Last year, we featured two ventures offering online music tutorials by professional and famous artists: Now Play It—with tutorials by artists including Paul McCartney, Au Revoir Simone and The Dandy Warhols—and Mucony, which focuses on classical music and features tutorials by musicians from the New York Philharmonic, faculty members of the Juilliard School, and other esteemed musicians and teachers.

Smart concepts, since they give (aspiring) musicians easy access to a level of teaching they could otherwise only dream of. So we were pleased to see that Apple is now offering something similar: earlier this week, Apple announced that it has added Artist Lessons to its popular GarageBand application (part of the iLife software suite). Lessons are sold separately through GarageBand's Lesson Store, for USD 4.99 a piece, and participating artists at launch include Sting, Norah Jones and Sarah McLachlan.

Like Now Play It, the tutorials include step-by-step instructions for chords, finger positions, and techniques. Artist Lessons also allow students to slow down playback for easier learning, and let them control a song's mix and instrumentation, enabling them to tune out Sting and play with his band, for example.

Website: www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/#lessons

Transparency tyranny has already been striking terror into the hearts of companies far and wide, as both customers and employees have begun sharing their experiences and impressions of them for all the world to see. No real surprise, then, that universities are next in line. RateMyProfessors.com has already made faculty popularity public, and now a few new sites offer a way for students to share an insider's perspective on campus life in general.

Unigo, which launched last month, is a site that offers tens of thousands of original reviews, videos, photos, documents and more about 225 of America's top colleges. Representing the efforts of 18 full-time editors, 300 on-campus interns and more than 15,000 students, the results are all searchable within an interactive community built around student-generated content. Using the free site, high school students can communicate with one another and with current college students to find the college that's right for them. An "intelligent calendar" guides them through the search/application process, while multidimensional filtering capabilities let them search through reviews by each reviewer's gender, ethnicity, major, political leaning, hometown and more. The New York-based site plans to expand soon to cover nearly every college in America.

San Francisco-based Yollege, meanwhile, also aims to empower college students to share their thoughts and opinions on every aspect of campus life, from dorms to campus hotspots to local culture. High-school students can use the site for help in finding the right school for them, while college students can use it not only to share reviews about their school but also to meet fellow students. As of late September, there were more than 4,000 reviews on the site, Real Simple reported. Launched in April, ad-supported Yollege was recently named one of the top five Best of the Web 2008 newcomers by BusinessWeek.

Finally, Pittsburgh-based College Prowler offers both print books and an online guide to more than 250 American schools. Each guide is written by a current student at the college, with the addition of quotes and comments from others in the student population. College Prowler launched online last year; a subscription for full access costs USD 39.95 per year.

Traditionally, college review guides have tried to provide information in an objective way, but of course what many consumers really want is subjective information from their twinsumers--those with tastes similar to their own. Add that subjectivity to immediacy, interactivity and free (or low-cost) access, and you just may have a winner. (Related: Transparency tyranny hits the workplace.)

Websites: www.unigo.com -- www.yollege.com -- www.collegeprowler.com
Contact: www.unigo.com/Contact.aspx -- info@yollege.com -- collegeprowler.com/Aboutus/Contactus.aspx

Spotted by: David Boyar

While most schools now incorporate computers into the curriculum at least to some extent, the fact remains that most learning is still done by the book. Recognizing that today's teens spend more and more of their time online, however, a new video-based network aims to offer extra learning and college preparation in a format that's more natural for digitally savvy high-school students.

Launched late last month, Brightstorm's online learning network is designed to help high-school students deepen their understanding of important subjects and better prepare for college through video-based courses designed and taught by expert teachers from across the country. Available courses cover subjects including math, writing, history, and AP and SAT test prep--with more coming soon, the company says--taught via 5-hour interactive video classes that are broken down into lessons lasting between 10 and 20 minutes each. Brightstorm's teachers--chosen for their classroom teaching success, passion for learning and professional qualifications--aim to develop unique curriculums that capture the most critical concepts in ways teens can relate to. Students, meanwhile, can not only choose the right teacher for their learning style, but can also work at their own pace in a manner suiting their digital preferences, with options to participate in interactive discussion groups and benefit from bonus materials such as interactive quizzes, "challenges" and study guides. Courses are each priced at USD 49 for a 12-month subscription.

Jeff Marshall, cofounder and CEO of San Francisco-based Brightstorm, explains: "We started this company as parents, educators and technologists who saw a need for a learning network that helped teens do better in school by syncing with their interests and online lifestyles. Great learning starts with great teaching, and we're giving teens a hand-picked selection of the best teachers from across the country. Simultaneously, Brightstorm broadens the reach of these teachers beyond their hometown classrooms."

These aren't your father's high-school students anymore, so to speak, so it makes sense that college prep should change too, better reflecting the online oxygen today's teens breathe. One to adapt on a localized basis for different cultures and languages....? (Related: Music school for generation YouTube.)

Website: www.brightstorm.com
Contact: www.brightstorm.com/aboutus/corporateinquiry

Inspired by the way Wikipedia changed the encyclopedia with its online format and user-contributed content, a new digital dictionary hopes to change the way the world articulates and understands the meanings of words.

Launched two weeks ago, Wordia is a visual dictionary that encourages members of the public to contribute to a collective pool of video definitions. As with any online dictionary, users can search for the traditional meaning of a word thanks to the involvement of HarperCollins with 76,000 words and 120,000 basic textual definitions. But appended to an increasing number of those traditional definitions are videos--both professionally produced and user-generated--expressing individuals' own, personal meanings for the words in question. Look up "purple," for instance, and two young "orators" tell you that it means "wacky... and kinda deep and mysterious... spiritual... agitated... royal... eggplant?" Search on "nascent," and you'll get a video definition featuring Michael Birch, the Bebo founder who is now supporting Wordia.

The site's founders explain: "We've found that this visualisation works; place a word into context visually and it helps you to recollect its meaning much more easily then a textual definition. The 'author' breathes life into it--and their video acts as an easy-to-remember reference--an aide memoire or mnemonic as it were." Powered by YouTube and supported by the Open University and the National Literacy Trust, the ad-funded site also lets users rate and comment on videos.

It's easy to imagine etymologists objecting to a site like Wordia. After all, even Wikipedia relies on citations, references and volunteer editors to maintain at least some level of credibility and authoritativeness; relying on everyday users to define language in a purely subjective way risks severing the connection with the words' true, objective meanings. On the other hand, there's certainly a distinct entertainment value to searching through Wordia's video definitions, which may even be able to reflect nuances and modern interpretations of words in ways traditional definitions can't. Wordia is currently available only in English; one to partner with for other languages?

Website: www.wordia.com
Contact: production@wordia.com

Taking a casual approach to learning, Hamburg-based Language Lounge combines English lessons with a coffee shop. For a monthly fee, members can drop by from Monday to Thursday between 5 pm and 9 pm for conversation classes. The company compares its setup to a gym membership: there's no need to sign up for a fixed day or time--members can just join in whenever it's convenient. Light membership is priced at EUR 59/month and allows members to attend one class per week. The school's premium membership gives access to as many classes per month as a member wants to attend, and is priced at EUR 99/month. Language Lounge's informal group classes are led by native English speakers with at least two years of teaching experience, and the lounge is also open to customers who'd rather stick to speaking German.

It sounds like a relatively easy way for language teachers to set up their own language 'gyms'--find an existing being space that could use some extra customers four or five evenings a week, and partner with a few fellow teachers once word gets out.

Website: www.language-lounge.com
Contact: info@language-lounge.com

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie