ANN ARBOR—The Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan has joined forces with Apple Computer to provide the business school community free access to events, seminars and news content they can listen to any time, anywhere.

The partnership will allow users to download audio content to their Mac or PC and transfer the information to their iPod or MP3 player. Other schools have launched podcast (digital audio recordings) efforts on a smaller scale, including lectures and interviews.

The podcasts will be accessible to business school community members with an iMpact intranet login. Four podcast channels, including content related to the school’s Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship, alumni magazine and student-run newspaper and the U-M’s William Davidson Institute, will reside on the Apple iTunes U Web site, which uses the same technology as the iTunes Music Store.

A launch event for students, faculty and staff will take place at 4 p.m. March 16 in Hale Auditorium at the Ross School. A video presentation, brief demonstration of the new service and student iPod nano raffle will be included.

The School of Dentistry was the first at U-M to offer the application, and has been providing podcasting to its students since September 2005. In addition, the U-M School of Music’s Block M Records label licenses its content to Apple for distribution through the iTunes Music Store.

Ross School of Business