Read books as they’re written w/ Roughcuts
Submitted on January 24th, 2006 by admin
Filed under Shopping and Books and Resources
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Roughcuts is an interesting new book service from O’Reilly, the same folks who publish some of the most popular tech books in the industry. So what is it exactly? By paying for a Roughcuts subscription, you are allowed access to drafts of books as they’re being written and have the ability to send comments, and feedback to the writers and ediors in order to improve the book. Once the finished product is published, you also receive a copy of the book. You’ll be paying a bit more for the online access, but it’s still quite an interesting experiment, and for those of us who have libraries of O’Reilly books, it’s definitely a nice little extra.
[Via Boing Boing]
[tags]o’reilly, books, text, preview, services[/tags]
Textbook Revolution helps you find free courseware
Submitted on November 29th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Books and Resources
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With the growth of the internet, more and more people are taking courses online. Others simply like to find free information on the web simply to improve their knowledge of a subject, or read up on the latest techniques in their field. If you are one of these people, you should definitely check out Textbook Revolution. The site is a great resource for finding textbooks and other courseware which is freely available on the web. Categories include business, technology, various scientific disciplines and more.
The Ultimate Guide to Google Services
Submitted on November 17th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Email and Productivity and Books and Shopping and Storage and Browsers and Graphics and Software and Services and Audio and Resources and Video
No. of comments (161)
Anyone who has ever used the internet probably knows about Google’s web search, but did you know that Google does a lot more? We’ve discussed many Google services on TipMonkies before, but there are some which some of you may not be aware of. Read the full article to get the giant list of Google services and what each does. We’ll try to keep this list up-to-date as Google begins rolling out more services (because you know they will).
1500 free eBooks from…Microsoft? Yup.
Submitted on October 26th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Books and Resources
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When you think of Microsoft, you generally don’t think about getting anything for free (except maybe for those cool XP powertoys), but the Redmond giant has put together a very nice collection of over 1500 (1516 to be exact) completely free eBooks which include tons of reference material like dictionaries and city guides, as well as great classics like The Time Machine and World of the Worlds. You can find the full library right here.
[Via digg]
Uncap your iPod’s volume level
Submitted on October 11th, 2005 by admin
Filed under The Mac Side and Books and Audio and Software and Windows and Linux
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Owners of iPods in Europe have had to deal with ridiculous volume restrictions on their iPods which forces Apple to put a cap on the maximum volume level the iPod can achieve. Now, there’s a new program called goPod which will unlock the restriction and let you hear your music at full blast for some ear-bleeding fun. This may damage your iPod though I haven’t heard of any problems yet. By the way, this is illegal in France (LOL). Grab goPod right here; it’s free and available for Windows, OSX, and Linux.
[Via digg]
Book Review: Steal This File Sharing Book
Submitted on September 26th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Books and Reviews and Networking
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File sharing is more and more common every day for a lot of users. For some, it’s almost second nature. A lot of people use file sharing networks to trade music, movies, and other files, but some use these networks for legal purposes. Steal This File Sharing Book goes over all the different networks, explains how to use them, and how to be safe in the process. Wallace Wang goes over everything you need to know about the history of file sharing, being safe, and exposes the abundant free files online.
Catalog your books with LibraryThing
Submitted on September 24th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Books and Services
No. of comments (3)
It seems like every day, there’s a new service popping up which offers to help you catalog your media, in this case books, thanks to LibraryThing. The service is free and completely web-based. SImilar to Reader2, it searches various online databases in order to match the title you’re searching with an existing one. While most services stick only to Amazon, LibraryThing will also search through the Library of Congress database, giving you much more refined and detailed information on books, including many which are no longer in print or rare. As far as databases go, it offers the most thorough catalog with over 160,000 books. A membership will let you catalog up to 200 books, but a USD10 lifetime membership will get you unlimited access.
My favorite features are the extras which include a widget so you can add your collection to a blog, and an Amazon bookmarklet to make it easy to add new books to your list. One of the more interesting and useful extras, is the ability to import your current collection from Delicious LIbrary, or export your list to CSV format which could then be read Excel. Though it has a somewhat unfortunate (though descriptive) name, LibraryThing is an awesome tool for those of us with large book collections.
Listal, the media collection manager
Submitted on September 20th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Books and Productivity and Audio and Services and Video
No. of comments (6)
I’ll admit, I’m a media junkie. I read several books a week, and love to collect DVDs and video games. In fact, my collection has outgrown many-a-bookshelf, and I often find it difficult to keep track of all the media I own. I’ve tried various software solutions, but being a web addict, I often prefer to find alternatives online. Luckily, I came upon Listal, which is an amazing service which lets you catalog all kinds of media, including DVDs, books, music, and games. Best of all, it lets you categorize each one via tags (a huge advantage, in my opinion) and you can even rate every piece of media you own. You can also break media down into items you own, and items you’d like to buy, making it a valuable shopping tool as well.
The signup process is super simple, and once logged in, you will notice that Listal is pretty much a blank slate, showing no categories by default. For those of you who like to brag, you can even choose to make your media library public for the world to see, or simply keep it to yourself. Listal is completely free, and has become one of my most visited bookmarks.
LibriVox: the open-source audiobook library
Submitted on September 13th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Books and Resources and Audio
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LibriVox is a pretty interesting experiment at doing an open-source audiobook library which, if you like to listen to audiobooks, you should probably check out. LibriVox is completely community-centric, and every week, people sign up to read a particular chapter of a book, and the book is then distributed to the public domain as a podcast. If you’d like to check it out, or maybe volunteer to read some chapters, head on to their website.
Reader2, tag your book collection!
Submitted on September 6th, 2005 by admin
Filed under Books and Productivity and Services
No. of comments (1)
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about MyProgs, a web application which lets you put a collection of software online and tag it for others to find, much like del.icio.us. Well, the same folks who created MyProgs have now come up with a new concept called Reader2. Reader2 allows you to put a list of books you own online and tag them in whatever way you like. You can also add genres and authors making easier to discover new things to read. If you are looking for some new books to read, Reader2 is an excellent way to do it. Plus, tagging things is cool right?
