Since moving away from Boston, I do miss living at the epicenter of academia. Living near Princeton University, there are occasional opportunities to attend lectures, but they're almost always held during business hours. Now there's a convenient way to attend lectures on a variety of topics from some of the top Universities like Stanford, MIT, and Princeton from anywhere via a free e-learning website called Academic Earth.
You can search for lectures by topic or select playlists on salient subjects. For example, if you want to better understand the financial crisis or learn tips on building top performing teams from entrepreneurs, they have a nice cross section of subjects. Considering the cost to actually attend a typical University course, Academic Earth offers considerably high quality information for almost no cost -- just time invested. Check it out.

The goal of Academic Earth is to make university lectures and course material widely available online so as to lower the cost of education around the world. University lectures will be offered for free, but Ludlow plans to monetize other content—for instance, lectures from think tanks—with advertising deals, subscriptions, and sales of such related services as tutoring.

(Source: Business Week) BW has a short writeup on the on the founder here.

No big surprises from The Academy.  Watch the president and Forrest Whitaker (Ghost Dog!!! :D) read the nominees here . Or read the official list .
For the most part, the Oscars and the Globes are closely aligned. The only big surprise is that Wall-E received a best screenplay nomination. Sure, Wall-E was cute and entertaining, but it is hard to compare with smart and dynamic screenplays like Gran Torino or Vicki Christina Barcelona -- as usual Woody is snubbed.

Today was a historic day on so many levels. Millions descended on the mall in DC to be a part of history. Millions more who could not travel participated online: streaming video, blogs, twitter, facebook, flicker, SMS, real-time news, and just about every kind of media swelled with Obamania. Long ago, Obama promised to appoint a Chief Technology Officer for America. Though there are many pressing urgent matter to tackle first, here's hoping that this one does not fall too far in his priorities. It's impossible to think about any industry or business without technology. If we're going to rebound from this global economic crisis, America must invest in innovation and technology.

In Obama's inauguration speech, the focus was on how we can move this country forward. While thousands of political pundits are pouring over his words, not many have zeroed in on this line that came in the same breath as calling for swift and bold action [to lift us out of this crisis]:

We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.

Does he mean building lines to bridge the digital divide? Invisible lines to reach the 'last mile?' Does electric grids mean open networks for greater access? Does this mean we'll finally invest in technical infrastructure to bring us up to the speeds seen in Japan and Korea (50Mbit connections are typical in .KR and .JP)? Or does Obama mean to invest in social technology -- in ways that not only drive business but also enable greater participation -- like the digital ferver that united us on this historic day?

[Edit]
Head over to Computer World for a .gov news story roundup, The Obama Administration: Tech Goes to Washington.