Geek News and Musings

Yuri’s Night “global space parties” happen from April 4-12.

( Image above: Aaron Muszalski, shot by Scott Beale, at Yuri’s night 2007.)

The annual celebration of space travel known as the “Yuri’s Night World Space Parties” happens this year on Saturday April 4, 2009.

The events, which take place in cities around the world each April, celebrate humanity’s achievements in space. The parties mark the anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s orbital spaceflight, which was the human race’s first foray into space (on April 12, 1961) and the first space Shuttle flight (on April 12, 1981). More than 150 events will take place this year on planet Earth.

I co-hosted one of the parties in Dallas, Texas, once, as the pic at left documents. Drunken cosmomauts (no, they were not drinking cosmopolitans) branded me with the head of Yuri Gagarin.

More about the Washington, DC edition of this event, from Yuri’s Night global organizer Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, the lovely and brilliant space diva who will be hosting that particular location’s festivities:

The party this year at Goddard features live music from regional music stars Middle Distance Runner. Listen to multi-layered, indie-pop sounds through exploded views of galaxies and NASA exhibits. Dance next to the rocket garden to beats infused by DJ Scientific. A series of activities are guaranteed to entertain including NASA heavy hitters guiding you though space in the Science on a Sphere theater. Galactic attire is encouraged, silver, antennae, glow in the dark, sci-fi. Participants must be at least 21 years old and bring a valid ID. Beer, wine, and refreshments will be available for purchase and water, soda and chips provided.

Food Network will also feature a 2.5 ft high Hubble Space Telescope cake made for the occasion on their TV show ‘Ace of Cakes’ about Baltimore’s own Charm City Cakes bakery and 500 lucky guests will get to sample Charm City’s finest as we celebrate Goddard Space Flight Center’s 50th Anniversary.

More info on events in all of the participating cities (I believe admission is $10 or less at each) is right here.

Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education [Lifehacker Top 10]

It’s easy to forget these days that the internet started out as a place for academics and researchers to trade data and knowledge. Recapture the web’s brain-expanding potential with these free resources for educating yourself online.

Photo by Sailor Coruscant.

10. Teach yourself programming

Coding, whether on the web or on the desktop, is one of those skills you’ll almost never regret having. Coincidentally, the web is full of people willing to teach, and show off, programming skills. Whether you’re looking to knock out a modest Firefox extension or tackle your first programming language, there's no requirement to run out and buy the thickest book you can find at Barnes & Noble. Google Code University, for instance, hosts a whole CSE program’s worth of straight-up coding lessons in its bowels. We’ve pointed out a lot of other programming resources found around the web, so you should be able to get started in almost any project. As for the random, unexpected, seemingly inscrutable bugs, well … welcome to the fold.

9. Get a Personal MBA

“MBA programs don’t have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work.” The Personal MBA site occasionally updates its list of dozens of helpful business books, designed to teach both the nuts-and-bolts money stuff and the kind of thinking one needs to get ahead in sales, marketing, or wherever your interests lie. A business school can offer networking, mentoring, and other perks, but nobody can teach you enthusiasm and business savvy—except yourself.

8. Learn to actually use Ubuntu

Too often, newcomers to Ubuntu, the seriously popular Linux distribution, find that their questions about any problem great or small is answered with a curt “Search the forums,” or “Just Google it.” From experience, that’s like telling someone there’s maple sap somewhere in that forest, so here’s a nail and get moving. With a brand-new installation sitting on your computer, few resources are as straight-forward and comprehensive as the Ubuntu Guide, which is packed with common stuff like installing VLC and getting VLC playback, but spans across topics including Samba and remote printing configuration. Author Keir Thomas also offered Lifehacker readers a little preview of his Ubuntu Kung Fu in two excerpts that tweak one’s system into a faster, more efficient data flinger.

7. Get started on a new language

Nobody’s pretending you can talk like a local without some immersion experience. But there’s a lot of resources on the web for honing an already-sharpened second language, or at least picking up some of the vocab and nuances. Learn10 gives you 10 vocabulary builders delivered every day by email, through iGoogle, through an iPhone page, or most any other way you’d like. One Minute Languages podcasts its lessons and lets newcomers stream from the archives. And Mango Languages has about 100 lessons, shown to you in PowerPoint style with interstitial quizzes, to move you through any language without cracking a book. Not that books are bad, of course, but this is stuff you can crack out during a coffee break.

6. Trade your skills, find an instructor

As Ramit Sethi put it in our interview, many people don’t realize the value of the skills they do have, whether it’s something as simple as higher-level English or software lessons for those in need. A site like TeachMate capitalizes on the inherent disparities in our interests, letting someone willing to teach a bit of, for example, Russian language get cooking lessons in return. If a site like TeachMate doesn’t quite reach you, try Craigslist, which, especially in a recession, is brimming with people looking to trade skills instead of cash.

5. Academic Earth and YouTube EDU

We have to guess that having a giant, searchable database of free academic lectures was just too good an idea for two different web firms to pass up. Academic Earth has been described as a Hulu-like aggregator for lots of major universities’ content, and offers the slicker and more navigable front-end for them, as well as allowing embedding and sharing with no restrictions. YouTube EDU might have a broader reach, and the player and format might be a bit more familiar to most. Both sites offer both individual lectures and full course series, and are definitely worth checking out.

4. Teach yourself all kinds of photography

Sites like Photojojo and Digital Photography School are oft-linked resources around Lifehacker, and for good reason. They let the uber-technical shooters run wild in forums and discussion groups, but focus the majority of their front-page posts on things that beginning DSLR shooters and moderate consumer-cam photographers can grasp and mix into their daily camera work. Of course, we’ve compiled and sought out our own digital photography advice at Lifehacker, including photographer Scott Feldstein’s guide to mastering your DSLR camera (Part 1 and Part 2), and our compilation of David Pogue’s best photography tricks, plus ours. Then there’s the simple pleasures of posting on Flickr, seeking out Photo by Marcin Wichary.

3. Get an unofficial liberal arts major

Whole-mind learning doesn't end the day you declare a major and start sending out resumes. A huge number of universities offer up some of their most unique and fascinating resources for free online, posting up databases, image galleries, and all kinds of stuff you wish you had time to dig through during your undergrad years. Learn everything you ever wanted to about Picasso at Texas A & M's Picasso Project. Indulge your inner geo-geek with super hi-res images from Hirise at the University of Arizona. Tour the world’s spaces in 3D with The World Wide Panorama at UC Berkeley. Wendy Boswell discovered those resources and way more in her discovery of the .edu underground, and you can find a lot more down there, too.

2. Learn an instrument

If being dropped off at the music store/mall/piano teacher’s house wasn’t a memorable part of your childhood, you might dig the digital age’s equivalents a lot more. Guitar players, in particular, have a lot of places to turn for video, audio, and graphical teaching tools. Adam rounded a lot of them up in his guide to learning to play an instrument online. If you want to build a foundation for learning any instrument, though, Ricci Adams’ Musictheory.net has Flash-based tutorials that offer a gentle tour through keys, time signatures, modalities, and the other ins and outs of notes and chords.

1. Learn from actual college courses online

A huge number of colleges, universities, and other degree-granting universities are going all open-source these days—giving away the actual guts of their courses, while retaining their revenue stream by awarding degrees only to those who pay. In this day and age, though, programming, marketing, design, and other self-taught skills are pretty valuable, however you came by them. Whether you're looking to break into a field or just augment your skill set, dig into our guide to getting a free college education online, which we then updated a bit with Education Portal’s list of ten universities with the best free online courses. Just think about it—at home, with your coffee and comfortable chair, you're far more awake than the average co-ed who totally should have hit the hay a bit earlier last night.

Where do you turn when you have to teach yourself something? What skills or topics would you like to see more coverage of on Lifehacker, or just anywhere on the web? Help us plan a curriculum in the comments.

Capital Factory Gives Austin Its Own Startup Incubator

While many people in the tech world only make the trek to Austin, Texas once a year for SXSW, the city has a fairly sizable startup community. Now Austin is getting its own Y Combinator-esque program, dubbed Capital Factory.

As with other similar programs, Capital Factory offers entrepreneurs a modest amount of funding in exchange for equity (the program is offering ‘up to $20,000′ in exchange for 5% of each startup). Capital Factory is also advertising ‘$20,000 in free stuff‘, which includes server usage, PR support, and legal help. But the real value from these programs comes from their associated mentors, who work with the startups to help them get on their feet, and help tap into their established networks of VCs and other entrepreneurs.

The ten week long program culminates in a ‘Demo Day’ during which each startup will pitch their wares to VCs, press, and other entrepreneurs.

Capital Factory joins a growing number of programs vying for the attention of eager new entrepreneurs. Aside from Y Combinator, which pioneered the idea, other incubators include TechStars (Boulder and now Boston), Start@Spark (Boston), LaunchBox Digital (Washington, D.C.), DreamIT Ventures (Philadelphia), and Shotput Ventures (Atlanta)

Most of these are regional, but they still draw from the same pool of entrepreneurs (many of whom are willing to relocate temporarily if they get accepted to their preferred program). Recently we’ve heard of some shady tactics like exploding term sheets that are being employed as these programs compete for the same candidates.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Capital Factory Gives Austin Its Own Startup Incubator

While many people in the tech world only make the trek to Austin, Texas once a year for SXSW, the city has a fairly sizable startup community. Now Austin is getting its own Y Combinator-esque program, dubbed Capital Factory.

As with other similar programs, Capital Factory offers entrepreneurs a modest amount of funding in exchange for equity (the program is offering ‘up to $20,000′ in exchange for 5% of each startup). Capital Factory is also advertising ‘$20,000 in free stuff‘, which includes server usage, PR support, and legal help. But the real value from these programs comes from their associated mentors, who work with the startups to help them get on their feet, and help tap into their established networks of VCs and other entrepreneurs.

The ten week long program culminates in a ‘Demo Day’ during which each startup will pitch their wares to VCs, press, and other entrepreneurs.

Capital Factory joins a growing number of programs vying for the attention of eager new entrepreneurs. Aside from Y Combinator, which pioneered the idea, other incubators include TechStars (Boulder and now Boston), Start@Spark (Boston), LaunchBox Digital (Washington, D.C.), DreamIT Ventures (Philadelphia), and Shotput Ventures (Atlanta)

Most of these are regional, but they still draw from the same pool of entrepreneurs (many of whom are willing to relocate temporarily if they get accepted to their preferred program). Recently we’ve heard of some shady tactics like exploding term sheets that are being employed as these programs compete for the same candidates.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Capital Factory Gives Austin Its Own Startup Incubator

While many people in the tech world only make the trek to Austin, Texas once a year for SXSW, the city has a fairly sizable startup community. Now Austin is getting its own Y Combinator-esque program, dubbed Capital Factory.

As with other similar programs, Capital Factory offers entrepreneurs a modest amount of funding in exchange for equity (the program is offering ‘up to $20,000′ in exchange for 5% of each startup). Capital Factory is also advertising ‘$20,000 in free stuff‘, which includes server usage, PR support, and legal help. But the real value from these programs comes from their associated mentors, who work with the startups to help them get on their feet, and help tap into their established networks of VCs and other entrepreneurs.

The ten week long program culminates in a ‘Demo Day’ during which each startup will pitch their wares to VCs, press, and other entrepreneurs.

Capital Factory joins a growing number of programs vying for the attention of eager new entrepreneurs. Aside from Y Combinator, which pioneered the idea, other incubators include TechStars (Boulder and now Boston), Start@Spark (Boston), LaunchBox Digital (Washington, D.C.), DreamIT Ventures (Philadelphia), and Shotput Ventures (Atlanta)

Most of these are regional, but they still draw from the same pool of entrepreneurs (many of whom are willing to relocate temporarily if they get accepted to their preferred program). Recently we’ve heard of some shady tactics like exploding term sheets that are being employed as these programs compete for the same candidates.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Capital Factory Gives Austin Its Own Startup Incubator

While many people in the tech world only make the trek to Austin, Texas once a year for SXSW, the city has a fairly sizable startup community. Now Austin is getting its own Y Combinator-esque program, dubbed Capital Factory.

As with other similar programs, Capital Factory offers entrepreneurs a modest amount of funding in exchange for equity (the program is offering ‘up to $20,000′ in exchange for 5% of each startup). Capital Factory is also advertising ‘$20,000 in free stuff‘, which includes server usage, PR support, and legal help. But the real value from these programs comes from their associated mentors, who work with the startups to help them get on their feet, and help tap into their established networks of VCs and other entrepreneurs.

The ten week long program culminates in a ‘Demo Day’ during which each startup will pitch their wares to VCs, press, and other entrepreneurs.

Capital Factory joins a growing number of programs vying for the attention of eager new entrepreneurs. Aside from Y Combinator, which pioneered the idea, other incubators include TechStars (Boulder and now Boston), Start@Spark (Boston), LaunchBox Digital (Washington, D.C.), DreamIT Ventures (Philadelphia), and Shotput Ventures (Atlanta)

Most of these are regional, but they still draw from the same pool of entrepreneurs (many of whom are willing to relocate temporarily if they get accepted to their preferred program). Recently we’ve heard of some shady tactics like exploding term sheets that are being employed as these programs compete for the same candidates.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Capital Factory Gives Austin Its Own Startup Incubator

While many people in the tech world only make the trek to Austin, Texas once a year for SXSW, the city has a fairly sizable startup community. Now Austin is getting its own Y Combinator-esque program, dubbed Capital Factory.

As with other similar programs, Capital Factory offers entrepreneurs a modest amount of funding in exchange for equity (the program is offering ‘up to $20,000′ in exchange for 5% of each startup). Capital Factory is also advertising ‘$20,000 in free stuff‘, which includes server usage, PR support, and legal help. But the real value from these programs comes from their associated mentors, who work with the startups to help them get on their feet, and help tap into their established networks of VCs and other entrepreneurs.

The ten week long program culminates in a ‘Demo Day’ during which each startup will pitch their wares to VCs, press, and other entrepreneurs.

Capital Factory joins a growing number of programs vying for the attention of eager new entrepreneurs. Aside from Y Combinator, which pioneered the idea, other incubators include TechStars (Boulder and now Boston), Start@Spark (Boston), LaunchBox Digital (Washington, D.C.), DreamIT Ventures (Philadelphia), and Shotput Ventures (Atlanta)

Most of these are regional, but they still draw from the same pool of entrepreneurs (many of whom are willing to relocate temporarily if they get accepted to their preferred program). Recently we’ve heard of some shady tactics like exploding term sheets that are being employed as these programs compete for the same candidates.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.