There will be a day — maybe it’s already here; maybe it was always here — when the Kindle will look incredibly retro. Mike Matas, once a designer of user interfaces at Apple and now co-founder of Push Pop Press, may make that day of visual reckoning come sooner rather than later. The demo above (which is easily worth a thousand words) lets you peer into the near future.. Text, images, audio, video and interactive graphics — they’ll come together in a seamless reading experience, making the traditional ebook look entirely one dimensional. You can download the book on display, Al Gore’s “Our Choice,” on iTunes here.
Seth Godin: The Wealth of Free (Semi-Animated)
Every idea has to begin somewhere. And, back in 2000, Seth Godin started experimenting with a fairly radical publishing model. Inspired by Malcolm Gladwell, Godin wrote Unleashing the Ideavirus, which essentially argued that free ideas spread quicker than ideas that cost money. And it’s the ideas that spread the quickest that win. So what was the logical next step? Making the book available for free (get the ebook here) and seeing what happened.
The video above tells you the rest of the story. What it doesn’t tell you is that Godin has since written a steady stream of bestsellers (find free ecopies here), while authoring the most widely-read marketing blog and founding Squidoo. The artwork accompanying Godin’s talk was created by Stuart Langfield.
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Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey: Free AudioBooks & eBooks
The Iliad and Odyssey — they form the bedrock of western literature and culture. And now, thanks to Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, you can find online numerous English translations of Homer’s great epic poems, including some by major literary heavyweights. Johnston’s list features translations of the Iliad by Thomas Hobbes (1675), George Chapman (1614), Alexander Pope (1720), William Cullen Bryant (1870), Samuel Butler (1888), and Richmond Lattimore (1951), along with accompanying versions of the Odyssey. Separately, but certainly worth noting, Librivox offers free audiobook versions of the Iliad and Odyssey, both based on the Butler translation. They’re now added to our list of Free Audio Books, and we have e‑texts within our Free eBooks collection.
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Oxford English Dictionary Free
Definitely worth a quick mention. The Oxford English Dictionary, otherwise known simply as the OED, can be accessed for free until February 5. This gives you access to 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, over 1000 years of English. In brief, the authority on the English language. To access the dictionary, simply login with trynewoed as both the username and password.
Note: Kaplan Publishing has extended its free ebook offer until January 17. If you know anyone getting ready to take the SAT, GRE, LSAT, etc., then please send them to this page for more information.
via Kottke
130 Free eBooks from Kaplan Publishing
A quick fyi for anyone trying to get into college or graduate school: Through January 17th, Kaplan Publishing will let you download 130 eBooks to your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Nook and Sony eReader – all for free. (You can find a special page for downloading titles via the Kindle here.) Some select titles include: Get Into Graduate School, Get Into Law School, Kaplan Portable SAT, and Kaplan AP Statistics. The full list of titles appears here, and you can start downloading the books right here. Note that you will need to initiate the download from a device listed above, and not your computer. Remember: this free offer will only last for the next few days …
Note: This offer previously expired on January 10th. Now it has been extended to January 17th.
via Galleycat
Introducing the New Google eBookstore (with Free Classics)
This morning, Google officially opened up the new Google eBookstore, which gives consumers access to three million ebooks, including many free classics. Taking a page out of Amazon’s playbook, Google now lets you purchase books at competitive ebook prices and read them across multiple platforms – meaning you can start reading a novel on your computer’s web browser, then seamlessly switch to the iPad, Kindle, or smartphone. And the content will stay in sync, all in the cloud. (Get instructions and apps here.) Another plus: you’re not forced to buy books from just Google. The new bookstore is open to independent booksellers and retail partners, which gives these smaller players a chance to play (and perhaps even thrive) in the ebook market. You can get more information on the new bookstore on the Google Books blog, and don’t miss our Free eBooks collection, which comes packed with many classics.
Note: the Google eBookstore is currently limited to the US market.
Dear Monsieur Picasso: A Free eBook
In the summer of 1955, Frederick Baldwin, a college student at Columbia University, set out on a pilgrimage of sorts, hoping to meet Pablo Picasso. Baldwin traveled first to Le Havre (presumably by boat), then headed south, down to Vallauris and Cannes, until he eventually reached Picasso’s home on the Riviera, known as Villa la Californie. It took a little craftiness and moxie, but the young American gained entrance into Picasso’s studio. And there he was, the great painter himself, wearing shorts, sandals and not much else.
More than five decades later, Baldwin has produced an elegant e‑book (available for free right here) that uses photographs and text to preserve the memory of this defining moment. After meeting Picasso, Baldwin became a professional photographer, working for Audubon, LIFE, National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and The New York Times, among other magazines. And, later, he looked to “replicate the Picasso experience professionally,” always controlling his own agenda, never taking a job where he wasn’t making his own decisions. You can download the 22 page e‑book, Dear Monsieur Picasso, right here. Find more great texts in our collection of Free eBooks.
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In Praise of Copying: Get Your Free Copy
Just a quick fyi: If you head over to the Harvard University Press web site, you can grab a free copy of Marcus Boon’s new book, In Praise of Copying, which makes the case that “copying is an essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in.” Boon is a writer, journalist and Associate Professor in the English Literature department at York University, Toronto. You can download a free copy of his book in PDF format straight from this link. (Note that the text is formally released under a Creative Commons license.) Or you can always purchase a printed copy online.
P.S. The University of Chicago Press is offering up a free e‑book of its own: The Bourgeois Virtues (632 pages) by Deirdre N. McCloskey. Head here to get a copy.
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