Pretty interesting: Apple and Stanford teaming up to put lectures, symposeums, etc online for audio consumption.

On the one hand this is great because it open sources knowledge. Good move by Standforf. Hopefully other universities follow suit, and someone sets up an independent service to aggregate and rate the content so that people can skim the cream for distance learning. Dunno how Apple's DRM would affect these kinds of second-generation uses, but hopefully people will hack around it where needed.

More colleges and educational institutions should get on this bandwaggon. I could see some really interesting educational work being done here. By the time I have adolescent kids it could be a whole new ballgame. Pretty exciting.

On the other hand, the marketing edge is pretty consumer-elitist. "Your classes are iPod ready!" Though I suppose anyone who's going to Stanford probably has a computer and probably an iPod too.