10 Best Book Websites by Timesonline

Literature is thriving on the web. It’s not just for sale on mega-sites such as Amazon either, but being swapped, analysed and recommended by fellow bookworms. You can download page after page of free material, post your work online and — dare we say it — even catch the eye of a publisher.

1 DailyLit.com

Fancy a daily dose of literature? Just sign up, select a book (the emphasis is on out-of-copyright classics, and most are free), then set aside a few minutes a day to read the pages the site e-mails to you at whatever time you choose. The text is readable on a computer and most mobile devices.

2 Shelfari.com

Described as a “social network for people who love books”, this site consists of a lot of people cataloguing the books they have on their shelves then indulging in some lively literary banter. For a similar proposition, check out LibraryThing.com .

3 RareBookRoom.org

You’ll probably never get your hands on a first-edition Shakespeare, but this is the next-best thing: 400 priceless literary treasures scanned in ultra high-resolution, now yours to peruse online.

4 FreeBookSpot.com

A goldmine of downloadable textbooks, saved as PDFs, meaning that unlike most electronic book formats, the diagrams and illustrations are preserved. Most take less than 60 seconds to download over broadband.

5 Authonomy.com

Launched last year by HarperCollins, the publisher, this site allows aspiring authors to upload their novels and have them read — and judged — by fellow members. It has already identified some up-and-coming talent, and the best offerings are now being printed.

6 Books.google.com

Also known as Google Book Search, this is a gateway to all manner of free book and magazine content, much of it downloadable. The search function is particularly strong, and is able to pull up specific text buried in any of the umpteen-million pages the company has scanned to date.

7 Blurb.com

Got a book in you? Use Blurb’s free software to lay it out, then upload it, and the site will make it into a real paperback, with prices starting at around a fiver.

8 BookCrossing.com

BookCrossing is the practice of leaving a book you’ve read for someone else to pick up by following your online directions. Nearly 800,000 people in 130 countries are involved.

9 LibriVox.org

This is the home of free, downloadable audiobooks — mainly classics and read by volunteers. It may be the only way you get to hear Dickens read in a Liverpool accent.

10 Goodreads.com

Described as “the world’s largest reading room”, the site is home to an active and well-informed community of bookworms.

 

 Source: Timesonline (12th July, The Sunday Times -Ingear)

Google Fast Flip: Discover and Share News Articles

Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to follow friends and topics, discover new content and create their own custom magazines around searches.

Google Fast Flip is an online free news reader that’s about reading news online but in newspaper style. One look at the way Google Fast Flip operates and you will get the idea. Google already delivers news content via Google News. With this new Google Labs web application, Google is attempting to promote a different way to read news. Something to which we are more accustomed with our morning brew.

The visual way of reading news is supposed to be free news reader with a more intuitive and faster experience. A news portal loads elements like images, videos, podcasts and Flash ads. This slows down content delivery when all we want is just scan the headlines and move on to a news snippet of interest. Google Fast Flip tries to speed up this process by giving a way to ‘flip through’ pages in the manner of a newspaper without any time lags.

• Popular is what’s hot and breaking. Follow what’s being recommended or most viewed across the news world.
• Sections are more like pages of specific news subjects like politics, world news,  sci-tech, sports, health, travel etc.
• Topics are just that, a subject matter that’s being discussed .
• Sources are the snapshots of news aggregated from the news/magazine websites.

See.  http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/

Find open souce as alternative to the popular commercial software

You can find open source alternatives to your favorite commercial products at osalt.com. Software categories and comparison and pros and cons of both commercial products as well as open source software are also done. For example the site show you and help you to browse alternative of Photoshop -> Krita 1.6.1 or Seashore 0.1.9 or Gimp 2.6 or CinePaint 0.23 or Gimpshop 2.2.11.

Check at.- http://www.osalt.com/

OASIS(Open Access Schlorly Information Sourcebook):Practical Step to Implimenting Open Access

The growing interest in Open Access (OA) worldwide necessitate the increasing demand for training, knowledge development, and skills for the implementing of OA repositories and OA journals, the twin routes for making research results openly accessible.

OASIS is a source book on OA movement, covering the concept, principles, advantages, approaches and means to achieving open access. It is a community building as much as a resource-building exercise. OASIS encouraged to share and download the resources provided, and to modify and customize them for local use.

The objectives of OASIS are as follows:

• to increase the number of trainers and centers of expertise worldwide
• to expand the knowledge base of open access implementation
• to share resources and best practices
• to demonstrate and record successful outcomes of OA around the world

http://www.openoasis.org/

Spezify: A Search Tool

Spezify is a search tool presenting results from a large number of websites in different visual ways. It take web search further, away from endless lists of blue text links and towards a more intuitive experience. Spezify mix all media types and make no difference between blogs, videos, micro blogs and images. Everything communicates and helps building the bigger picture. It collects websites and are aiming to use as many relevant, free and open API:s as possible to generate extensive and diverse search results.

Really, it is very interesting and good search tool. For more details please visit:

http://www.spezify.com/

Book Review Site:The Truth About Book

The Truth About Books is an independent book review website that provides professional, honest book reviews, author interviews, regular competitions and much more. It will helps in:

• Provide professional, independent and honest book reviews
• Recommended Reads for those needing inspiration
• Encourage and promote literature both in the UK and across the globe
• Monthly competitions: Readers’ Choice and Parents’ Choice
• Help consumers easily find the best possible price for the books they want
• Support authors in their efforts to get noticed (including self-published, debut and small independent publications)
• Author snippets

http://www.thetruthaboutbooks.com/

Springer Exemplar

Exemplar allows to see how a particular term or phrase is used in peer-reviewed, published literature. Exemplar searches over 1,900 journals from Springer’s collection to find authentic examples of how a word or phrase is used in published literature. Comprehensive coverage includes both current and archival content in all major subject areas including the life sciences, medicine, engineering, mathematics, computer science, business, and law, contributed by some of the world’s leading academics in these fields. Exemplar is continuously updated with new content as it is published.

Exemplar is for:

• Authors who want suggestions on how to express themselves or want to confirm how a particular word or phrase is used in published literature.
• Teachers who are looking for authentic phrases and sentences for teaching and testing.
• Editors and reviewers who want to confirm whether or not a particular turn of phrase is justified by usage.

For more information visit: http://www.springerexemplar.com/index.aspx

Google’s News Timeline

Google News Timeline is a web application that organizes search results chronologically. It allows users to view news and other data sources on a browsable, graphical timeline. Available data sources include recent and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, sports scores, and information about various types of media, like music albums and movies.

Google News Timeline provides a number of ways to navigate through time. Its features search results from many different sources: News Sources; Magazines and Newspapers; Blogs; Baseball Scores; Wikipedia Events, Births, and Deaths; Media from Freebase

http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/

OpenCourseWare Consortium for free & open digital publication

An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.

The OCW Consortium is designed to:

•  Extend the reach and impact of opencourseware by encouraging the adoption and adaptation of open educational materials around the world.
• Foster the development of additional opencourseware projects.
• Ensure the long-term sustainability of opencourseware projects by identifying ways to improve effectiveness and reduce costs.

To join and participate please visit: http://www.ocwconsortium.org/home.html

Google Power Searching Tips for Students

Google is the go-to search engine for both students and librarians. But with so much information on the web, it can be difficult to navigate Google and find exactly what you are looking for. The following Google power searching tips are designed to eliminate this common difficulty and lead you to the relevant information you need.

Useful Google Search Engines for Students and Universities

o Google University Search – Google’s University Search makes it easy to find information on university sites. University Search is great for students who are looking for information about admissions, programs, libraries and alumni news.

o Google Scholar – Google Scholar is the search engine to use when looking for scholarly literature, including papers, abstracts and citations. The most relevant results are guaranteed to appear on the first page.

o Google News Archive Search – This Google engine makes it easy to search historical archives. You can search by keyword and select news from relevant time periods.

o Google Blog Search – This Google search engine is entirely focused on blogs. You can explore by topic, site or keyword.

o Google Book Search – When you use Google Book Search, you can search the full text of books, see a preview of a book and use links to buy or borrow books from a store of library.

o Google Video Google Video hosts the most comprehensive collection of videos on the web. You can use this engine to find everything from documentaries and TV shows to syndicated web programming and personal productions.

o Google Advanced Search – The advanced search feature of Google is a fantastic way to get precise results. You can narrow your search down by file type, date range, language and much more.

Power Searching Tutorials

o Google Power Search Tutorial – This tutorial from Google teaches you how to use the Google search engine to get the best results. The tips are brief and offer specific examples to show you what type of results you can expect based on what you type into a Google search engine.

o Google Improve Your Search Tutorial – You can learn general tips to improve your Google search when you read this Google tutorial. The tutorial offers information on how to find everything from currency conversions to dictionary definitions.

o The Essentials of Google Search – This Google tutorial offers tips to help you choose the most appropriate search terms.

o Google Guide – Google Guide is an interactive tutorial that is specifically designed to help people learn how to make the most of Google search engines. The site offers separate sections for novices, teens and experts.

o 12 Quick Tips to Search Google Like an Expert – This HubSpot tutorial is a quick read and is best suited to people who want to brush up on Google skills and learn a couple of new power searching tricks.

o 101 Google Tips, Tricks and Hacks – This TechRadar.com tutorial offers 101 proven tips for using Google. Tips are short and easy to read through and offer valuable information for Google searchers at any level.

o Advanced Scholar Search Tips – This Google tutorial teaches you how to add ‘operators’ to improve your search experience and offers tips to help you use Google Scholar to its full potential.

Videos to Help You Use Google More Efficiently

o Google Search Tutorial – This five-minute video tutorial is based on the ‘Basic Search Help’ section of Google.com. It is best suited to students and universities who are looking for basic Google search tips.

o Teach Students How to Search Google – This seven-minute video is designed for people who want to teach other people how to search Google more effectively.

o How to Search Specific Sites with Google – This three-minute video teaches viewers how to search for information on a specific website using the traditional Google search engine.

o Advanced Google Search Tips – This eight-minute PowerPoint presentation from TeacherTube video offers step-by-step instructions to using Google’s advanced search features.

o Get Your Google On – This twelve-minute video from Locker Gnome offers a great selection of advanced search tips written by Google users.

o Google Search Tips – This eight-minute YouTube video offers an interview with Google’s senior engineer, who offers genuinely helpful Google search tips.