10 Educational History Podcasts To Subscribe & Listen To

10 Educational History Podcasts To Subscribe & Listen To: "

If Hitler knew his history, he wouldn’t have attacked the Russians and lost the war. Thank God, he didn’t pay history any heed. But shouldn’t we be aware of what happened in the times before us?

A lot of us left history back in the classrooms. For some it made for ponderous reading. Thanks to the many history podcasts available for free on the web, listening to it is both entertaining and educational. We have seen how podcasts can add value to our idle time. We have also noticed that the web and the many history related web apps have made the study of the past a more engaging one.

Now, with the help of these ten history podcasts we try to combine the best of both worlds.

History on Air

This is a podcast blog that’s all about historical figures, events and places. The About page says that since 2005, the site has seen 3.2 million downloads of its more than 100 episodes. The site features podcasts which you can listen to first, and then go through the blog post which includes external links for more study. The study aids are helpful if you want to do more research on the event. There are videos too that are collected from around the web.

Hardcore History

The well known podcast site by the American political commentator Dan Carlin takes an unconventional look at history with his own take on events past. Yes, you have to be in tune with his sense of humor as he rips into today’s society and relates it to historical churns. He covers topics on Roman history, the World Wars, and the Cold War to mention a few. The tag says it best – history like you have never heard before.

BBC: In Our Time

The BBC Radio 4 feature is hosted by Melvyn Bragg, the British broadcaster. Many podcasts have guests and follow a discussion format. Podcasts cover culture, religion, science, philosophy, along with history. You can listen to the podcast online via BBC’s iPlayer. Each podcast explores the ‘history of ideas’ and is usually broadcast live and unedited.

History According To Bob

Professor Bob Packett takes his history class and his considerable teaching experience online in the form of free history podcasts. He explains historic events from the perspective of those people who were caught up in it. He has a light style as he goes from explaining Caesar to more close events like The Korean War.

Matt’s Today In History

We had gone back in history and taken a look at websites that tell us what happened in history on this day (or on a particular date). Matt’s website is an audio version of that. Each podcast is 5-10 minutes long and is narrated in a pleasant voice and casual story style by Matt Dattilo. The site seems to be dormant so it’s not actually ‘today in history’. But you can still listen to the podcasts because history is hardly current.

Binge Thinking History Podcast

I loved the podcasts on The Battle of Britain on this blog which has a much smaller selection of podcasts. The only thing about Tony Cocks’ small site is that the history podcasts are infrequent and spaced out over months.

BackStory with the American History Guys

Subscribe free to this radio program which uses the trio of U.S. historians Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh to look at events that shaped our world. The podcasts are professionally produced and fun to listen to. For students of history, the links provided for further reading are a treasure trove of knowledge.

A History of The World In Hundred Objects

Another cool program from BBC which takes a look at the world with the help of 100 objects from the British Museum and hundreds more from museums and people across the UK. Use the beautifully designed timeline to explore the objects in the list and take a look at the history around it. The program has ended, but the MP3 are a ‘historical’ treasure.

How Stuff Works

This top notch website does a great job explaining how our world functions. They have a dedicated podcast page sub-divided into a few more “official” pages like the one on – Official Stuff of Genius Podcast Page which looks at inventions past and present. But the one history buffs should fall for is the page on – Official Stuff You Missed in History Class Podcast Page. The page is well supported by entertaining quizzes and puzzles.

Laughing Historically

Okay, we have had enough of serious history. Take a lighter look at it with these five podcasts on The Modern Day Pirates, a geek lifestyle magazine with a well developed funny bone.

These ten websites show that podcasts aren’t only about easy listening pleasures. When it comes to things like educating on history, they are a very important tool. Do contribute any other cool history podcasts that I might have missed here.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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More articles about: education, history, Interesting, listen, Podcast

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4 Free Ways to Learn to Code Online

4 Free Ways to Learn to Code Online: "

The Web Development Series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here.

Learning to code is something every tech-minded person should try at least once — and the wealth of online courses, many of which are free or surprisingly inexpensive, make learning about programming easier than ever.

If you’re thinking of picking up C++, Ruby on Rails, Python or Java, these online options might be a good way to test the waters of programming before you fully invest your time and money in formal training or certifications. And if you’re a veteran programmer in need of resources for learning new languages, these sites might help you a bit, too.

One disadvantage of learning to code through an online platform is the lack of face-to-face interactions with an instructor. But don’t let that intimidate you — Google, Stack Overflow, and other online forums (even Twitter) are great ways to get help when your code won’t compile, you don’t understand a concept or you just get frustrated.

In the comments, let us know if you’ve found other great resources for learning about programming — or other sites for support and Q&A for newer developers.

UC Berkeley Webcast/Courses

The University of California at Berkeley has an extensive catalog of webcasts, including events and courses. The coursework is entirely free to access, and it includes video and audio webcasts of computer sciences classes from the current semester all the way back to 2003.

Mozilla's School of Webcraft

Mozilla's 100% free developer training site is all about teaching noobs and jedis alike how to code. If you want to get started coding with something like HTML or if you're an experienced dev who wants to dive into Python, the School of Webcraft is something worth checking out. Several courses generally run simultaneously, and new classes are being drafted all the time.

Google Code University

From Google Code, we have the Code University, a free and fascinating resource. And of course, it has its own forums for learners to ask questions and get help. True beginners can also start out with the introductions and tutorials, which are designed with newer devs in mind.

MIT's OpenCourseWare

If you've dreamed of studying computer science at one of the U.S.'s leading tech institutions, here's your chance. MIT's free and accessible courses are great for ambitious would-be coders. Check out the full list of courses for computer science, which include introductions to Java, Python, C++ and more.

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Android Commander Is A Swiss Army Knife For Android Devices

Android Commander Is A Swiss Army Knife For Android Devices: "

The Android world is full of tools, hacks and guides that let you customize your device the way you see fit. Most of these utilize the official Android SDK tools provided by Google, but using these isn’t always the simplest of tasks. Enter Android Commander – a free app for Windows that is basically a front-end for the core Android tools laid out in such a way that enables even a novice to use them without much hassle. For our detailed review and screenshot tour of this gem of an app, continue reading.

We at AddictiveTips love Android and we know you do too. That’s the reason we do our best to bring you apps and tools to help you make the best out of your Android phone or tablet. While most of the apps are pretty straight-forward to install and use, other more advanced modifications to your device often involve the use of command-line utilities and complex methods that can be intimidating to those used to GUI tools, and although we try our best to make our guides the safest possible for you, there is still a relatively high risk involved with using such methods that can result in potentially bricking your device due to any mistakes being made in entering the commands. That’s why when we came across Android Commander, we were delighted at the way it provides a well laid-out graphical front-end for several standard Android tools in one package that makes the process of using these tools a breeze!

When you first launch Android Commander, you will see what appears to be just a dual-pane file manager but don’t let that fool you! Although it does provide very convenient dual-pane file manager access for transferring files between your PC and your Android device, it is filled with a plethora of other options to allow you to do pretty much everything with your Android device that would otherwise require using ADB commands. Let’s take a closer look at the features offered by the program.

Let’s first review the file manager before moving on to the more advanced features. By default, your computer’s local file system is shown in the left pane and the Android device’s file system in the right pane, both with multiple selection available using check boxes. However, tabs available in each pane let you switch the left pane to show the Android device’s file system and the right pane to the Applications Manager (more on this in a while). This is a handy option, as you can use it to drag and drop any of the apps installed on your device to not only your computer but also directly to a location on your phone’s storage. The Android Files tab presents you with a few handy features as well. You can easily transfer files between the computer and the device using the Copy, Push and Pull buttons, as well as delete any files from your phone.

One of the most useful main features of the program is the Applications Manager found as a tab in the right pane. This section lets you manage all the apps that are installed on your phone. These apps are organized by internal memory and memory card, depending on whether you are using App2SD, Data2ext or any similar hacks, with support for sd-ext partition as well, if one exists on your phone. Using the Applications Manager, you can backup your installed applications to the location on your phone or PC open in the left pane by using the first Backup button, or to any other location on your PC using the second Backup button. Furthermore, you can install applications from selective APK files present on your PC by using the Install button. Lastly, you can also uninstall any applications from your phone.

Under the Windows Files tab, you can browse to any location on your computer where APK files are located and click the ‘Installer’ button to bring up the integrated Applications Installer. This handy tool will load the necessary metadata for the APK files (including the app name and version) in that location and present them to you in a list, ready to be installed to your device, simply by selecting the ones you want to install and clicking ‘Install’. Sideloading multiple apps to your phone couldn’t be easier!

One would think the feature list ends here but that is far from the truth. So far, we haven’t explored the menus and the main toolbar so let’s take a look at what we have there. Firstly, there is the ever-handy Shell Console that provides you with a command-line shell access to your phone just like adb shell does. Though an added benefit this one has over the standard adb shell command is the ability to run shell scripts stored on your computer directly by using the Run SH Script button.

Next, there is Logcat – the handy Android feature that lets you log the activity on your phone, which can be of immense help when debugging your apps or sorting out problems and figuring out reasons for crashes etc. The log is presented in a color-coded, spreadsheet-like view with a very convenient Active check box to start or pause the logging.

Then we have one of the most handy features of the app – Flash update/image. This lets you flash apps, ROMs, kernels etc. in a zip format to your device from recovery with the ability to choose whether to wipe data and cache or not. You can also flash individual partitions on your phone directly using flash image files but do this only if you are absolutely sure about what you are doing since flashing a wrong image to your phone’s critical partitions can easily turn it into an expensive paperweight. The partitions flashable using this method include /boot, /recovery, /system, /data and /cache.

Ever wanted to flash a zip file from recovery but found you couldn’t because it wasn’t signed? Android Commander has a decent feature called Sign File, which can be accessed by clicking the pencil button on the toolbar. It lets you choose any flashable zip file on your computer and output it as a signed zip file. It uses the official SignApk.jar Android tool to do this but without having to use the command line. This feature requires Java installed on your computer.

Want to take a quick screenshot of your phone without having to use any app on your phone and then transferring the screenshot to your computer? Android Commander has you covered. Click the camera icon in the toolbar and you can save the screenshot to your computer.

Don’t feel like typing out long text using your phone’s tiny keyboard when you are already using your computer’s larger keyboard? Click the Keyboard icon on the toolbar and you will be presented with the Virtual Input window, where you can not only input text into your phone but also navigate your phone, invoke its hardware buttons and even control the phone’s audio player!

There is also a power menu accessible from the toolbar that lets you power your phone off or reboot it normally, into recovery or into its bootloader, without having to use any hardware button combination.

The program’s settings can be found under the Program menu, where you can select default paths to open in the panes, show/hide hidden files and even associate APK files with the program. Once associated, the Application Info window that appears on double-clicking any APK files from your computer not only lets you install the app directly to your phone but also shows you detailed information on the application, the permissions it requires as well as links to visit the app’s pages on AppBrain, AndroLib and Cyrket, More options in the settings pane allow you to specify default paths in the panes and choose whether to show or hide Windows hidden and system files.

Love the tool but don’t want to keep your phone tied to your PC via USB? Click the WiFi antenna icon on the toolbar, click ‘Get IP’, check ‘Set port’ and click ‘Enable’. You can now disconnect your phone from the computer and it will remain accessible from Android Commander as long as it remains on the same WiFi network. Though when testing this feature, our phone got disconnected once its screen automatically turned off and afterwards, our phone wasn’t recognized by the application at all, neither wirelessly nor via USB. Restarting the phone fixed the issue. This appears to be due to a limitation of ADB.

The status bar shows you some handy info like whether your device is rooted or not, free storage space on internal and SD card memory, and the battery level. Clicking on the storage space indicators brings up informative dialog boxes showing total, used and free space for the internal memory, SD card memory or the sd-ext partition’s memory for your device in a graphical format to keep tabs on your phone’s storage.

Android Commander has been brought to us by XDA-Developers forum member PanPiotr for free, works on most Android phones and tablets, and requires ADB up and running on your computer. To learn how to install ADB, see our guide on what is ADB and how to install it. Furthermore, root access is required on the device to make the best use of the program. To root your phone or tablet, see our guide on how to root your Android device. Needless to say. You must have USB debugging enabled on your phone in Settings > Applications > Development, to be able to use it with Android Commander.

The program is in active development and you are encouraged to contact the developer at the XDA-Developers forum links provided below for feedback, bug reports, feature requests etc. Android Commander is donationware so if you enjoy using the tool and find it useful, consider supporting the developer by making a donation through the program itself or at the forum thread.

The latest stable Windows version can be downloaded from the official website while the latest Windows beta and Linux alpha versions can be found at the corresponding XDA-Developers forum threads.

Android Commander Website

XDA-Developers Forum Thread (Windows)

XDA-Developers Forum Thread (Linux)

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