Fill Your New Kindle, iPad, iPhone with Free eBooks, Movies, Audio Books, Online Courses & More

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, e-books, iPad, Online Courses | December 25th, 2012

San­ta left a new Kin­dle, iPad or oth­er media play­er under your tree. He did his job. Now we’ll do ours. We’ll tell you how to fill those devices with free intel­li­gent media — great books, movies, cours­es, and all of the rest. And if you did­n’t get a new gad­get, fear not. You can access all of these mate­ri­als on the good old fash­ioned com­put­er. Here we go:

Free eBooks: You have always want­ed to read the great works. And now is your chance. When you dive into our Free eBooks col­lec­tion you will find 375 great works by some clas­sic writ­ers (Dick­ens, Dos­to­evsky, Shake­speare and Tol­stoy) and con­tem­po­rary writ­ers (F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asi­mov, and Kurt Von­negut). The col­lec­tion also gives you access to the 51-vol­ume Har­vard Clas­sics.

If you’re an iPad/iPhone user, the down­load process is super easy. Just click the “iPad/iPhone” links and you’re good to go. Kin­dle and Nook users will gen­er­al­ly want to click the “Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats links” to down­load ebook files, but we’d sug­gest watch­ing these instruc­tion­al videos (Kin­dle –Nook) before­hand.

Free Audio Books: What bet­ter way to spend your free time than lis­ten­ing to some of the great­est books ever writ­ten? This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books, includ­ing works by Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and more recent writ­ers — Ita­lo Calvi­no, Vladimir Nabokov, Ray­mond Carv­er, etc. You can down­load these clas­sic books straight to your gagdets, then lis­ten as you go.

[Note: If you’re look­ing for a con­tem­po­rary book, you can down­load one free audio book from Audible.com. Find details on Audi­ble’s no-strings-attached deal here.]

Free Online Cours­es: This list brings togeth­er over 600 free online cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond. These full-fledged cours­es range across all dis­ci­plines — his­to­ry, physics, phi­los­o­phy, psy­chol­o­gy and beyond. Most all of these cours­es are avail­able in audio, and rough­ly 75% are avail­able in video. You can’t receive cred­its or cer­tifi­cates for these cours­es (click here for cours­es that do offer cer­tifi­cates. But the amount of per­son­al enrich­ment you will derive is immea­sur­able.

Free Movies: With a click of a mouse, or a tap of your touch screen, you will have access to 500 great movies. The col­lec­tion hosts many clas­sics, west­erns, indies, doc­u­men­taries, silent films and film noir favorites. It fea­tures work by some of our great direc­tors (Alfred Hitch­cock, Orson Welles, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stan­ley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch) and per­for­mances by cin­e­ma leg­ends: John Wayne, Jack Nichol­son, Audrey Hep­burn, Char­lie Chap­lin, and beyond. On this one page, you will find thou­sands of hours of cin­e­ma bliss.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Per­haps learn­ing a new lan­guage is high on your list of 2013 New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 40 lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish, Yid­dish and Esperan­to. These lessons are all free and ready to down­load.

Free Text­books: And one last item for the life­long learn­ers among you. We have scoured the web and pulled togeth­er a list of 150 Free Text­books. It’s a great resource par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re look­ing to learn math, com­put­er sci­ence or physics on your own. There might be a dia­mond in the rough here for you.

Thank San­ta, maybe thank us, and enjoy that new device.…

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NASA Presents “The Earth as Art” in a Free eBook and Free iPad App

in Art, e-books, iPad, K-12, Science | December 20th, 2012

In 1960, NASA put its first “Earth-observ­ing envi­ron­men­tal satel­lite” into orbit, and, ever since, these satel­lites have let us observe the dynam­ics of our plan­et in a new way.  They can tell us all about chang­ing weath­er pat­terns, the impact of cli­mate change, what’s hap­pen­ing in the oceans, the coast­lines, rivers and more.

The satel­lites have also demon­strat­ed again and again the Earth’s aes­thet­ic beau­ty, revealed in the pat­terns, shapes, col­ors, and tex­tures seen from space. That beau­ty is what gets cel­e­brat­ed in NASA Earth As Art, a new visu­al pub­li­ca­tion made avail­able as a Free 160-Page eBook (PDF) and a Free iPad App. Fea­tur­ing 75 images in total, the app gives you a very aer­i­al look at places like the Himalayas, Arizona’s Paint­ed Desert, the Lena Riv­er Delta in Rus­sia (shown above), the Byrd Glac­i­er in Antarc­ti­ca, and much more. Enjoy the images, from the sur­re­al to the sub­lime.

You’ll find NASA Earth As Art list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. Also see these relat­ed NASA mate­ri­als:

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

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The Complete Sherlock Holmes Now Free on the Kindle

in Books, e-books, Literature | December 13th, 2012

It’s sure­ly worth giv­ing you the quick heads up that, start­ing today, “the com­plete col­lec­tion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes tales, both long and short, have been com­piled togeth­er for the first time.” The Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes (down­load it here) is free on the Kin­dle thanks to Simon & Schus­ter. Unlike many free texts, the for­mat­ting looks quite nice on my Kin­dle Paper­white as well as on the iPad using the Free Kin­dle app. So, we’re glad­ly adding this one to our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks, which gives you imme­di­ate access to many more clas­sics.

NOTE: We have unfor­tu­nate­ly dis­cov­ered that this par­tic­u­lar text is not avail­able in some coun­tries. Sor­ry, there was no way for us to know that in advance. But, fear not, you can find oth­er ver­sions of Sher­lock Holmes on the web. Give these links a try:

Doyle, Arthur Conan - The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes

via @kirstinbutler/The Verge

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Calibre’s Open Source Software Makes It Easy to Read Free eBooks (and Much More)

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, iPad, iPhone, Software | October 25th, 2012

We at Open Cul­ture have dis­cov­ered a handy piece of soft­ware that will make it eas­i­er to use our col­lec­tion, 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. Cal­i­bre is a free e‑book library man­age­ment soft­ware that lets users con­vert e‑books from one for­mat to anoth­er.

Say that you’ve down­loaded Jane Austen’s Pride and Prej­u­dice in the open ePUB for­mat and want to move the book onto your Kin­dle. Cal­i­bre can con­vert the text into all of the major e‑reader for­mats, includ­ing Kindle’s pro­pri­etary for­mat. The pro­gram will then sync the text to your device and you’re good to go.

Cal­i­bre sup­ports e‑book for­mats used by major man­u­fac­tur­ers (includ­ing Ama­zon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Sony), but if your device isn’t list­ed in the program’s list, Calibre’s “gener­ic device” option will most like­ly do the job.

The pro­gram also offers a default view­er for read­ing texts on your com­put­er, and books can be con­vert­ed from one plat­form to anoth­er, mak­ing it easy to move books from your phone to iPad to lap­top and beyond.

Cal­i­bre fills a niche for e‑book read­ers, pro­vid­ing a sim­ple way to man­age e‑libraries. The pro­gram also helps man­age and orga­nize online mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers and oth­er read­ing mate­ri­als. Click “Fetch News” and Cal­i­bre will scan select­ed online news out­lets and cat­a­log them in your col­lec­tion.

You can even buy books by using Calibre’s inter­face to search for the best price on a select­ed title.

You can down­load Cal­i­bre here and then start min­ing our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Find more of her work at .

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Download 397 Free Art Catalogs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

in Art, Books, e-books, Museums | October 22nd, 2012

Ear­li­er this year, the Guggen­heim Muse­um put online 65 mod­ern art books, giv­ing you free access to books intro­duc­ing the work of Alexan­der Calder, Edvard Munch, Fran­cis Bacon, Gus­tav Klimt & Egon Schiele, and Kandin­sky. Now, just a few short months lat­er, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art has launched Met­Pub­li­ca­tions, a por­tal that will “even­tu­al­ly offer access to near­ly all books, Bul­letins, and Jour­nals” pub­lished by the Met since 1870.

Of the many resources you can explore, here’s one obvi­ous high­light: Met­Pub­li­ca­tions now makes avail­able 397 out-of-print titles, includ­ing lots of infor­ma­tive and visu­al­ly-packed art cat­a­logs from the muse­um’s past exhi­bi­tions. You can read the books online or down­load them in PDF for­mat (although I should warn you that the PDF down­loads take some time, so be patient). When you rum­mage around, you’ll come across works like these and more:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Down­load 375 Free eBooks

 

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Amazon Finally Gets the Kindle Right with the Paperwhite, Delivering on Price and Technology

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Technology | October 7th, 2012

It took five years and five mod­els, but Ama­zon has final­ly released a new gen­er­a­tion of the Kin­dle — the Kin­dle Paper­white — that deliv­ers the goods. The prob­lem with the pre­vi­ous mod­els boiled down to this. The screens were fair­ly mud­dy. The con­trast, poor. The words did­n’t pop off of the page. If you ever tried read­ing a Kin­dle indoors, espe­cial­ly in low­er light con­di­tions, you know what I mean.

With the Kin­dle Paper­white, Ama­zon has made a pret­ty big leap ahead. They’ve made improve­ments to the font con­trast and screen res­o­lu­tion, which def­i­nite­ly enhance the read­ing expe­ri­ence. They’ve also added a touch­screen to the e‑ink mod­el. But the big stride for­ward is the built-in light that illu­mi­nates the screen. The screen is sidelit, not back­lit (à la the iPad). The point of the light isn’t to make the screen glow like a com­put­er screen. It’s to make the screen stay white, like the page of a book, under vary­ing light con­di­tions. If you move from brighter to dim­mer light­ing con­di­tions, you nudge up the bright­ness so that the page con­tin­ues to look white. And then you stop there.

It all works quite well, until you start read­ing with the Paper­white in pret­ty dim light con­di­tions. Then you’ll need to dial up the light until the screen actu­al­ly glows, and that’s when you’ll start to see some imper­fec­tions in the design. As David Pogue men­tioned in his New York Times review, the Paper­white has some hotspots (areas of uneven light­ing) along the bot­tom of the screen, which detract minor­ly from the read­ing expe­ri­ence.

The last thing Ama­zon got right is the price. The entry mod­el starts at $119, which means that Ama­zon is basi­cal­ly sell­ing the e‑reader at cost, and then mak­ing mon­ey on book sales. But that does­n’t mean that you need to spend very much. You can always down­load texts from our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks. Or, if you’re an Ama­zon Prime Mem­ber, you can bor­row up to 180,000 books for free.

For a com­plete tour of the new Kin­dle, watch this 20 minute video.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 450 Free Audio Books

Read 160 Free Text­books Online

Down­load a Free Audio Book From Audible.com

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The Comic Biography of Underground Publisher & Political Writer, John Wilcock

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, e-books | September 11th, 2012

He describes him­self as a “peri­patet­ic patri­arch of the free press,” and so he may be. John Wilcock, a British ex-pat who helped found the Vil­lage Voice in 1955 went to work as the New York Times’ trav­el edi­tor. His Europe on $5 a Day was sem­i­nal in the trav­el guide­book pub­lish­ing world. His sub­se­quent Mex­i­co on $5 a Day was a trail­blaz­er.

Wilcock, who lives in Cal­i­for­nia and pub­lish­es the online Ojai Orange, was the ulti­mate gad­fly. His 1971 Auto­bi­og­ra­phy and Sex Life of Andy Warhol includ­ed inter­views with Nico, Lou Reed and oth­er asso­ciates of the enig­mat­ic artist. Wilcock was also a found­ing edi­tor, with Warhol, of Inter­view Mag­a­zine in 1969. He accom­pa­nied Warhol out the night that the Vel­vet Under­ground played its first gig and wrote lin­er notes for Nico.

Pub­lished online in graph­ic nov­el form, John Wilcock: The New York Years chron­i­cles this peri­od in Wilcock­’s life with an exten­sive inter­view and sump­tu­ous car­toon illus­tra­tions by artists Ethan Per­soff and Scott Mar­shall. Chap­ters one and two are deli­cious­ly fun read­ing, as Wilcock recounts his arrival in New York City from Eng­land and his ear­ly inter­views with Leonard Bern­stein, Rock Hud­son and Mil­ton Berle and launch­ing the Vil­lage Voice.

It’s an impres­sive site that cap­tures the Bohemi­an cir­cles Wilcock moved in. Per­soff and Mar­shall have just released chap­ter three, which includes Wilcock’s time edit­ing Nor­man Mail­er and his inter­views with actor Jean Shep­herd and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. Stay tuned for more. Chap­ter three brings us up to 1957 so there should be plen­ty more to share.

Kate Rix is free­lance writer. Find more of her work at

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A Big List of 375 Free eBooks for Your iPad, Kindle, Nook and Other Devices

in Amazon Kindle, e-books | September 9th, 2012

Last week, Ama­zon announced that it would start ship­ping a promis­ing, new ebook read­er in ear­ly Octo­ber — the Kin­dle Paper­white. The Paper­white looks much like the old school, e‑ink Kin­dle that you know and maybe love. But this new mod­el has a touch­screen and bet­ter con­trast­ing fonts. Plus … drum roll … it sports a built-in light that even­ly illu­mi­nates the screen, as you can see here. If Ama­zon can deliv­er on these promis­es, the new Kin­dle should be a pret­ty excel­lent deal, espe­cial­ly see­ing that the cheap­est mod­el is priced at $119.

If you’re ready to splurge for an ebook read­er, then we’re ready to do our part — to hook you up with Free eBooks. If you vis­it our col­lec­tion, 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices, you’ll find 600 great works. The list includes many clas­sic mas­ter­pieces (Tol­stoy’s War & Peace, Jane Austen’s Pride & Prej­u­dice, and Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis), but also more mod­ern works by such authors as Isaac Asi­mov, Philip K. Dick, Kurt Von­negut, and even Neil Gaiman.

If you’re an iPad/iPhone user, the down­load process is super easy. Just click the “iPad/iPhone” links and you’re good to go. Kin­dle and Nook users will gen­er­al­ly want to click the “Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats links” to down­load ebook files, but we’d sug­gest watch­ing these instruc­tion­al videos (Kin­dle — Nook) before­hand to take full advan­tage of the col­lec­tion. And, if down­load­ing files seems like a bur­den, fear not. We often give you the abil­i­ty to sim­ply read texts online. Find our full col­lec­tion here: 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

PS When you return, you can always find this col­lec­tion along the top nav­i­ga­tion bar — where it says eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

500 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

150 Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion

450 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

500 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Learn 40 Lan­guages for Free: Span­ish, Eng­lish, Chi­nese & More

 

 

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