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Grab a Free Chapter of Google Apps Hacks

10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Philipp Lenssen, author of the oft-linked Google Blogoscoped blog, has put together an entire book of Google Apps Hacks, covering Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and beyond, and his publisher is offering a sample chapter as a free PDF download. The sample delves into Google Presentations and how the PowerPoint-like app can be extended pretty far with style sheet tweaks, theme changes, and a little creative use of photos. Hit the link below to grab the free 19-page excerpt. Google Apps Hacks [O'Reilly Media] More »

Toss Freely-Available Books to Clear Out Bookshelves

12:40AM Kevin Purdy | People get pretty attached to their favourite books, but an over-abundance of just-can’t-toss tomes can overwhelm your shelves and leave you with useless, seriously heavy boxes. The Unclutterer blog offers some tough love for book lovers, but this tip in particular stands out for college grads: Get rid of any book you’ve read, don’t plan on reading or referencing again, is in the public domain, and can be found in its entirety online. That’s right, I’m talking about ditching your Dover copy of The Scarlet Letter. Looking at my own shelves, I can see more than a handful of candidates that meet that criteria. The idea is, presumably, that if I really want to yank a copy down and reference it, it’s actually easier to do with an online copy. While you’re de-booking, read a few suggestions on re-organising your bookshelf.Photo by Stewart. Bringing your bookshelves back to order [Unclutterer] More »

Get Free Copyrighted eBooks in PDF Format at Wowio

2:00AM Kevin Purdy | Want a free ebook copy of a Kurt Vonnegut novel? Free ebook site Wowio has five of them, along with lots of other copyrighted fiction, literature, comics, and other works. The site offers the wares through sponsorships, and only limits your downloads to three books per day, 30 per month. The two caveats are a somewhat limited selection (as you might expect) and that the site’s U.S.-only due to licensing restrictions. Otherwise, it’s not a bad place to check for fresh content for your PDA, cell phone or computer screen. For more free page-turners, try the top ten sites for free books and the 100 best free Project Gutenberg books. More »

Use WorldCat to Search Libraries

2:00AM Wendy Boswell | The next time you need to find something at your local library, try searching through WorldCat, a ginormous network of libraries, library content, and library services. You can use WorldCat to search for everything you would search for at your local library, find free content (downloadable audiobooks, for example), articles and citations, historical documents, and many more kinds of information from libraries all over the world. You can also use WorldCat to check out items directly from libraries you have an active membership with (this can vary by library). AU – I already posted about Worldcat here. WorldCat More »