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Elena Filatova's Chernobyl

It's two years since I last visited Elena Filatova (aka KiddOfSpeed)'s Chernobyl website. For anybody who doesn't know who she is - Filatova gained notoriety for her high-speed motorcycle trips into the Chernobyl deadzone, and the ghostly photographs she'd then post to her website. I didn't realise that, since, she'd gained further notoriety after some people doubted the veracity of her motorbike story. Now's certainly a good time to return to the site... in the last few weeks it's gained some fascinating, moving and very troubling films, including "Ghost Town", which features normal life in Pripyat, the day after the explosion, and just hours before the evacuation. Go here for recent updates.

UC Berkeley on iTunes

Last week I got very excited about Bowdoin's podcast experiment. And now here's a giant list of lecture courses courtesy of Berkeley, made available (for free) on iTunes. Everything's here - from sport to "Existentialism in Literature and Film" (Prof. Hubert Dreyfus). It's fascinating not just for the subject matter and the access to expert teaching, but for insight into the lecture process - these aren't broadcasts, they're actual lectures, and the students are a presence too. This is exactly the kind of cultural embrace of technology that makes me such an evangelist for new media. Here's the Berkeley page.

[via TUAW]

Getting Things Done

For a number of years, I've been interested in California's personal growth movement of the 1960s and '70s. And it was from that perspective that I became curious about the Getting Things Done meme that began replicating online in 2005 and continues to organise business leaders and the internet generation. I thought I'd put it to the test, see if it can do anything for me... and guess what? Anyway, for the Financial Times, I spoke to GTD's author David Allen, to GTD blogger and extreme multi-tasker Marc Orchant, and to lifehacker-provocateur and GTD blogger Merlin Mann. Click here to download the piece.

Geek chic

It's a Hard Drive Coffee Table. Here's what they say:

The Hard Drive Coffee Table is built from an original 26" diameter hard drive platter from an early storage device, the Control Data Corporation 6603 Disk File Controller manufactured by Bryant-Excello circa 1967.

But you knew that already didn't you?

[via TechEBlog]

Bowdoin podcasts

Maine's oldest college - Bowdoin - is embracing the 21st Century and making free podcasts available of interviews, events and lectures. There's plenty of good stuff, including novelists (Matthew Pearl, Doris Kearns Goodwin, others) talking about their books in the Common Hour series, and original concert performances. Go here for more details.

Why don't Brits IM?

Here are some interesting results from a survey by cable ISP Telewest into how UK professionals use email, IM and SMS. In the case of IM - the answer is infrequently. Interestingly, this isn't because of an absence of need, rather an absence of trust. In fact, UK professionals are effectively using email for instant messaging. Seventy-seven per cent considered it rude to not respond to an email within 24 hours, 44% wouldn't think it acceptable to wait longer than a morning. And yet less than half have IM clients on their desktops, and fewer seem clear about how best to use them.

I'm a latecomer to IM myself (I now keep iChat and SKYPE open on my desktop), and I sympathise with that uncertainty about IM etiquette. It doesn't get any easier. Like, how long are you meant to wait after seeing a "buddy" you need to contact appear as online on your client list before it's okay to message them? You don't want to jump on them right away. It makes you look like a stalker. And yet I've waited too long before, only to see them vanish again. What are the rules?

BBC Radio music diary

To coincide with Daniel Barenboim's Reith Lectures, BBC Radio 4's Front Row arts show is asking listeners to keep a 24 hour music diary, listing every fleeting contact they have with music... whether it's in a restaurant, leaking from a somebody else's iPod or telephone waiting system muzak. Barenboim's concerned that we don't get to listen to the music we choose - but we are forced to listen to the music we don't choose - and it might be spoiling the entire experience for us. Here's the Music Diary page, with the download forms. The deadline's April 26.

The music machine

For BBC Radio 3's Jazz on 3, I chatted with American composer/web entrepreneur Tim Westergren, whose Music Genome Project and Pandora recommendation engine are two of the most interesting meetings of music and technology you'll find. The Pandora feature's about 20 minutes; the whole show's 90 minutes (with loads of great music by British pianist John Taylor), and you can still hear it for another three days by pressing this.