Gizmo's Freeware

Hi All,

If users want to review and rate the best free software a good site to visit would be Gizmo's Freeware. 

Click on this 'About' link to learn more about Gizmo's Freeware....note that the site is composed of a non-commercial community of users and the site is staffed by volunteers.

The site has links for freeware on a multitude of topics including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Online Apps, eBooks and Resources.

For example, when a user chooses the Windows option listed above another page of options appears.  All Windows desktop freeware is listed by category.  Some of the more relevant categories include Audio & Video, Cleanup & Tuning, Disk & File, Games, Photos & Graphics and Security & Privacy.

Another click on the topic that is needed brings the user to another page.  This page has a narrative about the specific freeware in question.  Note that a time stamp is included in the article.  In addition, the author of the article is listed. The site gives users the ability to track particular author's articles - and view them.

The site is much different than PCWorld or Cnet since its focuses completely on freeware.  The other sites deal with news, video, How-To and have software downloads...

Enjoy the links!

Regards,
Stu

Free Ebooks

Hi All,

The library has a fantastic product for downloading ebooks and audiobooks called Overdrive - its free by the way.  Click here for the link.

Using just your library card you can download current fiction, current non-fiction and audiobooks to your iPad, Kindle and other Android devices.

But wait...there's more. Other websites give users access to even more free ebooks and free audiobooks.

Readers can visit Gutenberg.org to download free contemporary fiction and non-fiction ebooks to your devices.  Users must use the Kindle free app or have an Amazon kindle device

However, users can also use HundredZeros to download free and discounted (these cost money)  ebooks that match your interests.  Link to HundredZeros is here.

Finally users can try BookBub.com for even more downloadable books. (Users must register for BookBub though.  BookBub is free to join and you can read on any device. Also, the books are yours to own.

Enjoy the sites and the free ebooks!  Happy reading.

Regards, 
Stu

Internet Archive: The Wayback Machine

Hi All,

Who says that everything on the internet is always there?!  Its not.  Material get posted and then gets removed every single second of every single day.  So how are you able to find material from a few days ago - let alone a few years ago?

Great question and for that we have the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine.  With an easy url to remember - http://archive.org/web/ - its not wonder the site is so well known and so well used!

The site moniker is '456 billion web pages saved over time'.  Wow - that is almost half-a-trillion (yes, with a 't') websites.  The number looks like this 456,000,000,000.  Awesome.  And all the sites can be searched. 

Just type in a website name (businessweek, espn, Farmingdale Public Library, etc.) and you'll be directed to another page that has the url that you searched and the number of times (between a particular date the) site was first found on the Wayback Machine and the current date.

For example, a search for the Farmingdale Public Library resulted in a page that says the Wayback Machine saved the Farmingdale PL site 74 times between August 17, 2007 and March 29, 2015. 

And there is a box which enables the user to click on a particular year - and then a particular month - to choose to view the site on certain day.  Click on the blue circle of the date you are interested in and you'll see a snapshot of how the site looked on that day. 

Some notes...sometimes pictures take a bit of time to load and sometimes page links don't go to an original link.

Click on this link to learn a bit more about the Internet Archive.  Click on this link to capture a web page as it appear now for use as a trusted citation in the future!  Click on this link for a very, very extensive FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) from the Internet Archive.

And for some fun Internet Archive links, click on this link which offers over 6,000,000 fully accessible public domain ebooks.  Awesome!  Not all torrents are bad!  Click on this link to go to a page of Archive Torrents.  There is a search box for you to use on the page.

And, as if this wasn't enough, the Internet Archive has a blog, and a store, and a full-fledged organization structure.  Click on the prior links to see the particular option you are interested in.

And to think that some folks still say that 'nothing is free anymore!'.  Go figure.  They just haven't seen the Internet Archive yet!. 

Regards,
Stu

Spotlight On Websites That Offer Free Downloadable E-books

Hi All,

I'm sure that many of you know that the library has e-books. Users can download e-books onto their Ipod, Ipad, Sony Reader, Android device, Nook's, Kindle's and other e-readers.
Just visit the library website by clicking on this link and scrolling down to the section of the page that says 'Download an E-book or Audiobook'. Click here to go directly to the link though.

Farmingdale PL patrons can download books on a wide variety of topics - both fiction and non-fiction in a wide variety of formats from Overdrive. Just remember that you'll need your Farmingdale library card to download e-books and audiobooks.

Now - onto to the main part of this post. Did you ever hear about Project Gutenberg? Well, if not, Project Gutenberg is an online archive of books and e-books that users can take out and read - for free! Click here to go to the Project Gutenberg site. (http://www.gutenberg.org) FYI, Project Gutenberg has over 33,000 free e-books to read on virtually all devices.

Another website where readers can get their fill of e-books is on Free-ebooks.net. Click on this link to go to the site. The site also has e-book resources and information on ebook authors.

http://www.free-ebooks.net

Finally, users can click on this link from Manybooks.net to get yet more e-books. Click here to go to the Manybooks site. http://manybooks.net Manybooks has over 29,000 e-books available for Kindle, Nook, Ipad and most other eReaders. And of course, they are free!

Other free e-book sites include:

UPenn Digital Library at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books

Kokobooks.com at http://www.kokobooks.com

Archive.org at http://www.archive.org/details/texts

Google Books at http://books.google.com/ebooks

Enjoy the books!

Stu