Free e-Books

Project Gutenberg has over 100,000 out of copyright e-books that you can download for free:

http://www.gutenberg.org

The Universal Library at archive.org has over 70,000 free, out of copyright, e-books. I have found a number of books on there that I couldn't find at Project Gutenberg:

http://www.archive.org/details/universallibrary

ManyBooks has over 23,000 e-books that you can download for free in a number of different file formats:

http://manybooks.net

Quite a lot (though by no means all) of the e-books on lulu.com can be downloaded for free:

http://www.lulu.com

(Lulu is a company which allows authors to publish in small print runs rather than relying on large publishing houses)

A nice German company, GASL, has made its out of copyright publications available here:

http://www.gasl.org/wordpress/?page_id=67

Unfortunately the site is in German, but the link above is to the latest additions to its catalogue and it's quite clear which of the books are in English. Just click on a link to download a book.

If you click on Alphabetisch A-H, Alphabetisch I-P, Alphabetisch Q-Z you'll see their other titles.

For example, here's a PDF download of Alice in Wonderland from their site.

Newspapers and Feed Readers

Buying a paper newspaper is a non-thrifty habit I haven't given up, partly because I prefer the experience of reading the physical paper, and partly because I think it would be a big cultural loss if paper newspapers were to disappear, just as it would if paper books were to disappear. (Update 2011: unfortunately did eventually have to give up buying the Grauniad - can't remember now whether it was the arrival of Julian Glover, or Monbiot asserting that Fukushima was just fine and dandy, or just the gradual realisation that over £400 a year was a bit much to pay to keep some over-privileged twits in beer money. Whatevs as they'd say on Zero Hedge.) To get a broader range of opinions than from just one paper I enjoy flicking through a whole range of newspapers and blogs using a feed reader. Practically all national newspapers and lots of blogs publish RSS feeds, which allow you to browse through just the constantly updated headlines and only click on the articles which interest you. (Just type RSS and the names of the newspapers into Google and you will find the feed addresses). This is a lot quicker than having to go to a specific newspaper site and navigate to individual articles.

The feed reader I use is Liferea in Linux. There are lots of other feed readers for Linux and other operating systems, including Google Reader. See this Wikimedia comparison:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_feed_aggregators

If you find it a bit confusing, Google has produced a guide to help those who are new to RSS / web feeds:

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/01/google-reader-for-beginners.html

All the world's news on a page

http://newsmap.jp/ displays news from all around the world on a single page. The size of the boxes linking to the stories indicate how popular the stories are and the boxes are colour coded according to subject. There's a separate tab for each country. A very clever idea.

Newspaper Paywall Madness

There is quite a lot of talk at the moment of newspapers jumping on a Murdoch-inspired bandwagon (as if he doesn't have enough in his piggy bank already...) and trying to charge for online content. I happen to agree with Arianna Huffington that trying to turn the clock back fifteen years, in the process un-inventing Tim Berners-Lee's invention of a free and open network is not a particularly good idea, and that newspapers need to figure out some new ways of making money rather than trying to turn the internet into an expensive patchwork of balkanized, walled gardens: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/11/newspapers-web-media-pay-wall

Of course advertisers are spending less at the moment - it's called a recession. Everyone else has to deal with it so why should newspapers be any different.

If newspapers wanted to stop making their content available online for free, they could do just that. Le Canard enchaîné, a well known French satirical magazine has an entertaining and apologetic little message on its (single-page, news-free) website pointing out that they are in the business of publishing a paper magazine and would like to stay that way.

The truth is the large media groups want it all ways. They want to charge for paper editions, attract new readers online, charge advertisers for online and offline advertising and now charge readers for online content too. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending which side of the paywall you're sitting on) that's not an equation that stacks up. If Wall Street Journal readers are willing to pay for online content, I suspect it's because they've got more money than sense, either that or (more likely) their companies are paying for the subscription at everyone else's expense.

Peter Preston, the former editor of the Guardian, has had more changes of mind about newspaper paywalls than a five year old making its mind up about Christmas presents (which makes this quite ironic), but if he were to manage another swing back to being in favour then he'd need to be very good at unremembering what he wrote here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/06/newspapers-websites-internet-advertising

which was one of the best descriptions I have read of why the idea of trying to charge for newspapers online is completely barmy - but then I might be underestimating human stupidity. (How many people pay £60 per month for Sky TV?) On the other hand, the Murdochs haven't exactly demonstrated a particularly good understanding of the web with MySpace:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/29/myspace-facebook-bebo-twitter

Old Man Murdoch Finally Loses It

Proof, if any further proof were needed, that the Dirty Digger has finally lost it comes in this entertaining article from the FT where the mad old Aussie threatens to sue the BBC and Google for allegedly using Murdoch generated content:

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=Murdoch+hints+he+will+sue+bbc+and+google

(Update 2012: when the above was originally written, the FT still provided free access to articles linked to from other sites. Sadly that's no longer the case. However, not wanting to disappear entirely behind a Murdochesque iron curtain, they do still allow Google to link to them, and strangely enough also allow people to read articles linked to by Google for free. This means that if there is something you would like to read on the FT, you can type the headline from the homepage into Google and then click through to the article. If you do this too often you might find yourself under a deluge of Adsense adverts for Rolexes and superyachts, but probably nothing that adblock plus wouldn't solve.

One side-effect of the FT paywall is that it does make you realise that there really isn't all that much that's genuinely worth reading in the FT. A quick scan of the headlines is usually enough to understand what that particular demographic is thinking, though not necessarily what it's up to. (Although if they published articles by Simon Schama a bit more often I'd probably read them.) For a bit more insight into the financial shenanigans which don't get much of a mention in the FT you'd be better off having a look at the blog Zero Hedge or reading Matt Taibi on Rolling Stone. You'd struggle to describe either of those as unbiased - but then the same goes for the FT.)

As an interesting experiment I thought I'd go through all the links to news articles on the front page of this site and remove any links to Times or Sunday Times articles. Out of well over a hundred links there were about four or five to Times and Sunday Times articles. That's not because I've been deliberately avoiding linking to them, but because they are rubbish. (Though not, I have to admit, quite as bad as the Observer - which makes Sundays problematic. I'd pay not to have to read Nick Cohen, Polly Toynbee and Will Hutton. Note to self, must try the Sunday Torygraph again. Oh dear, perhaps not. Just tried that and I don't think Torygraph adequately desribes it any more. There was so much beard coverage, I thought I'd accidentally bought a copy of the Völkische Beobachter. Perhaps Sundays will have to become a newspaper day of rest...)

The Times and Sunday Times have largely turned into comics under Murdoch ownership. I think the Dirty Digger will be surprised to find that the internet will do just fine without any of his content - and unless he wants to turn the front page of the Times into a permanent streaming service for sports events that he's wangled a monopoly on, then he'll be able to give up on the idea of advertisers paying to advertise to an audience the size of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.

This is quite amusing on the subject:

Alt Text: Clever Murdoch Turns News into Hip Underground Club

Or sadly not...

The other side of the story is well put by Emily Bell (who is as sane as the day is long), who points out that the belief that Rupe has lost his marbles is almost certainly wishful thinking, and that the Digger's recent apparently bonkers remarks are just a very deliberate part of his multi-year strategy to get the Tories to emasculate the BBC for him and further entrench his monopoly of pay TV, all for a plug in the super soaraway and a few nice dinners. Which of course implies that it's the Tory politicians who need their marbles investigated:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/nov/13/murdoch-attacks-google-cameron

(update 2012: Cameron's appointment of the Fat Pang as chairman of the BBC Trust suggested that he was neither quite as daft nor as supine with regard to Rupe as Bliar and Broon, unfairness of pre- and post-hackergate comparisons notwithstanding.)

Probably just as well for the internet in the UK, as Emily Bell alludes in her article, that senior members of the Tory party have been having what used to be called Ugandan discussions with senior employees of Google for some time. 

Who knows, perhaps it will all end with Google and the Murdochs in bed together. Stranger things have happened. (And of course they are (update 2011: were) already in the shape of My Space, though by all accounts not particularly happily.)

Some people are suggesting that all Murdoch is trying to do (for example by threatening to work exclusively with Microsoft on search) is extract more money from Google. That I vaguely have some sympathy with (given that Google typically take 90% of the income from Adsense advertising - though I imagine they're more generous to media conglomerates), but I wouldn't bet on his chances of succeeding. If Google started sharing advertising revenue fairly, they'd probably halve their income almost immediately. If they do do a deal I imagine it would be a secret one, though I don't know how you'd manage to keep that out of a company's accounts - perhaps they could bring back Andrew Fastow. The campaign to destroy the BBC I have less sympathy with, though I do struggle to understand either Jonathon Ross or Mark Thompson's salaries. Though now that Jonathon Ross has announced he's leaving all they need to do is get rid of Mark Thompson, and perhaps ask Greg Dyke to come back again (after all he now seems relatively chummy with David Cameron) and they'd look almost normal again. (Update 2011: silly me, I was forgetting that the whole reason Mark Thompson got the job was his extraordinary abilities in the sphere of kowtowing to politicians - now that's a skill that never goes out of demand...)(And update 2012: Thompson says he'll go after the Olympics. Presumably he's made more than enough now to retire in style, though if I were forced to guess, I'd guess he'd go for an even better paid government-sponsored job - at a government-owned bank perhaps? Hester must be getting tired of all the aggro by now, whereas for MT it's just part of the job. Dave should perhaps bear in mind, that if the next one is any less independent-minded than MT, people might start watching Russia Today instead - though not for news about Russia. I suppose Ofcom could just ban RT like Press TV, but it would be a bit obvious and presumably wouldn't do BP any good.) And back to the original subject - with any luck James Murdoch will still find that if there's one thing you can never trust it's an Old Etonian - they're just not trained that way. The French didn't use to call us perfidious Albion for nothing.

Incidentally, if you're looking for a good alternative to Google as a search engine, have a look at Duckduckgo (may be trickier on an Android phone):

http://duckduckgo.com/

(In my view it's not Google that senior media luvvies and croak-voiced daleks really need to worry about, it's Amazon. They don't call him "the Dread Pirate" for nothing. I'm not suggesting you should believe everything or even anything you read on rt.com, but this certainly makes for interesting reading:

"It was going to be a partnership between Megaupload execs and others in the online industry, including Amazon — but it was also going to be a big thorn on the side of record labels." [sic] )

And on the subject of strange reports, what about this: the entire British (and other West European) press apart from the Daily Mail (several days later) failed to report a half-million strong rally in Budapest in favour of the democratically elected government and national independence. And no, this isn't irony, it really happened. (How much do they pay Rusbridger?)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2092670/The-huge-protest-Budapest-showed-Hungarians-support-government--wasnt-reported.html

It didn't even get much coverage in the Hungarian press. But given that the entire population of Hungary is only about ten million, I don't think many Hungarians will have failed to notice. I used to wonder what would have happened if the Germans had been in charge of implementing the UK national biometric ID card scheme. I fear we may yet get to find out. 

On the other hand, the Hungarians were abandoned to Soviet tanks in 1956 (whilst the British, French and Israelis were busy trying to take the Suez canal back off the Egyptians) and the Soviets were so chastened by the experience, that they subsequently left the Hungarians on a very long leash, turning Hungary into by far the least oppressive place in the whole Soviet bloc. In 1848 the Hungarians almost succeeded in single-handedly defeating the Hapsburg empire - having the Austrians' guts for garters. If it hadn't been for the Russian Tzar sending in 200,000 troops to help the Austrians, the Hapsburgs would have been done for seventy years earlier and the First World War would have had to start in a different way. In 1989 the Hungarians triggered the end of the Soviet empire by opening their border to Austria and allowing unlimited numbers of East Germans to cross. So they have form the Hungarians, and they'll be a tougher nut to crack than even the Greeks. Certainly a lot tougher than the Irish, the Portuguese or the British.

Postscript

(2012: postscript now hopelessly out of date and possibly even irrelevant. Would they sell the Times to an ex-KGB Russian oligarch??)

And lo it came to pass that everything Emily Bell had predicted came true. The corporation bought the remaining shares in the satellite company it didn't own, sacked a few hundred more journalists and started heavily cross subsidising its "grown up" (reading age 14, or is it 12?) newspapers from the premiership monopoly goldmine. The Torygraph went bust and the Daily Fascist was holed in the side, despite mad Mel's attempts to declare war on Outer Mongolia.  The Grauniad was going  bust anyway - its sooper dooper new paywall just accelerated the process.

Thing was though, why would junior carry on subsidising a loss-making newspaper group once properly off the leash (to put it tactfully)? He'd realised a long time ago that cutting edge politics had moved on to 3D coverage of Wayne Rooney's sexual proclivities rather than the colour of the blessed Margaret's handbag. The only thing senior could have done would have been to put the "grown up" titles into some kind of trust - but, seriously, why bother?

So it was bye bye newspaper industry.

Oh well, never mind. The Grauniad had become such a dire neo liberal rag over the last few years that the only thing anyone might possibly miss was Steve Bell's cartoons.

Wonder if Rupe ever had a sledge?...

(Update 2012: postscript getting a bit long in the tooth now, but blowed if I can guess what will happen next. Interruption in advertised service for WWIII perhaps, but I'd have thought the Chinese were still more interested in making cheap plastic gadgets than blowing things up for that - though I can't see how having your second biggest oil supplier bombed back to the stone age would help you produce more cheap plastic gadgets, not to mention the Nigerian or Sudanese imbroglios. It's like a bad remake of The Great Game but with Chinese and Americans instead of Russians and English, and drones and nukes instead of ironclads. Or perhaps they, the Chinese that is, really have developed an "off-switch" for the internet which would make blowing things up a bit pointless... They must have forgotten to tell our American friends if that's the case. Personally I've never been that keen on the thought of living in greater Beijing - though Rupe evidently didn't mind the idea...)