How Can I Download Free Books?
How Can I Download Free Books?
One of the wonderful things about the Internet is the sheer amount of information you can find online. You can even find complete books to download, and even better, it’s a free and simple process. There are many sites available as well, from the new book service from Google to longer established sites where you can download free ebooks on a variety of subjects.
Google Book Search
The newest service from the popular search engine, Google Book Search is currently in the beta stage for a launch later this year. Allowing you to hunt down forgotten classics, books that are out of print or no longer protected by copyright, Google Book Search is extremely easy to download booms from.
When you find the book you’re looking for, it will have a download button next to it, if it’s applicable. Clicking on this button will download a PDF version of the book to your computer’s hard drive. You can also search for books that can be downloaded by typing in “Full view books” when searching, using the Google Books search bar.
Free Ebooks
Another way you can download free books is by visiting one of the many websites that offer free ebooks for download. These cover a huge range of topics, from fitness and heath to financial advice, and much more. These ebooks are free due to the fact that most of them are written as something that people want to give away to visitors to a certain website.
Again, just like Google Book Search, these free downloads come in PDF form. One of the most popular sites is GetFreeEbboks.com – this is a particularly intensive site that collects the best ebooks from around the Internet, as well as featuring original ones compiled by the owner of the site. Titles include everything from guides to using the Internet and computer manuals, to cook books and recipes.
A new website, Scribd.com, also allows you to download free ebooks, as well as other written prose such. This is a user-friendlier site than many others, due to its reliance on users to actually fill its library of publications by uploading books and documents themselves.
Free Audio Books
One of the fastest growing options for downloading free books is with audio books. With exactly the same idea as the more traditional form of book download, an audio book allows you to download a novel, short story or otherwise, in an MP3
You can then save this to your computer’s hard drive, in order to listen to the book at your leisure. Many people are using this option to download a book and listen to it whilst on a long trip, and it’s made sites like Librivox.com highly popular.
Indeed, with the amount of free books currently available and the list growing everyday, it’s easy to see why traditional book retailers are having to look at ways to keep their customers coming back. It may not be too long before reading and downloading a book online is as natural as going to the library.
How Can I read Free Classic Books at Google?
How Can I read Free Classic Books at Google?
From its earliest inception in the 1970’s, through to its current status today, one of the terms the Internet has always been known by is the Information Superhighway. With literally one touch of button – or, in the Internet’s case, one click of a mouse – you could have access to pretty much any fact or figure you wanted. Yet there’s more than just the latest news on the Internet – did you know there are complete books online, and thanks to the Google, these are free to read.
Not satisfied with being the most popular search engine for Internet users, Google is in the beta stage of a new service called Google Books, with its own Google Book Search allowing you to find the exact book you’re after. From classics to newer books, whole volumes of anthologies and more, Google Books lets you find that old out-of-print classic and read it online at your leisure. But is it really free, and how does it work?
Well, the god news is that, yes, it is free, and even better it’s extremely easy to use. Which, considering Google is behind it, shouldn’t really come as a surprise. All you need to do to get started is go to Google, and type in ‘books’ in the search engine. The first result should be a line that says ‘Google Book Search’. Click on that link, and you’ll be taken to the online Google library.
The screen that greets you shows you a glimpse of what books are available. Broken down into themes and sections, you can browse by the category that interests you, from classics such as ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ by Mark Twain, to the likes of popular modern-day fiction writer James Patterson. Although the choice can’t quite hold up to a normal bookstore, there are still over 100,000 books online, and this number is growing everyday.
Once you’ve found the book that you’re interested in, you then have a set of choices, dependent on the book’s availability. Many of the books on Google Book Search are public-domain works, which means that they are no longer copyrighted. It’s this lack of copyright that allows these books to be digitised and uploaded for users of Google Book Search to read them free of charge.
You then simply click on the book you wish to read, and it’ll open in a new window, in a format similar to a PDF file. On certain books, you can even download a PDF file direct to your computer, so you can read the book later.
However, there are still some books and authors whose work is still protected by copyright. In this instance, you then have the option to read a preview of it, or buy it outright. There’s even a library feature, where Google Book Search is working with libraries countrywide to increase the numbers of books that have been scanned and uploaded to the servers where users can go to read the books.
There are still a few bugs to iron out – for instance, some books have made it into the Google Book Search database despite still being under copyright. Yet the software is still in the beta stage, and Google should have these small bugs ironed out before launch.
How Can I have books read to me by Scribd?
How Can I have books read to me by Scribd?
One of the many plus points of new website Scribd.com is the ability for people worldwide to upload virtually any file they wish and share it with other users of the Scribd website. From eBooks to school books, plays to sheet music
One of the reasons for this is that not only can you upload documents and then have the ability to read them immediately – no, one of the real success stories of Scribd.com is how it allows the formats of the originals to be changed. From a Word document to a PDF file and into an eBook, there’s virtually no limit on what can be done. The piece de resistance of this set-up, though, has to be the ability to listen to the document or book.
If you have poor eyesight, or perhaps suffer from some sort of reading disorder, it can be frustrating trying to read documents and paperwork. This is especially true if the documents are online, and you have Internet fonts and monitor glare to contend with. However, thanks to the efforts of Scribd.com, this is no longer a problem. Amongst the formats that uploaded files can be transferred into are audio files – this then allows the visitor to listen to a spoken word version of the document or book they’re interested in.
How Easy is it to Listen?
What makes this possible is the intelligent way that the site uploads the documents. Even as a user is uploading one of their stories, poems or other, Scribd.com is already converting it to various formats such as Word, PDF and more impressively, an audio file in the MP3
Once the document has been converted, that’s where the real fun begins. By going to the relevant page on Scribd.com where the file is hosted, you have various options available to you. The toolbar on the left of your screen has two choices available to you for audio playback of your chosen book or document, and both are extremely straightforward to use.
The first is a simple playback feature, much like using a media player on your computer. If you look down the left hand side of the page you’re on, you’ll come across a small grey bar with the word “Listen” next to it. On this grey bar you’ll notice a Play button, as well as a Time and Volume Control feature. If the document has already been converted to an audio file, an automated voice will begin reading the text for you.
The other option available to download the MP3 file itself, and listen back to your chosen subject at a later time to suit you. Again this is simplicity in itself – all you need to do is look slightly above the Playback bar to where you should see a boxed area that offers you sharing options. In here, if it’s available, you’ll see a colourful arrow, which is the symbol for Windows Media Player. Just click on this icon, and your MP3 will download. You can then listen to it through any compatible MP3 player or Media Player.
Already a hugely innovative site, Scribd.com has taken things one step further with its audio playback functionality, and as such, it seems hard to imagine how this won’t be the next huge thing in Internet popularity.
Storing your books and documents at Scribd.com
What is Scribd.com?
Next time you’re on your computer, take a look at your hard drive. Is it clogged up with loads of files, Word documents and similar that you hardly use anymore? If this is you – and if you’re like everyone else, it probably is – and you’re thinking of deleting these files, don’t. At least, not immediately – instead, why not put them to use and share them at Scribd.com?
Described as a “big online library” by its creators, Scribd.com is a new website that came into fruition in 2006. Created by three friends – Trip Adler, Jared Friedman and Tikhon Bernstam, Scribd.com is notable for having gained backing from such heavyweight Silicon Valley businesses like Y Combinator and the Kinsey Hills Group. So what exactly is Scribd.com, and should you care?
Scribd.com Explained
Just as its creators suggest, the best way to look at Scribd.com is as a huge online library. Users can upload any document and allow other users worldwide to read them, use them, and learn from them – pretty much anything, really. In this respect, it’s not too dissimilar to Wikipedia, in that it shares information for various purposes. The difference here is that the scope is potentially far greater than even Wikipedia could hope for.
How it all Works
One of the nicknames that the Internet received early in its life was the Information Superhighway, and Scribd.com compounds that even further. By uploading the documents on your computer, you’re basically educating the online community even more, as well as entertaining. The types of documents and files you can upload to Scribd.com are almost endless:
· Office documents such as PowerPoint presentations, Word docs, Excel sheets, etc
· Academic papers and old school papers and notes
· Music
· Online books and Ebooks
· Personal points of view (as long as they’re not racist or likely to incite)
In fact, pretty much the only stuff you can’t upload is copyrighted work and advertisements. On top of the files that you upload, you can also do a whole host of tricks and amendments to them once they’re uploaded. For example, you can make an MP3
Why use Scribd.com?
So what’s so different about Scribd.com anyway? With blogging being so popular as well as social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, isn’t Scribd.com a waste of time? Far from it – as well as sharing information that could be extremely useful to someone in another part of the world, Scribd.com lets you have your own unique online voice. You can let people read short stories you may have written years ago; there’s no time limit how long your upload stays on the site; and best of all, it could even lead you to winning a book deal from a passing publisher!
Although still early days for the site, Scribd.com is gaining ground quickly on the more established websites that offer a similar service. However, by allowing users to share pretty much anything they want to, Scribd.com offers something these other sites can’t, and that’s a true worldwide audience for even the silliest of things you’ve written. Remember that the next time you’re about to delete something.
The Flip Ultra Camcorder
The Flip Ultra Camcorder
If someone asked you to name a camcorder brand, you’d more than likely say Canon, or Sony, or Panasonic. One name you probably wouldn’t consider is Pure Digital – yet its Flip Ultra camcorder is currently the best-selling model at Amazon.com. Although it could be argued that a lot of that has to do with its low price – it costs as little as $149 for the 1GB version – there’s more to this little camcorder than meets the eye.
The Flip Ultra camcorder is actually the third version of this nifty piece of equipment, and as such is now really beginning to fond its stride in the marketplace. No longer just a cheap and cheerful option for the YouTube generation, the Ultra can be used for much more than quick videos.
Instead of going down the video tape route of similar, yet more expansive camcorders, the Flip Ultra uses digital film instead, which is then stored on the camera’s internal flash memory. The good news about this is that, unlike previous versions of the camcorder, the video recording time hasn’t been increased. This means that the quality of the video is a lot clearer, due to the fact that Pure Digital aren’t trying to squeeze as much recording as possible out of the camera – definitely a good decision.
The design of the Flip Ultra camcorder means it’s an extremely easy camcorder to hold, and this is a big plus when it comes to keeping it steady for recording purposes. It’s also very light, with a weight of 5 ounces even with the two AA batteries included to power the unit.
One of the more noticeable improvements in this version over previous models is the 1.5” LCD display screen that is found at the back of the camera. Although the previous model also had this, it wasn’t made out of the “transreflective” screen that comes with the Flip Ultra. Because of this new screen, video playback quality is still impressive enough, even in the strongest sunlight.
Although you can play back any clips you’ve filmed on the Flip immediately via the LCD display, you also have the option of hooking the camera up to a television, as long as the TV has a composite video input. This can help when trying to decide what looks better on your recording, and what needs to be deleted and shot again.
Another area where this Flip Ultra camcorder improves over its earlier incarnations is in its video sharing and editing. Since this camera is being marketed toward the “shoot and share” market that is YouTube users, the ability to upload pretty much straight from the camera using the Share Video option is a definite bonus. Additionally, Pure Digital has licensed video editing software from a company called Muvee.
This allows you to select your favourite movie clips, edit them into a montage and add all sorts of scrolling and fade-in, fade-out effects, as well as your own musical soundtrack. If there’s any downside to the software, it’s that it’s currently only compatible with PC’s.
Sure, there are minor gripes with the camera – it’d be nice if you could expand the memory, or have the LCD screen be able to turn on an axis. But for the quality you receive at the price you can buy it, the Flip Ultra camcorder is currently in a league of its own.
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