Technology opens classroom doors for free

Something special has come online from Stanford University, the college closest to Apple's world HQ. The two institutions have teamed up to offer 500 lectures and speeches for free though Apple's iTunes software. Stanford seems to get a lift by showing the world what its educational clout is based upon. Apple, of course, gets another 500 reasons to encourage people to download and use the software which drives millions of dollars a day into its music coffers.

The content is diverse. The front page of the Stanford iTunes site — think of it as an album cover for the university — includes two icons' speeches, from the Dalai Lama and Steve Jobs. Jobs had a commencement address videotaped last summer at Stanford, a remarkable 15 minutes of admissions and inspiration that revolves around Jobs being adopted, cashiered out of Apple in the '80s, and getting a usually-terminal cancer prognosis.

As for the Dalai Lama, well, there's more than five hours of him talking about meditation, non-violence, craving, suffering and choice. Topics that an exile from his native country has been eloquent about for several decades by now. There's also "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" a speech by faculty member Robert Sapolsky about infectious diseases and how Western disease has become a slow death for many of us. Stress kills.

It's all free. Follow the Stanford link at itunes.stanford.edu to get your seat in the lecture hall. Even while Apple has been reselling PBS "Austin City Limits" content in the iTunes store — taking a public broadcasting resource and making "viewers like you" pay twice for it — the company is also reaching out to make some private university resources available to the public.

A less-well-known resource for online lectures has been emerging from New Mexico, well in advance of the Stanford-iTunes collaboration. At the software company AICS Research, a series of public lectures is available for viewing and listening. Wirt Atmar, the founder of the company and a scientist, professor and software developer, has created QCShow, a free player and for-sale authoring suite that captures slides along with synchronized audio to distribute lectures and talks. For the moment, QCShow only operates with Windows. Atmar gave me a demonstration of the technology several years ago at an HP computer conference. Since then he's gotten a National Science Foundation grant to continue QC Show development and content creation.