What is Digg?69 Comments
- sophiaperennis, on 10/12/2007, -5/+46I agree, PDF is not one of my favorite formats, but it is better than nothing.
On another note, most of these downloadable titles are likely to be available already, at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org - zirtbow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+41If you guys just hate the bloated Acrobat reader you can try out FoxIt reader. My dad's computer is slower and I was trying to get some of the bloated crap off there to speed it up. I stumbled on FoxIit while I was installing Quicktime alternative. So far it seems faster and opened all the PDF's he had (which were just some basic ones)
Link: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
I'm guessing there will be stuff Acrobat can do that it can't but chances are (at least in my case) it won't be anything I'm ever in desperate need of. - hourog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Google should partner with The Gutenberg Project.
Throw some money to the guys who have worked so hard for all these years to make free ebooks available to everyone. - tahim, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20http://books.google.com/
- Trunkmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Gee. Sounds a lot like Project Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ - bennyboy371, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14I'm going with what zirtbow said, Foxit reader IS the best. I know thats a bit off topic, but whatever. It takes forever for Acrobat to start on my system, and only a few seconds for Foxit to start.
- airayn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Ok this post has me wondering and wanting to ask everyone a question: As an author who published my own book freely on the internet (A Personal Tao) I published this book in PDF for two reasons: I can preserve the non standard formating I use within the entire book and I know pretty much everyone has access to PDF.
Seeing the conversation here, I would ask, what open source format would you recommend placing a book into which can preserve complicated formatting and has wide availability for non technical individuals?
Thanks :)
Casey - LordSkywalker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11They're gonna let let us download ENTIRE books at the same time? Ted Stevens isn't gonna be happy to hear about this.
- hehe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Begars can't be choosy. Free book is worth the use of a .pdf. (At least they're not AOL...it'd be "You've Got Books....And Spyware!")
- wastern, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12whats wrong with pdf. it works well, clean, reasonably fast.....what more do you want
- Phil246, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8if you had read the article you would realise that this is for books for which the copyright has already expired and are thus public domain
- GMoney79, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9War and Peace would clog some tubes.
- szelij, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Does anyone think that Google is doing things half-way? Its as if Google is positioning itself in alot of major "hot" websites but not really going 100% there. To give an analogy, Google is as if surrounding a castle with thousands of troops but not moving to take the castle itself...
I wonder.. - Darthmalt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6In addition to foxit I recommend the PDFdownload extension it alerts you if you accidentally click on a pdf link and offers the option to view as html. Great for when you just need a quick look at something.
- Phyltre, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12I have to agree, I hate .pdfs. When I see those as attachments I wonder how many minutes my explorer/firefox will slow down or freeze as it struggles to dl the document, open the reader, have the reader check for updates and nag if they're there, and then ask for 5 reboots so it can install the update (actually, taking an old Adobe install and updating it on a computer that was away from the internet for a year, it took something like 8 reboots to completely update.)
Also, printers love to print little blank boxes or gobbledygook instead of characters when you print them based on customized preferences of any kind. Ech. - Malakin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@Phyltre I suggest setting Firefox to download the PDF and then launch Acrobat Reader (or Foxit) separately, instead of using the Acrobat plugin. This stops it from freezing up or slowing down your browser.
From Firefox - Tools -> Options -> Downloads -> View&Edit Actions -> Find PDF and set it to open with reader or foxit instead of using the plugin.
I still hate PDF's, but this makes them much less annoying. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It's Acrobat Reader's Fault. The Adobe Plugin slows down Firefox when PDFs are opened. I just use Foxit Reader, solves all my problems.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php - esheep932, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This is great news. i'm an avid classic novel reader. but i don't look forward to reading off the computer screen or on multiple printouts. oh well, i suppose i can't complain about something thats free.
- Nathan07, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC00386151&id=evEfZbzWtIYC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=%22The+scarlet+letter%22&as_brr=1
Wow, it would seem that they have it working NOW! I just downloaded a full PDF of The Scarlet Letter! Only 5 megs for a 300+ page book too. Heh, free books are good! - electronicmaji, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6project gutenbergs been doing this since the 90s!
- Darthmalt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Sounds like a good ask slashdot or post it on a blog and make a digg article.
- tedgoas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Ever here of the Open eBook format? It's going to be a standard recommendation based on xml, xhtml and css, among other universal web languages.
http://www.openebook.org/oebps/oebps_faq.htm - MrSunshine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Oh... so that's what's next with Google: gBooks.
I followed this little tip here to make my Acrobat Reader load up faster:
http://www.petefreitag.com/item/110.cfm
Now it loads up PDFs in about 2-3 seconds. - rolandog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The Doom of War
http://books.google.com/books?vid=015IVjIqghT7vRC8vi&id=UKnQ86yjCoAC&output=pdf&sig=4D11tEdx1eLBAhARvaRpcLjk11I
Interesting book from 1916! It talks about the negative aspects of war... I was amused to read the cost of operations back then:
"Irrelevant though it may seem to be, we may well pause and reiterate the meaning of war to us in terms of money. To fire one of our big navy guns once, for example, costs the equivalent of a respectable home. To fire it twice costs enough to meet every essential expense of a college education."
[...] - GMoney79, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I can see the marketing angle now...
"Project Gutenberg...now with bloatware!!!" - starmanjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3>Some kind of open XML format in a .zip would
>probably be better. Or at least something other than PDF.
PDFs purpose in life is to reproduce exactly, across all platforms, documents... so they appear on screen and print exactly like the author wanted it. there really is no other format that does that. i think the major problem is the way windows handles them. on macs pdf is just not an issue and in fact are convenient. - phronko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Nice. I'd like to see some H. P. Lovecraft on there.
- unversed, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Wow!! you mean we get to read for free? Why hasn't someone thought of this earlier? What would even be better is a building full of books that would let you take and read them... for free!!! ;)
- ericeman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Wait wait wait- do I really want to read Dante's Inferno from my LCD monitor? That would be straining on the eyes.
- TheReport, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3great now i can read Finnegan's Wake in its entireity and it still not make any sense
- chess007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2 Is there any master site? I mean a site where it shows a directory of every single free book they have? Rather than finding them by searching, i'd like to browse and see what I find that way.
- cubbieco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It looks like this may be a pdf with actual scanned text as opposed to the text only that Gutenberg offers. Pros and cons of both. Personally the text only is more useful so we'll see.
If you search inferno by dante into books.google.com you can see examples of what it may look like. - adolfojp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have always loved the Gutenberg project.
You can also find good free books here http://www.mslit.com/default.asp?mjr=FRE if you don't mind using the Microsoft reader. It is quite good. - totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4PDF on windows thru acrobat reader is tedious, but PDF on OSX is pretty seamless.
- sup34dog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1ahhh, I remember when Google first mentioned this (that they were borrowing the books from Stanford, and also how copyright issues are involved).
I'm glad to see that they've managed to follow through with it. Way to go, Google. - MoFoKeR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1hey guys off topic a little bit...is there a list which we can browse thru that has all the free books offered by google? any one know
- fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It doesn't. This only applies to books and publications where the copyright has expired.
For neuromancer, you've got 40+ years to go. - MoFoKeR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1much lighter to
- Swift2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think this is great. I use Preview, the little Mac app for pdfs that's ten times faster than Adobe, and these are searchable as well as looking like the typset version. What's the problem? You can, of course, print these out.
- LKBM, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1cuposmuck, because there's no way plain text is better than scanned image, right?
PG is about out-of-copyright classics. You may as well complain that Flickr doesn't do video. - syberghost, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2unversed:
Yeah, a single building where everybody in the world can walk to, where the books take up space, and where only one person can have the book at a time! That's WAY superior to having something where everybody in the world can access it, and as many people as want the book can have it at the same time.
Technology is bad! Boo progress! - pitaman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The problem with PDFs is that reading the docs through the web is slllooow.
Adobe's reader feels slow and bloated.
I thought that Macromedia's (Now Adobe's) Flash Paper format was going to do well.
It had plenty of potential. Hopefully it will make a comeback in some form. - LKBM, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2tbmcmullen, I would assume he's refering to them being in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat == big and slow.
- tbmcmullen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Project Gutenberg...now with bloatware!!!"
Yeah, because all of Google's web-based software is bloated... Man... Look at that home page with all the images and bloated HTML...
Oh... Wait... - richardcrocker1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Obviously Google is going to get big public relations points out of its recent announcement to offer a bunch of books for free download. I thought I'd let you know about our thoughts at PlanetPDF.com on the books that Google has produced. Nutshell: great idea, but we wonder if anyone is actually going to make good use of the books. If Google makes a few updates to the books they publish then we reckon readers will benefit greatly.
http://www.planetpdf.com/creative/article.asp?ContentID=Free%5FPDF%5FeBooks%5Ffrom%5FGoogle&gid=7376 - orfeo77, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0You can try this simple file and unprotected directory search engine, it is based on google co-op:
http://searchable.awardspace.com/
http://digg.com/software/Searchable_internet_file_search_made_easy_with_this_google_co_op - bioskope, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2please throw in some philip jose farmer while you're at it
- WildBil, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yes Yes Yes - If this keeps up I can get rid of 1/2 my paper stash of classics, Not to mention that THERE WILL FINALLY BE SOMETHING WORTH READING ON THE INTERNET.
Benefits for teachers students etc etc etc.
Big Smile - gjleyba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0What is so great about this? Project Gutenberg has been up in running for a long time now. I guess it just might be as good or better that Project Gutenberg, but it is not a new idea, just a little trinket that google now wants to install. I guess I should be greatful for adding just a little more to what it has to offer. It could be worse I could be logging into Google China where the google server has not installed the freedom of speech software.
Oh Google, you and your hypocritical business decisions. - kingfelix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1dude, no you can't. joyce's grandson will never let go of the rights if he can help it.
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