags (Jewish holidays). I'm saving my West Wing DVDs for airplane flights. Hulu won't work outside the US. All of my satellite TV channels are in Japanese. And, it's not time for dinner yet.

This is when I discovered Academic Earth. Richard Ludlow, a bright young Yale grad, realized that many universities were video taping their best lectures and courses and putting them online for free for the public. But, to find them, you'd have to know which universities were doing this, and even then would only get a random smattering of courses. There was no way to find all of the ones on a particular topic.

Academic Earth serves as an aggregator of all of this content. Plus, it lets you rate each one, so that overtime you'll be able to see which Game Theory or Political Philosophy lecture is the best. You can even download the syllabus and exams in some cases.

I just watched Barry Nalebuff's "Why Not?" lecture on entrepeneurship, and am starting Benjamin Polack's Game Theory course. Both are worth watching.