SciTalks.com Offers Lecture Video Search Site
In the same vein as YouTube, SciTalks.com (Boston, MA) has launched a searchable online collection of science lecture video files from across the world. Currently 1,000 lectures are online, with new videos being added daily.
Access to the site is free; users need only establish a username and password. From there they can upload their own video, submit links to new lectures for listing on the site, search for upcoming conference, create a collection of favorite videos, and share that collection with others.
The videos range from an hour-long lecture from the late Richard Feynman to a discussion on designing a semiconductor-based brain from Stanford researcher Kwabena Boahen. SciTalks.com provides subcategories for academic, business and personal science lectures.
SciTalks.com does not copy preexisting video content but instead acts as a sort of targeted search engine that provides url links to existing online sources to let copyright holders such as universities and the lecturers maintain control over their content. Listings include descriptive video captions and screenshots, but not the linked videos.
Still, SciTalks.com will host videos as well. Scientists and lecturers can upload videos on the system, which uses SeeFile Software's (Boston, MA) SeeFile3 technology for that capability.
Linked and hosted videos are searched together in a consistent way, and can be listed under categories such as physics, biology and space science.
Linked sites for lectures in the humanities, government and business (www.humtalks.com, www.govtalks.com, and www.busitalks.com) are planned for launch in the next 3 months.
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David Kopf is a freelance technology writer and marketing consultant, and can be reached at [email protected].