class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/shutterstock_47033620.jpg?323f2c" alt="app to split bills" />Nothing can spoil a great group lunch or dinner than having to spend quality time calculating the cost of splitting the bill. Sure it’s easy when you split the cost between yourself and your girlfriend or boyfriend, but what happens when you have more than five people in the group?

You could use a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/variety-calculator-apps-basic-advanced-calculations-ipad/">calculator or the old pen and paper method, but if you have a iPhone or other iOS device, there are apps that make splitting up expenses less of a chore and are even more accurate than the mental calculations we perform. There are several such apps in the iTunes Store.

href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tip-calculator-free/id330270120?mt=8">Tip Calculator Free

Tip Calculator Free not only manages the splitting of the bill, but will also figure out the waiter’s and waitress’s tip as well. While this can be easily done on an iPhone calculator, Tip Calculator does it faster, and is better to look at.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bill_splitter_app_5.jpg?323f2c" alt="app to split bills" width="580" height="428" border="0" />

To use the app, all you have to do is input the Check Amount, select the number of people to split the payment, and then select the quality of the service you receive from the waiter or waitress.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bill_splitter_app_1.jpg?323f2c" alt="app to split the bill" width="580" height="431" border="0" />

The service quality feature means that your tip can be based on 5 to 50% of the bill. Tip Calculator allows you to split the bill between up to 50 people, or you can select no split and use it simply for tip calculation.

href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trip-splitter-lite/id417029244?mt=8">Trip Splitter

If you’re needing to split expenses for a trip you take with two or more people, Trip Splitter Lite is an app you should give a try.

With Trip Splitter, you have presets for dividing up lodging, gas, transportation, food, entertainment, supplies, and your own set of custom expenses.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bill_splitter_app_21.jpg?323f2c" alt="app to split the bill" width="580" height="369" border="0" />

To use the app, you set up a name for a new trip, and then add the names of the people you will be splitting expenses with. Next, you add an expense item, such as gas, and either calculate the amount for each time you purchase gas or for the total amount of gas expenses. Tip Splitter also allows you to keep tabs on who paid, and even how they paid – e.g. cash, credit, debit.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bill_splitter_app_3.jpg?323f2c" alt="app to split bills" width="580" height="379" border="0" />

Expenses are categorized into items and days, and each person and item gets color-coded for easy visual reading. The href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/trip-splitter/id374395458?mt=8">paid version ($1.99) of the app allows you to handle up to six people. The free version allows for two people.

href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spotme-payments/id443369076?mt=8">SpotMe Payments

The newest app in this personal finance category is SpotMe Payments. It’s geared toward groups of people that you may share expenses with on a regular basis, such as roommates, family, co-workers, and close friends.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/bill_splitter_app_4.jpg?323f2c" alt="app to split bills" width="580" height="426" border="0" />

With SpotMe, you set up groups for sharing expenses, and then add individuals – including their phone number or email, and photo – from your Address Book, Facebook and Twitter account

SpotMe enables you to split and track bills, lend and borrow money, and send out regular reminders. It is fairly easy and straightforward to use.

Let us know that you think about these and other bill splitting apps. Do you have a favorite one on your iPhone that you use?

Image Credit: href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=47033620" rel="nofollow">Shutterstock

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/0_foodie.jpg" alt="" />Food makes the world go round. Whether dining out a few times a week, exploring new recipes, or simply taking pictures of your food and sharing it with others (which is called foodtography), there are a lot of people out there who love enjoying a good meal. If you consider yourself a foodie, you probably take advantage of a few key apps to document everything you’ve eaten.

Even apps like href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/foursquare/">Foursquare and href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/search/?cx=009717636731598800244%3Aqhe4rh7wuxs&cof=FORID%3A11&q=instagram&sa=">Instagram, which weren’t necessarily intended for sharing just food items, have been getting used that way for quite some time. In Instagram’s case, I would argue that foodtography played a major role in why the app became so popular amongst iPhone users.

So what’s next for foodies? In this article, I’m going to show you some more apps which should help you locate places and meals you’ll like, as well as document those meals you’ve eaten and enjoyed.

1. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ness/id454869181?mt=8">Ness

The first iPhone app I’d like to share with you is called Ness. Ness is a visually appealing food search engine that enables you to discover places you’ll love based on the types of foods that you like to eat. Just tell Ness what you like – and what you don’t – and it will get smarter over time, recommending to you new places to try.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/1_foodie.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="416" />

Ness is also social. The app shows you the places your Facebook and Foursquare friends have rated, reviewed, or checked into, and allows you to share the things you like with them. Ness’ Likeness Engine incorporates your ratings/reviews and recommendations from friends to suggest new places that meet your tastes.

When you start using the app, Ness asks that you rate 10 restaurants that you’ve visited in the past. It will use this information to learn about your tastes when you rate your dining experiences and follow friends whose opinions influence your decisions. Results are tailor-made just for you.

2. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alfred/id447020280?mt=8">Alfred

If you’re into recommendations, Alfred is another great app for you foodies out there. Alfred is your personal food butler/robot who recommends places based on your favorites. When you select a few of your favorite places for lunch, dinner, nightlife, coffee, brunch, etc. you will begin to receive custom results in the form of restaurants you will enjoy.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2_foodie.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="437" />

Connect Alfred with your Facebook account and you will be able to select the friends that you are out with. Alfred will then “tune” his recommendations to match everyone’s taste. The app is pretty intuitive and you do interact with Alfred as if he’s a real person. He asks you questions and even lets you ask your friends where they think you should grab a bite to eat.

3. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/foodily/id475603520?ls=1&mt=8">Foodily

If you’re not interested in going out to eat, you should check out the Foodily app for iPhone. Foodily ( href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/foodily-learn-to-cook-recipes-for-friends/">directory listing) gives you daily recipe inspirations from your friends, food experts, and people you follow. It even lets you utilize your phone’s camera to pair your own food pictures with recipes from across the web.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/3_foodie.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="437" />

Foodily has a recipe news feed that updates every time you open the app, giving you new recipe ideas, photos of what your friends have made, and search options to help you discover meals to make.

If you are eating out, you can take a picture at a restaurant, type a few ingredients into Foodily’s search bar, and get a similar recipe for you to cook at home. The photo functionality is also great for pairing a dish you’ve personally made with the recipe you found on a food blog, from a magazine, or wherever.

4. href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-eatery/id468299990?mt=8">The Eatery

The Eatery is another great food-related application that takes advantage of your phone’s camera. With this app, you can snap photos of your food and The Eatery will give you a second opinion on the healthiness of your meal. The idea behind the app is that documenting the meals you eat is the first step to building awareness around healthy eating.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/4_foodie.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="436" />

The Eatery will help you discover how well you eat from week to week, where you eat your best and worst meals, and what factors into potentially bad habits. Personally I think it’s pretty cool how information is presented to you upon simply snapping pictures of your food (which you probably do anyway).

As a bonus, I also recommend you check out href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/rate-share-discover-meals-restaurants-forkly-iphone/">Forkly, which I covered a couple of months back. When you’re done experimenting with these foodie apps, come back and tell us what you think!

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/14.png" alt="ifttt recipes" />We’ve already introduced you to href="http://ifttt.com/">ifttt in a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/connect-automate-web-apps/">previous post and there have been several improvements made and new channels added to the web application since then. Automation and synchronization are two points that have to be stressed if you’re very involved in social web and GTD. ifttt’s ability in allowing the user to automatically associate all interests and priorities to their relevant web-based services is a luxury that will save you a lot of both time and effort.

To save you even more time and effort, I’ve assembled a list of 10 of the best Recipes that are currently available. With more than 5,000 public Recipes to browse through, here are the gems (in no particular order):

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/1847">Receive An SMS Message Every Time Facebook Makes A Change

If your friends list is anything like mine, you will have noticed a huge response to the href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/enable-facebooks-timeline-profile/">recent changes to Facebook. This Recipe will monitor the href="https://blog.facebook.com/">official Facebook blog‘s RSS feed and text you whenever there is an update. I made this Recipe and I use it myself, and it worked rather well in immediately informing me of href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-ipad-finally-features-news/">Facebook’s recent iPad release.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see (along with weather notifications also from ifttt) the SMS message sent at 4:44 PM EST. The blog post by Facebook was published at 1:31 PM PST, according to their servers. A brief delay like that (three minutes) means you can stay ahead of the curve and be the first to check out cool new Facebook features.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/22.png" alt="ifttt recipes" width="324" height="484" />

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/168">Receive An SMS Message When Rain Or Snow Is Coming

I wasn’t as conscious of Florida’s rainy weather until I activated this. Very simple and straightforward: whenever rainy conditions are forecasted for your ZIP code, you will receive an SMS alert that tells you of the conditions. You can choose between rain, snow, cloudy, and clear alert conditions.

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/1760">Send Facebook Photos That You Are Tagged In To Dropbox

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/32.png" alt="best ifttt recipes" width="389" height="280" />

As Facebook is a little more universal in comparison to href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/dropbox/">Dropbox, this Recipe acts as nothing more than a great method of backup. When you are tagged in someone else’s photo on Facebook, they control the exposure. If it is deleted from their photos, it is deleted from any albums that you’ve placed it in via the tag. This Recipe ensures that any photos attached to your name will be saved and accessible to you through a folder in your Dropbox. Above is a screenshot of that, within Windows Explorer in Windows 7, where you can see that I’ve been tagged in a few app-generated images.

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/1793">Send Starred Google Reader Entries To Read It Later

This is really great if you read your RSS feeds on the go. You’re able to read just an entry title or sentence, determine if it’s worth further involvement, star it, then keep it moving. There are a lot of RSS reader apps for desktops, tablets, and smartphones that support the Read It Later and href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-and-manage-your-bookmarks-better-with-instapaper/">Instapaper API functionality.

If you’re big on Google and Google Reader especially, you should know that there is a benefit to starring content. Google introduced a “sort by magic” algorithm within Reader that shows you the latest news most relevant to your most targeted interests. Being able to both star and send to Read It Later in a single action is a timesaver just as it is effective.

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/4245">Receive an Email when New ifttt Channels are Announced

This is a must-have for any ifttt enthusiast. As the web app grows, additional Channels will be added for additional and deeper functionality. Most recently, href="http://boxcar.io/">Boxcar was added. Add this Recipe to your arsenal if you’re truly addicted to the ifttt platform and eager for updates.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/42.png" alt="best ifttt recipes" width="580" height="148" />

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/123">Send Your Instagram Photos To A Facebook Album

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/instagram-photo-editing-and-sharing/">Instagram is a great service for any photo junky, but the Facebook community is much more social and involved. This Recipe automates the process of sending your Instagram uploads right to a Facebook album so that your social circle can appreciate all of those photographs you snap.

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/766">Post Your “Loved” Last.fm Tracks To Twitter

Twitter is all about the right now, and this is a great way to automate the process of giving your favorite artists recognition on Twitter. Along with the track’s name, a link to the Last.fm song page and image of the album cover will be posted.

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/36">Create An Evernote Archive Of Your Tweets

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/54.png" alt="ifttt recipes" width="214" height="276" />

This is another great Recipe if you’re obsessed with backup like I am. Who knows when something horribly wrong is going to happen to your Twitter account? Aside from that, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/evernote/">Evernote is a much more orderly storage container for all of your thoughts and happenings. Every tweet you send out on Twitter will be placed within a Note in Evernote.

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/5213">Monitor New Craigslist Posts To Note in Evernote

This Recipe allows you to input any Craigslist URL (including parameters for certain search queries, etc.) that you’d like to watch for updates and Evernote will create an archive of everything new so that you don’t miss a thing. Images will be attached to each Note. Notes are automatically tagged so that things don’t get messy. Looking for a used iPhone on Craigslist? This can definitely help you.

href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/2465">Receive An SMS For Every Amazon Gold Box Deal

Amazon’s Gold Box deals are the highest discounts you’ll see on a product on Amazon. Every day, a single Gold Box deal is released. You’ll receive one SMS per day by using this Recipe, and it’s worth it. If you’re more of the gamer type and don’t mind receiving up to 15 SMS messages per day, there is also a href="http://ifttt.com/recipes/5583">Recipe available to alert you when Steam games go on sale.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/62.png" alt="best ifttt recipes" width="580" height="261" />

There are hundreds of useful ifttt Recipes that couldn’t make this list, but I’d love to hear your opinions and ideas for others in the comments!

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/intro11.jpg" alt="" />Can you remember 1997? Those of you who can might also recall the hysteria, outrage and above all critical acclaim festooned on one of the most iconic and original video games of the time – Grant Theft Auto.

It seems bizarre nowadays that a small amount of pixellated blood, top-down 2D viewing angles and the odd car chase could cause such a reaction – but it did. Since then there have been a steady stream of console and PC releases as well as a handful of handheld efforts to boot.

Those of you who live, breathe and sleep Liberty City are in luck. Here are some killer resources for your favourite crime ‘em up.

href="http://www.gta4.net/map/">The Big GTA4 Street View Map

So, the best use for href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-websites-virtual-globetrotting-google-street-view/">Google Street View technology thus-far goes to… the guys over at href="http://www.gta4.net">GTA4 who have spent two long months recreating GTA4’s Liberty City as an interactive, clickable world. That’s right – the whole city is available for your perusal, as well as all the information you’d expect regarding pickups, activities and other challenges.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/streetview1.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="475" />

This really is a monumental achievement. 78,494 screenshots were required, totalling over a million files with a total file size of 125GB. Now that’s a lot of work, and it’s easy to appreciate the beautiful outcome once you’ve started clicking around.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/streetview2.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="474" />

Streets are labelled correctly, locations can be marked and the href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/everything-you-should-know-about-making-awesome-screenshots/">screenshots are beautiful. It’s like a real-life living city, and testament to Rockstar’s ability to create immersive worlds. There are also a selection of cameos and other points of interest dotted around, like href="http://www.gta4.net/map/?lat=5.2294921875&lng=-8.7890625&z=4&u=6.50390625%7C-11.25%7C&p=1755&ph=23.34975&pp=-31.40394&pz=1">this one – don’t forget to share your findings in the comments!

Community Modding, Mapping & Custom Models

Here’s where the PC gamers have the advantage – the overwhelming number of modifications available for each and every GTA release. Fancy trying to survive in a href="http://www.gta4-mods.com/script/left-4-liberty-infectionv20-f8616">zombie-infested Liberty City? What about playing through GTA: San Andreas on GTA4’s RAGE engine? New cars, missions and graphics? Oh yeah, it’s been done!

href="http://gtaivsa.com/">GTA4: San Andreas

Currently in beta, but functional – this is GTA: San Andreas on the GTA4 engine. The developers are currently appealing for testers to submit information about known bugs and issues, but really it’s there for anyone to play around with.

width="580" height="356" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7ZKMgk2oEmo?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" /> name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> width="580" height="356" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7ZKMgk2oEmo?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" allowFullScreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" />

Included is the full map and original vehicles with improved graphics, sound, Euphoria physics and an advanced replay tool.

href="http://www.gta4-mods.com/">GTA4-Mods

This is where you’ll find a healthy portion of the latest customizations and href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-free-online-multiplayer-source-engine-mods-halflife-2/">third-party add-ons for GTA. Hosted efforts include the fabulous href="http://www.gta4-mods.com/misc/icenhancer-13---enb-graphic-mod-f10005">iCEnhancer graphics mod, href="http://www.gta4-mods.com/vehicles/gta-iv-mega-car-pack-f4510">epic compilations, new weapons and vehicles as well as some great tutorials in case you were thinking of creating your own customizations.

href="http://www.gtaforums.com/">GTAForums

Part of the Grand Theft Auto Network (the same guys who brought you the Liberty City Street View map) comes probably the most active community when it comes to all things GTA.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/gtaforums.png" alt="" width="531" height="395" />

Not only are there the usual “what do you want to see?” and “I have problems with my graphics” posts but a whole section dedicated to showcasing mods, which makes it fairly easy to find what you want (like href="http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=397589">this realistic driving mod). Check out the href="http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showforum=90">mod showroom section for a decent list of what’s on offer.

href="http://www.gtainside.com/">GTAInside

Another collection of awesome downloads, with a fairly regularly updated news section that highlights the community’s latest and greatest work. There are a good number of vehicles (air, land and sea) on offer here.

GTA4 Shorts

GTA4’s RAGE engine is a dynamic tool – so much so that it has been used in many videos, and to great effect. Here is a very small selection, be warned adult themes and language are used (after all, GTA is an adult game).

GTA4: Project Cooper

width="580" height="356" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VFwO_K6lVBY?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" /> name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> width="580" height="356" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VFwO_K6lVBY?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" allowFullScreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" />

The Bad Assassin (Also: Part 2)

width="580" height="356" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lMDtaB4jdls?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" /> name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> width="580" height="356" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lMDtaB4jdls?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" allowFullScreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" />

Niko’s Dance Party

width="580" height="356" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aIxAMafeh28?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" /> name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> width="580" height="356" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aIxAMafeh28?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" allowFullScreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" />

Liberty City Terrorist Attack

width="580" height="356" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/p__dPCRtQGY?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" /> name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> width="580" height="356" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/p__dPCRtQGY?version=3&hl=en_GB&rel=0" allowFullScreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" />

href="http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/">Download GTA & GTA2 For Free

Finally if you’re ready to take a trip down memory lane, both GTA and GTA2 are still available for free from Rockstar Classics. You’re probably going to need to href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/common-windows-7-compatibility-issues/">fiddle around with compatibility settings to get these running on a modern Windows Vista or 7 system, but it’ll be worth it just to shout “Gouranga!” and href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/emulation/">re-live the 2D days of yore.

Conclusion

Hopefully there’s enough GTA meat here to get your teeth into. If you’ve played through the game on a console but have a capable PC, picking up a cheap copy of GTA4 or Episodes From Liberty City might be worth it for the wealth of modifications and add-ons spawned by the community. Of course, you’ll also get to try your hand at a couple of movies too!

Have you tried any GTA mods? Any particular favourite game in the series? Have you made any movies? What are your thoughts on the next installment? Let us know in the comments.

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class="align-right" title="sound sunday" src="http://www.makeuseof.com/images/recurring/sound-sunday.png" alt="free music" width="210" height="210" />I have likely said this before, but each and every Sound Sunday is a challenge. I should add that each edition also holds a revelation and is a pleasure to compose. I would like to thank all of you who have shared their feedback and sent in suggestions, your participation is appreciated very much!

By the way, if anyone tried to download The Unknown Stuntman’s album The Best Of…Everyone Else from SoundCLoud href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-free-music-albums-sound-sunday-august-28th/" title="Sound Sunday Edition August 28th 2011">last week, let me share with you that it never was a download from SoundCloud. You can, however, download the album for free from href="http://www.theunknownstuntman.co.uk/" title="The Unknown Stuntman Homepage">The Unknown Stuntman’s Homepage. So if you haven’t done so yet, please go ahead and get the album now. Sorry for the confusion!

As always, please post your feedback in the comments or send me an email [tina at makeuseof dot com]. I promise to listen!

title="Dan Freeman YouTube" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/freemandan23">Dan Freeman – Blaster

Genre: indie, rock, electro pop, rock’n’roll

width="400" height="100" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 400px; height: 100px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=1251739003/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> href="http://danfreeman.bandcamp.com/album/blaster">Blaster by Dan Freeman

All songs on the album were written, recorded, and performed by Dan Freeman. This alone sounds amazing, but even more so if you listen to the entire album. With every song, Dan demonstrates an impressive variety of talents and great skills. You will hear different genre flavors from melancholic electro pop with classical elements to pure rock’n’roll. As a vocalist he commands the smooth pop voice (The Color Of Your Eyes) as well as the rough rock voice (Walkin’ Out The Door). Blaster was suggested by Dan’s good friend Nate, who writes that Dan never charges anything for his large collection of really good music.

Blaster is a name your price download from title="Dan Freeman - Blaster" href="http://danfreeman.bandcamp.com/album/blaster">Bandcamp.

title="Artmagic Homepage" href="http://www.artmagicmusic.com/">Artmagic – I Keep On Walking

Genre: alternative, electronic, pop, post-punk

width="400" height="100" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 400px; height: 100px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=946898046/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> href="http://artmagic.bandcamp.com/album/i-keep-on-walking-ep">I Keep On Walking EP by Artmagic

From their Homepage: “Artmagic is guitarist Richard Oakes and producer / vocalist Sean McGhee. Richard Oakes is best known for his work as guitarist and songwriter with Suede. Sean McGhee has recorded and mixed #1 singles for Britney Spears, sung with Alanis Morissette, and worked with Robyn, Sugababes and Imogen Heap.”

I Keep On Walking is a free download from title="Artmagic - I Keep On Walking" href="http://artmagic.bandcamp.com/">Bandcamp.

title="The Tambourine Club Homepage" href="http://www.tambourineclub.com/links/home">The Tambourine Club – Lo-Fi Feeling

Genre: indie, alternative, lo-fi, pop, rock

width="400" height="100" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 400px; height: 100px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=3711002727/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> href="http://tambourineclub.bandcamp.com/album/lo-fi-feeling">Lo-Fi Feeling by the tambourine club

The Tambourine Club is a solo project of a Kansas City based artist, who apparently prefers to remain rather private, although you can href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Tambourine-Club/53923138962?sk=info" title="The Tambourine Club Facebook">follow band news on Facebook.

Lo-Fi Feeling is a free download from title="The Tambourine Club - Lo-Fi Feeling" href="http://tambourineclub.bandcamp.com/album/lo-fi-feeling">Bandcamp.

title="Unkind Facebook" href="http://www.facebook.com/UnkindHardcore?sk=info">Unkind – Yhteiskunnan Pikkuvikoja

Genre: crust, hardcore, sludge, metal, metalcore

width="400" height="100" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 400px; height: 100px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=283790761/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> href="http://unkindband.bandcamp.com/album/yhteiskunnan-pikkuvikoja">Yhteiskunnan Pikkuvikoja by Unkind

From their href="http://www.last.fm/music/Unkind" title="Unkind LastFM">LastFM profile: “A Finnish crust/hardcore punk band with dark atmosphere in lyrics and sound. Used to be called Speedapple in the late 1990s, before they changed their name to Unkind.”

Yhteiskunnan Pikkuvikoja is a free download from title="Unkind - Yhteiskunnan Pikkuvikoja" href="http://unkindband.bandcamp.com/album/yhteiskunnan-pikkuvikoja">Bandcamp.

title="Terius Nash Twitter" href="http://twitter.com/#!/MrTeriusNash">Terius Nash – 1977

Genre: hip hop, R&B

width="580" height="465"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EsGKxiFeuEs?version=3&hl=en_US"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true"> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EsGKxiFeuEs?version=3&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="465" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

From his href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/the-dream/id259369321?showBio=1" title="Terius Nash iTunes">Biography on iTunes: “R&B singer/songwriter and producer Terius Youngdell Nash, better known as the-Dream, was born in Rockingham. (…) Nash’s singing career got off to a slow start once he graduated from high school, but he found success in selling song lyrics after he met R&B producer Laney Stewart in 2001. (…) Paired with producer Chris “Tricky” Stewart (Laney’s brother), he continued to write songs for various artists over the next four years, such as the Britney Spears/Madonna duet “Me Against the Music.” His watershed moment came when he and Tricky created Rihanna’s 2007 international smash hit “Umbrella.” Several labels began approaching him so he could churn out more hits for their artists, particularly Def Jam, Rihanna’s label, which was reluctant to sign the singer/songwriter at first. [After releasing several successful solo albums...] The-Dream declared that Love King would be his final solo album, but he retracted the statement prior to the disc’s June 2010 release. Even while recording his own material, he managed to dish out songs for a wide range of popular artists, including Mary J. Blige (“Just Fine”), Mariah Carey (“Touch My Body”), Beyoncé (“Single Ladies [Put a Ring on It]“), (…) Justin Bieber (“Baby”), [and more]”

1977 is a free download from title="Terius Nash - 1977" href="http://www.radiokillarecords.com/">Radio Killa Records.

title="Grip Tapes Homepage" href="http://griptapessite.com/">GRPTPS vs href="http://www.potluckfoundation.com/" title="Potluck Homepage">PTLCK – Round One

Genre: compilation, pop, rock

width="400" height="100" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 400px; height: 100px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=1886971974/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> href="http://grptpsvsptlck.bandcamp.com/album/grptps-vs-ptlck-round-one">GRPTPS vs PTLCK: Round One by GRPTPS vs PTLCK

From href="http://trianglemusic.blogspot.com/2011/08/griptapes-potluck-records-give-away.html" title="Triangle Music Article">Triangle Music: “Local record labels Griptapes and PotLuck have teamed up to celebrate the Hopscotch Music Festival next week. They’re giving away a 13-song compilation titled GRPTPS vs PTLCK: Round One, which features a number of bands playing the festival. /> It features songs from Old Bricks, Gross Ghost, North Elementary, Heads on Sticks and Organos who are playing the festival as well as Schooner who is playing a few day parties. The other bands on the comp are Joshua Carpenter, Jphono1, Juan Huevos, Corey Pallon, Logan Pete, The Grapes and Doctor.”

Round One is a free download from title="GRPTPS vs PTLCK - Round One" href="http://grptpsvsptlck.bandcamp.com/">Bandcamp.

title="Jezus Factory Records Homepage" href="http://jezusfactory.bigcartel.com/">Jezus Factory Records – Jezus Factory Records Sampler

Genre: art, rock, folk, punk

width="400" height="100" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 400px; height: 100px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=3680385240/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> href="http://jezusfactoryrecords.bandcamp.com/album/jezus-factory-records-sampler">Jezus Factory Records Sampler by Jezus Factory Records

From their Bandcamp page: “It’s been over 5 years since the label began and it’s nice to look back at what a varied but compatible group of music we have released. Please download and share and please consider making a purchase of a nicely packaged physical release that can help us keep supporting good independent music.”

The Jezus Factory Records Sampler is a free download from title="Jezus Factory Records - Jezus Factory Records Sampler" href="http://jezusfactoryrecords.bandcamp.com/album/jezus-factory-records-sampler">Bandcamp.

title="Face Melt Chicago Homepage" href="http://facemeltchicago.com/">Face Melt Chicago – Chi-Sound

Genre: compilation, bass, dubstep, electronic, instrumental, hip hop

width="400" height="100" style="position: relative; display: block; width: 400px; height: 100px;" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=2562392709/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0"> href="http://facemeltchicago.bandcamp.com/album/chi-sound-presented-by-face-melt">Chi-Sound. Presented by Face Melt by Face Melt Chicago

From their Bandcamp page: “This compilation, presented in conjunction with Ground Lift Media, aims to define the ‘Chi-Sound.’ With so many producers in Chicago, and being as spread out as we are, different sounds develop. For Volume 1, we’ve producers spanning a couple generations in Chicago Bass & Hip-Hop music.”

Chi-Sound is a free download from title="Face Melt Chicago - Chi-Sound" href="http://facemeltchicago.bandcamp.com/album/chi-sound-presented-by-face-melt">Bandcamp.

title="Graham Colton Homepage" href="http://www.grahamcolton.com/">Graham Colton – Pacific Coast Eyes

Genre: indie, pop, rock

Graham Colton was href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-free-mp3-albums-country-folk-special-sound-sunday-12th/" title="Sound Sunday Edition June 12th">previously featured on Sound Sunday with his Twenty Something EP. On the introduction for Pacific Coast Eyes on NoiseTrade Graham writes: “Due to the overwhelming response to my Twenty Something EP I am once again partnering with Noise Trade offering my new CD, ‘Pacific Coast Eyes’ as a direct download for a very short time only. This is my first independent record since my first self titled album and it took everything I had to make this album happen. Thanks so much for your support! Oh yeah…tips are greatly appreciated!”

Pacific Coast Eyes is a free download from title="Graham Colton - Pacific Coast Eyes" href="http://noisetrade.com/grahamcolton">NoiseTrade.

title="Sloan Homepage" href="http://www.sloanmusic.com/">Sloan – Select Singles 1992 – 2011

Genre: alternative, rock, pop

From their NoiseTrade page: “Four men, ten albums, twenty incredible years: ladies and gentlemen, Sloan! Sloan is a Toronto-based rock quartet formed in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1991. The band is known for their sharing of songwriting from each member of the group and their unaltered line-up throughout their career. To celebrate their 20th Anniversary, Sloan just released their 10th album, The Double Cross and are offering a NoiseTrade exclusive 14-song collection, Sloan select singles 1992-2011.”

Select Singles 1992 – 2011 is a free download from title="Sloan - Select Singles 1992 - 2011" href="http://noisetrade.com/sloan">NoiseTrade.

New to Sound Sunday? Past editions of Sound Sunday are available title="Past Editions of Sound Sunday" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/soundsunday/">here.

Feel free to get in touch with me [tina at makeuseof dot com] to share free material, suggestions, and feedback or simply add your comments below.

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/GoingToBed-300x300.png" alt="" />Are you one of those geeks with dozens of awesome gadgets and a secret passion for books? Did you love reading as a kid and want your kids to enjoy books as well?

Despite the obvious attraction to real paper-based books, the digital world has begun to create some really special adaptations of great stories. These somehow blur the line between books, movies and games, by providing a story in page-by-page format, interactivity and audiovisual segments. They’re also usually highly customisable, enabling parents to choose how much glitz to add to an already-worthwhile story. Take a quick look at two prime examples of the new interactive picture book market.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore – MoonBot Studios, William Joyce & Brandon Oldenburg

class="vt-p" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fantastic-flying-books/id438052647?mt=8">The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore is a story which started as a short film and then was adapted to become an interactive book for the iPad. Both the class="vt-p" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-fantastic-flying-books/id439399261?ign-mpt=uo%3D4">film ($2) and the class="vt-p" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fantastic-flying-books/id438052647?mt=8">iPad application ($5) version of the story are available to purchase, which is good news for people without an iPad.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MorrisLessmore-BookRoom.jpg" alt="" />

Moonbot Studios have created something very special with their iPad application. You can make the pictures animated, add music and sound effects, or remove everything and read it as just a straight book.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MorrisLessmore-Music.jpg" alt="" />

On every page there’s something interactive: wind, books, piano keyboard. It’s all there. Readers can get quite engrossed in the story as they’re actually helping the story to be told.

View the book in action on this Vimeo clip.

width="580" height="430" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> name="src" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=25833596&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0" /> width="580" height="430" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=25833596&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" />

The Going To Bed Book – Sandra Boynton, Boynton Moo Media & Loud Crow Interactive

class="vt-p" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.loudcrow.goingtobed">The Going To Bed Book is a book which has long been available as a real book and has recently been released as an class="vt-p" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.loudcrow.goingtobed">Android application for around $2.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/goingtobedbook4.jpg" alt="" />

This eBook also has interactivity, sound effects, short video movements, voice-over and numerous choices for parents and kids to make. An especially good feature is the ability to choose “I want to read it myself“, but will pronounce a given word if the reader taps on it while reading. These little things help kids to teach themselves how to read books – and their usefulness can’t be overlooked.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/goingtobedbook5.jpg" alt="" />

Plus, the kids get to experience books in a way that just wasn’t around when we were young. The magic of being able to move your favourite characters about, listen to them speak and watch events unfold must be captivating for young kids. Perhaps this halfway concept will convince more kids to take up reading rather than movie-watching.

View this book in action on YouTube here.

width="580" height="430" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Km1k1s4ZuuU?version=3&hl=en_US" /> name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /> width="580" height="430" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Km1k1s4ZuuU?version=3&hl=en_US" allowFullScreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" />

Kids eBooks

These class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/books/">books are an excellent concept for where kids eBooks could be heading, besides also being great stories. They seem to be appearing at a rapid rate for a number of different devices. Hopefully, soon all these books will be available for all smartphone and tablet devices.

Meanwhile, here’s some more reading on the topic of kids books:

• class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-websites-reading-childrens-stories-online/"> 10 Websites For Reading Children’s Stories Online
• class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/smoriescom-safe-online-space-kids-read-kids/"> Smories.com – A Safe Online Space For Kids To Be Read To By Other Kids
• class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-publish-a-childrens-book-storyjumper/"> How to Publish a Children’s Book with StoryJumper

Have you found any similar eBook/applications for kids? Which ones do you recommend?

View full post on MakeUseOf

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/mail.png?54167"/>I admit it. I check my email inbox way more than I should in any given day. I can’t seem to shake the behavior, yet I can’t find time to sit down and read a good, not-for-school book. That’s why I’m smitten with the concept behind href="http://www.dailylit.com/">DailyLit.

For the uninitiated, DailyLit is a brilliant service that helps you href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-sites-read-books-email/">read books by email or RSS. You basically choose a book, how often you want your emails to be delivered and how large the installments should be. You can change your settings anytime. You can even suspend the delivery if you’re going on vacation, and resume your reading when you’re back.

DailyLit offers lots of titles that are on the public domain, like href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/pride-and-prejudice">Pride and Prejudice, href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/war-and-peace">War and Peace, and other popular classics books. DailyLit also works with sponsors and publishers to make select contemporary works available for free. Here are a few titles that you should totally check out this summer!

href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/someone-will-be-with-you-shortly">Someone Will Be With You Shortly by Lisa Kogan

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2011-07-08_161451.png?54167" width="576" height="441" />

With the permission of Kogan’s publisher, DailyLit is able to offer selected essays from Lisa Kogan’s book, which is a hilarious account on contemporary living, single motherhood and more. Who is Lisa Kogan exactly? She’s a columnist for O, the Oprah Magazine, with a tremendous wit and lots of unique stories. Her book has gotten 4.5 stars as rated by 34 customers on href="http://www.amazon.com/Someone-Will-You-Shortly-Perfectly/dp/B004NSVFHC/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1">Amazon, while the collection of selected chapters on DaillyLit has gotten 4.5 stars from an average of 16 ratings. This funny, poignant item is the reason that brought this MakeUseOf article to life – I actually look forward to getting the installments from DailyLit in my email inbox. There are 20 installments, which are bound to make you laugh.

href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/fetching-raymond">Fetching Raymond by John Grisham

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2011-07-08_171736.png?54167" width="570" height="390" />

Fetching Raymond is one of the 7 unrelated short stories that comprises Grisham’s 2009 book, href="http://www.amazon.com/Ford-County-Stories-John-Grisham/dp/0385532458/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310157724&sr=8-1">Ford Conty: Stories. This tale deals with a woman who visits her brother who’s been locked away on death row for more than a decade. DailyLit offers this contemporary short story on 13 free installments.

href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/little-big-things-by-tom-peters">The Little Big Things by Tom Peters

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2011-07-08_173402.png?54167" width="575" height="411" />

This self-help, management book is currently rated 4.5 stars from 10 reviews on DailyLit and 4.5 stars as well from href="http://www.amazon.com/Little-Big-Things-Pursue-EXCELLENCE/dp/0061894087/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310150200&sr=8-1">28 reviews on Amazon. Unlike the previous two items on this list, which were extended excerpts, this book is offered in full at DailyLit in 164 installments. Even the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People says you will learn lots from this book, in particular if you’re looking to improve your business (either as a boss or employee). Additional self-help/management books include href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/bootstrappers-bible">The Boostrapper’s Bible by Seth Godin and href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/50th-law">The 50th Law by 50 Cent (yes, the rapper) and Robert Greene.

href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/emeril-at-the-grill">Emeril at the Grill: A Cookbook for All Seasons by Emeril Lagasse

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2011-07-08_180540.png?54167" width="579" height="395" />

DailyLit offers 15 recipes from celebrity chef Emeril’s full book, which is available on href="http://www.amazon.com/Emeril-Grill-Cookbook-All-Seasons/dp/0061742740/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310165376&sr=8-1">Amazon. Though this series doesn’t contain pictures, it is certainly timely for the summer. You can get this delivered to your inbox (or get the RSS feed) in 15 installments. Check out additional books in this genre href="http://www.dailylit.com/tags/cooking">here.

href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/mba-mondays?source=lpage">MBA Mondays by Fred Wilson

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2011-07-08_183946.png?54167" width="574" height="342" />

Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist who’s known for sharing advice in his href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/mba-mondays/">blog. He started sharing concepts he learned in business school every week on Monday on his blog, giving birth to this series, which is available on DailyLit in 51 installments. This might be a good read for those of us that want to understand the investment jargon, applying a buy and hold strategy, etc.

href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/with-a-little-help">With A Little Help by Cory Doctorow

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2011-07-08_184849.png?54167" width="566" height="359" />

This sci-fi book consists of 12 short stories, and has earned 4.5 stars both on the DailyLit community and on href="http://www.amazon.com/Little-Help-Cory-Doctorow/dp/1456576348/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310154024&sr=8-1">Amazon. The Canadian author has released the book under a Creative Commons license so he also offers the book in several different mobile-friendly formats, as well as the href="http://craphound.com/walh/audiobook/download-audiobook">audiobook on his website. If you’re into the futuristic, sci-fi genre, you should definitely check this book out.

There are probably plenty of other contemporary titles that I couldn’t possibly all list in this article, but if you know of one, feel free to share it in the comments!

Image Credit: rel="nofollow" href="http://findicons.com/icon/220044/mail">Aha-Soft Team

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-great-contemporary-ebooks-read-email-dailylit/">6 Great Contemporary E-Books You Can Read By Email Via DailyLit is a post from: href="http://www.makeuseof.com">MakeUseOf

More articles about: href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/books/" title="books" rel="tag">books, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/ebooks/" title="ebooks" rel="tag">ebooks, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/email/" title="email" rel="tag">email, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/hobby/" title="hobby" rel="tag">hobby, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/reading/" title="reading" rel="tag">reading />

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View full post on MakeUseOf

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/image53.png?54167" alt="read articles kindle" />I love my class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/kindle/">Kindle. For a tech writer, I don’t actually have many gadgets – but the Kindle is one I would never trade. Being able to read an endless variety of books on one slim device with a paper-like display makes me feel like I’m actually living in the future. But sometimes, a book isn’t what I need. Sometimes I just want to read a lengthy, well-written magazine article that would make me feel smarter or better informed.

Another good reason to read long-form articles is that you can finish them in one sitting; that always gives me that satisfying “Saturday morning with the paper” feel, if you know what I mean. class="vt-p" href="http://delivereads.com/">Delivereads is one lovely way to get your long-form fix on the Kindle.

First, here’s what the site itself looks like:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/image54.png?54167" border="0" alt="read articles kindle" width="580" height="484" />

It says that the first step is to “let your Kindle know” they’re coming. Your Kindle has an email address, but only those addresses you enter into Amazon’s “white list” can use it. So go to Amazon’s class="vt-p" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/manage#pdocSettings">Manage My Kindle page and add Deliverads to the list of allowed addresses.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/image55.png?54167" border="0" alt="articles kindle reader" width="580" height="350" />

The address, as you can see, is dave@delivereads.com. “Dave” is Dave Pell, the guy behind Delivereads, who curates the articles sent out using Delivereads. Now that you’ve added Dave to your white list, you need to find your own Kindle’s email address, to tell Delivereads where to send content to. That address is on the same page, under Your Kindle Devices:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/image56.png?54167" border="0" alt="articles kindle reader" width="580" height="350" />

Now let’s take this address and paste it into the Delivereads page (yes, that’s my Kindle’s email. To each his own!).

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/image57.png?54167" border="0" alt="articles kindle reader" width="580" height="350" />

Note that you don’t paste the whole address in, but just the beginning, and then use the drop-down to select the correct suffix. Then just click Subscribe, and get the following message:

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/image58.png?54167" border="0" alt="read articles kindle" width="580" height="113" />

That’s it! As simple as could be, really. A welcome message should appear on your Kindle within an hour, and then you’ll get long-form articles every now and then for your reading pleasure.

The Content

You may be curious to know what you’re subscribing to, what sort of articles you’d be getting every week. Here is the current crop, as of this writing:

• class="vt-p" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/07/the-brain-on-trial/8520/">Atlantic: The Brain on Trial
• class="vt-p" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/">Atlantic: How to Land Your Kid in Therapy
• class="vt-p" href="http://thefastertimes.com/news/2011/06/16/aol-hell-an-aol-content-slave-speaks-out/">Faster Times: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out
• class="vt-p" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html?pagewanted=print">NYT: Roger Federer as Religious Experience
• class="vt-p" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-schienberg/facebooking-frank_b_876647.html">HuffPo: Facebooking Frank

I read the piece about AOL, and it was very good. I used to write for Download Squad (an AOL property), and working there wasn’t like that at all. It was still interesting to see what other parts of AOL looked like. It took me about 5-10 minutes to read the article – just enough time for a relaxed cup of coffee.

Alternatives

While Delivereads is very well executed, the idea of delivering long-form articles for the Kindle is not groundbreaking. class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/sendmestory-recent-interesting-newspaper-articles/">Send Me A Story were there first, but I haven’t received anything from them for months now. Here’s hoping Delivereads proves more consistent and persistent.

Do you know of similar services, maybe ones not curated by a single person?

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/read-great-longform-articles-kindle-delivereads/">How To Read Great Long-Form Articles On Your Kindle With Delivereads is a post from: href="http://www.makeuseof.com">MakeUseOf

More articles about: href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/ereader/" title="ereader" rel="tag">ereader, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/kindle/" title="kindle" rel="tag">kindle, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/reading/" title="reading" rel="tag">reading />

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View full post on MakeUseOf

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/intro10.jpg" alt="" />Quick response codes, or class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/qr-codes-can-digitize-your-world-and-back-again/">QR codes for short, have been used for a few years now to provide rapid access to URLs, messages or contact information. Marketing and advertising departments love QR codes, as with a simple scan, even more advertising related to their product can be delivered straight to your thumbs.

But why let the big multinationals have all the fun? It’s easy and completely free to generate your very own codes, and these can be used in a myriad of useful or entertaining ways. Of course you’ll need a smartphone with a QR reader to enjoy your own creations.

Creating & Reading Your Own

There are plenty of good, free QR generators out there with some offering more advanced options than others. Between them, the following four manage to cover most bases, including contact cards, URLs, text messages and even access to wireless networks (including security codes):

• class="vt-p" href="http://qrcode.kaywa.com/">Kaywa.com QR Generator
• class="vt-p" href="http://goqr.me/">GoQR.me
• class="vt-p" href="http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/">ZXing Project QR Generator
• class="vt-p" href="http://delivr.com/qr-code-generator">Delivr.com QR Codes

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/generators_goqr.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="388" />

In order to read them back you’ll need an app for your chosen device. There’s plenty out there, but at the moment I’m using RedLaser for my class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/iphone">iPhone which works a treat (and is fully class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/android">Android compatible too).

• class="vt-p" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/redlaser/id312720263?mt=8">Download Red Laser for iOS (4.0 required, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad 2)
• class="vt-p" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ebay.redlaser">Download Red Laser for Android (1.6 + required)

Business Cards

Not exactly original, but important nonetheless. Whilst you should always provide adequate contact information on class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-to-create-a-business-card-20/">your business card (email address, website, phone number and so on) a QR code might also be a good idea.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/business_card.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="369" />

Your QR code could be used to store all of your contact information in vCard format, so that when it is scanned on a compatible device the option to add a new contact appears. With a scan all of the information stored on your paper business card is transferred to a digital device – effortlessly.

This could also work for posters, and is certainly not limited to just vCard uses.

Classified Ads (Offline)

Selling something locally? Too big for snail mail? For weighty electrical items, cars, hardware and so on QR codes could be used to help sell your item. If you are using an online merchant for the sale (such as class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/ebay-tips/">eBay or AutoTrader) the QR code could be used to link directly to the item’s point of sale.

If you’re simply selling offline and advertising locally a QR code can be used to provide a web link to the manufacturer’s description, which will provide a lot more information than you can fit on a classified advertising card. Simply print out your code and glue it on!

Clothing & Jewellery

QR codes are on everything from rings to scarves to t-shirts these days, and getting your own t-shirt from somewhere like Cafe Press or Spreadshirt is easy. Why not advertise your brand on your back? If you’re a photographer, events organiser or musician (to name but a few) who doesn’t mind being scanned regularly then QR might be an effective tool.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ring_qrcode.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="435" />

You don’t actually need a valid use for QR codes in order to get some clothing or alternative jewellery made up though, and a t-shirt or bracelet that scans might make the perfect gift for the geeky girl or guy in your life.

Forum Avatars

Depending on the forum, a QR code as your avatar can act as a quick way of identifying you. Of course you won’t necessary want this for all forums, but it might help drive traffic to your site or increase your social media outreach with a simple scan.

Award yourself additional points if you can actually get it to look like something.

Starting A Revolution

Okay, so starting a revolution might require more than a scan of your mobile phone, but the ability to embed text, email addresses, URLs and so on within a code mustn’t be overlooked. If you’ve got something to say why not place codes around town and get your message out there? Many who know what QR codes are for will probably scan them out of pure curiosity (I know I would).

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/street_qrcode.jpg" alt="" width="374" height="500" />

Bus stops, the subway, lamp-posts and even urinals (sorry, but it’s true) are all opportunities for this.

CV/Resume

Will adding a QR code to your next job application land you that dream position? Possibly not, but it might set you apart from the rest of the crowd who simply didn’t think that far ahead. Employers love initiative and the ability to demonstrate understanding, so why not show off your forethought and get a cheeky link to your website in the process?

A must for social media types, programmers and techies alike.

Share This!

This could work pretty well on the street, especially if you’re an artist, street performer or (dare I say it) a graffiti writer. Simply stick a QR code next to your artwork/pitch/throw-up and link to a URL that tweets the scene. For example: “I’m currently in St. James Park, London watching The MakeUseOf Jazz Quartet” with a class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-five-best-things-about-google-maps/">Google Maps link.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/qraffiti.jpg" alt="" width="370" height="500" />

Add your own hashtag to monitor the success of your QR bombing. We could call it QRaffiti!

Conclusion

Remember there’s an endless number of applications for QR codes, especially considering it’s so quick and easy to generate your own! As more people switch on to the smartphone revolution, more people have access to these innovations. If you come up with any great unique uses then be sure to let us know!

Have you tried any of these? Do you scan QR codes on your phone? Any favourite scanners or generators? Add your thoughts below.

Images: class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chandramarsono/4400203341/in/photostream/">Business Card, class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fluidforms/3635425508/in/photostream/">QR Code Ring, class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sillygwailo/5379370730/in/photostream/">Street QR Code, class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/id-iom/4808349970/in/photostream/">QR Wall Code

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-great-qr-codes-generate-free/">7 Great Uses For QR Codes & How To Generate Your Own For Free is a post from: href="http://www.makeuseof.com">MakeUseOf

More articles about: href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/art/" title="art" rel="tag">art, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/barcode/" title="barcode" rel="tag">barcode, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/business-card/" title="business card" rel="tag">business card, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/information/" title="information" rel="tag">information, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/interesting/" title="Interesting" rel="tag">Interesting, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/scanner/" title="scanner" rel="tag">scanner, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/smartphones/" title="smartphones" rel="tag">smartphones />

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View full post on MakeUseOf

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/intro10.jpg" alt="" />Quick response codes, or class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/qr-codes-can-digitize-your-world-and-back-again/">QR codes for short, have been used for a few years now to provide rapid access to URLs, messages or contact information. Marketing and advertising departments love QR codes, as with a simple scan, even more advertising related to their product can be delivered straight to your thumbs.

But why let the big multinationals have all the fun? It’s easy and completely free to generate your very own codes, and these can be used in a myriad of useful or entertaining ways. Of course you’ll need a smartphone with a QR reader to enjoy your own creations.

Creating & Reading Your Own

There are plenty of good, free QR generators out there with some offering more advanced options than others. Between them, the following four manage to cover most bases, including contact cards, URLs, text messages and even access to wireless networks (including security codes):

• class="vt-p" href="http://qrcode.kaywa.com/">Kaywa.com QR Generator
• class="vt-p" href="http://goqr.me/">GoQR.me
• class="vt-p" href="http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/">ZXing Project QR Generator
• class="vt-p" href="http://delivr.com/qr-code-generator">Delivr.com QR Codes

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/generators_goqr.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="388" />

In order to read them back you’ll need an app for your chosen device. There’s plenty out there, but at the moment I’m using RedLaser for my class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/iphone">iPhone which works a treat (and is fully class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/android">Android compatible too).

• class="vt-p" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/redlaser/id312720263?mt=8">Download Red Laser for iOS (4.0 required, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad 2)
• class="vt-p" href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ebay.redlaser">Download Red Laser for Android (1.6 + required)

Business Cards

Not exactly original, but important nonetheless. Whilst you should always provide adequate contact information on class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-to-create-a-business-card-20/">your business card (email address, website, phone number and so on) a QR code might also be a good idea.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/business_card.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="369" />

Your QR code could be used to store all of your contact information in vCard format, so that when it is scanned on a compatible device the option to add a new contact appears. With a scan all of the information stored on your paper business card is transferred to a digital device – effortlessly.

This could also work for posters, and is certainly not limited to just vCard uses.

Classified Ads (Offline)

Selling something locally? Too big for snail mail? For weighty electrical items, cars, hardware and so on QR codes could be used to help sell your item. If you are using an online merchant for the sale (such as class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/ebay-tips/">eBay or AutoTrader) the QR code could be used to link directly to the item’s point of sale.

If you’re simply selling offline and advertising locally a QR code can be used to provide a web link to the manufacturer’s description, which will provide a lot more information than you can fit on a classified advertising card. Simply print out your code and glue it on!

Clothing & Jewellery

QR codes are on everything from rings to scarves to t-shirts these days, and getting your own t-shirt from somewhere like Cafe Press or Spreadshirt is easy. Why not advertise your brand on your back? If you’re a photographer, events organiser or musician (to name but a few) who doesn’t mind being scanned regularly then QR might be an effective tool.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ring_qrcode.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="435" />

You don’t actually need a valid use for QR codes in order to get some clothing or alternative jewellery made up though, and a t-shirt or bracelet that scans might make the perfect gift for the geeky girl or guy in your life.

Forum Avatars

Depending on the forum, a QR code as your avatar can act as a quick way of identifying you. Of course you won’t necessary want this for all forums, but it might help drive traffic to your site or increase your social media outreach with a simple scan.

Award yourself additional points if you can actually get it to look like something.

Starting A Revolution

Okay, so starting a revolution might require more than a scan of your mobile phone, but the ability to embed text, email addresses, URLs and so on within a code mustn’t be overlooked. If you’ve got something to say why not place codes around town and get your message out there? Many who know what QR codes are for will probably scan them out of pure curiosity (I know I would).

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/street_qrcode.jpg" alt="" width="374" height="500" />

Bus stops, the subway, lamp-posts and even urinals (sorry, but it’s true) are all opportunities for this.

CV/Resume

Will adding a QR code to your next job application land you that dream position? Possibly not, but it might set you apart from the rest of the crowd who simply didn’t think that far ahead. Employers love initiative and the ability to demonstrate understanding, so why not show off your forethought and get a cheeky link to your website in the process?

A must for social media types, programmers and techies alike.

Share This!

This could work pretty well on the street, especially if you’re an artist, street performer or (dare I say it) a graffiti writer. Simply stick a QR code next to your artwork/pitch/throw-up and link to a URL that tweets the scene. For example: “I’m currently in St. James Park, London watching The MakeUseOf Jazz Quartet” with a class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-five-best-things-about-google-maps/">Google Maps link.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/qraffiti.jpg" alt="" width="370" height="500" />

Add your own hashtag to monitor the success of your QR bombing. We could call it QRaffiti!

Conclusion

Remember there’s an endless number of applications for QR codes, especially considering it’s so quick and easy to generate your own! As more people switch on to the smartphone revolution, more people have access to these innovations. If you come up with any great unique uses then be sure to let us know!

Have you tried any of these? Do you scan QR codes on your phone? Any favourite scanners or generators? Add your thoughts below.

Images: class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/chandramarsono/4400203341/in/photostream/">Business Card, class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fluidforms/3635425508/in/photostream/">QR Code Ring, class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sillygwailo/5379370730/in/photostream/">Street QR Code, class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/id-iom/4808349970/in/photostream/">QR Wall Code

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-great-qr-codes-generate-free/">7 Great Uses For QR Codes & How To Generate Your Own For Free is a post from: href="http://www.makeuseof.com">MakeUseOf

More articles about: href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/art/" title="art" rel="tag">art, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/barcode/" title="barcode" rel="tag">barcode, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/business-card/" title="business card" rel="tag">business card, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/information/" title="information" rel="tag">information, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/interesting/" title="Interesting" rel="tag">Interesting, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/scanner/" title="scanner" rel="tag">scanner, href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/smartphones/" title="smartphones" rel="tag">smartphones />

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/intro1.jpg" alt="mobile phone reviews" />As development of mobile platforms and apps soars, it’s hard enough to keep track of Android news and iOS apps, but at least we’ve got you covered with our list of class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-android-websites-you-should-check-out/">best Android-related websites and class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-websites-you-should-go-to-for-iphone-apps-reviews/">iPhone app review sites. As these new updates always get released in newer smartphones and tablets, all of which seem to promise to out-do even the more recent models, it’s also hard to keep track of all these portable devices.

There are a few mobile phone review sites which not only help you keep track of the latest news and devices, but also do a very thorough job of examining the pros and cons of each device so you know what to expect when you’ll acquire your new mobile phone. You may already know class="vt-p" href="http://news.cnet.com/crave">CNET and class="vt-p" href="http://www.engadget.com">Engadget as gadget review providers, so in this list, we’ll see other, perhaps lesser-known but very complete sites that cover a great deal of mobile phones and tablets.

class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/mobiletechreview">Mobile Tech Review

This YouTube channel offers more than 200 video reviews mostly of smartphones, but occasionally also laptops and tablets. Most reviews are about 10 minutes long or less, some running more than 20 minutes, such as this review on the class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RLsQGlIlGk">Motorola Atrix 4G mobile phone.

Lisa, the host of the videos does a really good job at explaining features and going over hardware, design and software in a very soothing voice that makes the reviews more professional sounding and easy to enjoy these videos for the viewers as well.

Here is the latest smartphone review as of this writing, which covers the the new Nokia E7, a QWERTY keyboard version of the N8. You can also check out class="vt-p" href="http://www.mobiletechreview.com/">the website for text-based reviews.

width="580" height="430"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QcMrxnFWJes?fs=1&hl=en_US" /> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="430" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QcMrxnFWJes?fs=1&hl=en_US" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TheDigitalDigest">The Digital Digest

The Digital Digest offers about 38 reviews as of this writing, and mainly covers tablets, but also has video reviews on cell phones, such as this demonstration of the Motorola Droid X.

width="580" height="430"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l822YX2YwN0?fs=1&hl=en_US" /> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="430" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l822YX2YwN0?fs=1&hl=en_US" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

The video reviews are fast-paced but also very thorough as most videos run close to 10 minutes long. Not only does Ed, the host of the videos explain features thoroughly, he also does it very eloquently, barely pausing because he does go through all pros and cons of the devices.

Since he mostly focuses on tablets, there are many reviews of devices from a variety of prices that he showcases so if you’re not interested in the iPad or are looking for smaller alternatives, you should definitely check out this channel.

class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/phonedog">PhoneDog

A favorite channel of mine, PhoneDog has a variety of tablet, mobile phone, and unboxing videos (try 1,100+ videos) but what makes it stand out is the addition of reviews covering feature or messaging phones (for anyone that just wants a working phone without the extra data fees), as well as 101-type videos explaining what 4G is, and comparisons of similar phones, which they call “dogfights”.

width="580" height="430"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/s_8akjL14V8?fs=1&hl=en_US" /> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="430" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/s_8akjL14V8?fs=1&hl=en_US" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

What’s also cool is that the class="vt-p" href="http://www.phonedog.com/">website contains mobile-related news and updates on the latest and upcoming phones, and it also constantly offers sweepstakes, where the prizes may be iPod Shuffles, smartphones or tablets.

class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/phonearena">PhoneArena

With over 1,300 videos, PhoneArena has reviews of mostly smartphones and tablets, usually over 5 minutes long, but it has also many video reviews of phone accessories, as well as sample videos shot with the smartphones so viewers can appreciate the quality of the phones’ video-recording capabilities.

width="580" height="430"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mfi4dVNxa_w?fs=1&hl=en_US" /> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="430" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mfi4dVNxa_w?fs=1&hl=en_US" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

The website is also a blog with the latest mobile news but a distinguishing feature is the excellent class="vt-p" href="http://www.phonearena.com/phones">phone finder tool, which has lots of very specific search fields, perhaps the most thorough ones I’ve seen.

Honorary mentions go to class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/phonescoop">PhoneScoop, which offers short video tours on the latest and upcoming phones. All of these channels definitely give you detailed mobile phone reviews so you actually learn lots. Which sites are your favorite?

Image credit: class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/takapprs_flickr/4937208753/">TAKA@PPRS />
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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/intro1.jpg" alt="mobile phone reviews" />As development of mobile platforms and apps soars, it’s hard enough to keep track of Android news and iOS apps, but at least we’ve got you covered with our list of class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-android-websites-you-should-check-out/">best Android-related websites and class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-websites-you-should-go-to-for-iphone-apps-reviews/">iPhone app review sites. As these new updates always get released in newer smartphones and tablets, all of which seem to promise to out-do even the more recent models, it’s also hard to keep track of all these portable devices.

There are a few mobile phone review sites which not only help you keep track of the latest news and devices, but also do a very thorough job of examining the pros and cons of each device so you know what to expect when you’ll acquire your new mobile phone. You may already know class="vt-p" href="http://news.cnet.com/crave">CNET and class="vt-p" href="http://www.engadget.com">Engadget as gadget review providers, so in this list, we’ll see other, perhaps lesser-known but very complete sites that cover a great deal of mobile phones and tablets.

class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/mobiletechreview">Mobile Tech Review

This YouTube channel offers more than 200 video reviews mostly of smartphones, but occasionally also laptops and tablets. Most reviews are about 10 minutes long or less, some running more than 20 minutes, such as this review on the class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RLsQGlIlGk">Motorola Atrix 4G mobile phone.

Lisa, the host of the videos does a really good job at explaining features and going over hardware, design and software in a very soothing voice that makes the reviews more professional sounding and easy to enjoy these videos for the viewers as well.

Here is the latest smartphone review as of this writing, which covers the the new Nokia E7, a QWERTY keyboard version of the N8. You can also check out class="vt-p" href="http://www.mobiletechreview.com/">the website for text-based reviews.

width="580" height="430"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QcMrxnFWJes?fs=1&hl=en_US" /> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="430" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QcMrxnFWJes?fs=1&hl=en_US" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TheDigitalDigest">The Digital Digest

The Digital Digest offers about 38 reviews as of this writing, and mainly covers tablets, but also has video reviews on cell phones, such as this demonstration of the Motorola Droid X.

width="580" height="430"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/l822YX2YwN0?fs=1&hl=en_US" /> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="430" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/l822YX2YwN0?fs=1&hl=en_US" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

The video reviews are fast-paced but also very thorough as most videos run close to 10 minutes long. Not only does Ed, the host of the videos explain features thoroughly, he also does it very eloquently, barely pausing because he does go through all pros and cons of the devices.

Since he mostly focuses on tablets, there are many reviews of devices from a variety of prices that he showcases so if you’re not interested in the iPad or are looking for smaller alternatives, you should definitely check out this channel.

class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/phonedog">PhoneDog

A favorite channel of mine, PhoneDog has a variety of tablet, mobile phone, and unboxing videos (try 1,100+ videos) but what makes it stand out is the addition of reviews covering feature or messaging phones (for anyone that just wants a working phone without the extra data fees), as well as 101-type videos explaining what 4G is, and comparisons of similar phones, which they call “dogfights”.

width="580" height="430"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/s_8akjL14V8?fs=1&hl=en_US" /> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="430" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/s_8akjL14V8?fs=1&hl=en_US" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

What’s also cool is that the class="vt-p" href="http://www.phonedog.com/">website contains mobile-related news and updates on the latest and upcoming phones, and it also constantly offers sweepstakes, where the prizes may be iPod Shuffles, smartphones or tablets.

class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/phonearena">PhoneArena

With over 1,300 videos, PhoneArena has reviews of mostly smartphones and tablets, usually over 5 minutes long, but it has also many video reviews of phone accessories, as well as sample videos shot with the smartphones so viewers can appreciate the quality of the phones’ video-recording capabilities.

width="580" height="430"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mfi4dVNxa_w?fs=1&hl=en_US" /> name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="430" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mfi4dVNxa_w?fs=1&hl=en_US" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

The website is also a blog with the latest mobile news but a distinguishing feature is the excellent class="vt-p" href="http://www.phonearena.com/phones">phone finder tool, which has lots of very specific search fields, perhaps the most thorough ones I’ve seen.

Honorary mentions go to class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/phonescoop">PhoneScoop, which offers short video tours on the latest and upcoming phones. All of these channels definitely give you detailed mobile phone reviews so you actually learn lots. Which sites are your favorite?

Image credit: class="vt-p" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/takapprs_flickr/4937208753/">TAKA@PPRS />
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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/greader-look.jpg" alt="google reader userscript"/> href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/google-reader/">Google Reader is another free Google tool that I can’t live without (coming right next after Google Search and href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/google-docs/">Google Docs).

Google Reader has been always almost perfect: and it’s been fun watching it being improved: the added cool search option and some interface tweaks have made it even better.

But there’s nothing too perfect under the sun, and the below userscripts have been quite good at making Google Reader experience even better.

(All the below Google Reader userscripts have been tested on FireFox 4 + href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/greasemonkey/">Greasemonkey, but they may work in other browsers as well)

1. Add Favicons to the Feed List

href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/24371">Favicons for Google Reader is an old, but still functioning userscript that adds domain favicons to the corresponding feeds in your left-hand list. This way the feeds are much easier to recognize:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/greader-look-01.jpg" alt="google reader userscript" width="329" height="379" />

2. Make the Most of the Screen Real Estate

href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/58577">Google Reader Absolutely Customizable is an ideal userscript for those who access Google Reader interface using a laptop or a mobile browser as it lets you make the most of the screen real estate:

• Get rid of the top navigation;
• Resize the left-hand sidebar navigation;
• Get rid of “All items” in the left-hand sidebar;
• Condense white space;
• Move search box; many others.

Any of the above behavior can be turned on / off using the tool “absolutely customizable” (as the name suggests) options:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/greader-look-03.jpg" alt="tweak google reader" width="531" height="433" />

Let’s see it in action!

Here’s your regular Google Reader interface:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/greader-look-05.jpg" alt="tweak google reader" width="540" height="398" />

And here’s how Google Reader looks after you have the script installed and all its options checked:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/greader-look-04.jpg" alt="tweak google reader" width="540" height="293" />

Other userscripts with similar functionality:

• href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/12197">Google Reader Minimalistic is another fun option to try here that does pretty much the same but is harder to customize.
• href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/remove-distractions-from-google-reader-with-helvetireader/">Helvetireader is yet another great userscript to minimize your Google Reader interface.

Note: all of the minimalistic userscripts in this section are incompatible with the “Favicons for Google Reader” script above, so you’ll have to choose one.

3. Color and Filter Feed Items

href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8782">Google Reader – Colorful List View is a fun userscript that visualizes the feeds in your list by the source. Whether it makes the Gogle Reader interface more usable or more cluttered is the matter of personal taste. Here’s what it looks like (the “List” view):

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/greader-look-06.jpg" alt="userscripts google reader" width="540" height="308" />

The userscript options are available on Google Reader “Settings” page. From there you can set:

• To colorize only read / unread items (or both)
• To colorize only expanded / list view (or both);
• To colorize comment view

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/greader-look-06.jpg" alt="userscripts google reader" width="540" height="308" />

href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/23671">Google Reader Filter is a userscript that allows to highlight feed items in the list by keyword (as well as filters duplicated entries and unwanted content). After the user script is installed, a “Google Reader Filter” button appears in the top-right corner of Google Reader interface. The button allows you to quickly access your filter and keyword highlight settings:

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/greader-look-07.jpg" alt="userscripts google reader" width="540" height="445" />

The userscript works as follows:

• Feed items with banned keywords are in gray (these can be totally hidden upon your settings);
• Feed items with your favorite keywords are highlighted:

This userscript only works with Google Reader’s list view and not expanded view – switch to list view from the view tabs on the upper right.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/greader-look-08.jpg" alt="google reader userscript" width="540" height="360" />

Are you an avid Google Reader user? Do you think the Google Reader userscript above would come in handy? Please share your thoughts! />
/>Need Assistance? Ask questions to MakeUseOf staff and thousands of other readers on href="http://www.makeuseof.dev/answers/" target="_blank" >MakeUseOf Answers!

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These days most digital SLR cameras include the ability to shoot in RAW, an uncompressed image format that gives you great control over a number of photographic variables. This can vary from the basics like white balance and exposure; to curve adjustment, lens vignetting and more.

As a semi-serious photographer and Linux user, you’ll be forgiven for feeling a bit left out when it comes to post-processing. Whilst Adobe Photoshop (and fantastic Camera RAW module) happily chugs along in Windows or Mac OS, unless you’re prepared to put up with WINE you’ll be looking for something a little more native.

Here are 4 free solutions for getting the most out of your photography on a Linux machine.

A Quick Word About RAW

If you’ve bought a digital SLR camera in the last 5 years or so, there’s a good chance it can capture photos in the RAW image format. Depending on the size of your camera’s sensor, these files can be roughly two to three times the size of your average high quality JPEG.

Whilst it is possible to open JPEG files in some RAW editors, the compression and lack of data stored within a JPEG simply does not compare it to RAW. If your camera does shoot RAW and you haven’t experimented yet then I’d urge you to give it a go.

Once you’ve transferred your RAWs to your computer, you’ll need an editor. With an editor you can change (within reason) most aspects of your photographs in a way JPEG doesn’t allow. Speaking from experience, it’s amazing how well some of your worst shots scrub up after a 10 minute edit!

Note: Where possible, Ubuntu instructions for installing via repositories have been provided.

Photivo

An incredibly powerful RAW editor, Photivo handles nearly every RAW format and BMP files with startling ease. The interface could do with some work, but with literally hundreds of processing techniques at your disposal it’s clear that the open-source project is being taken in the right direction.

If you’re a fan of GIMP for your photo editing (and let’s face it, using Linux you don’t exactly have a choice) then you’ll also like the way Photivo is able to send modified photos directly to GIMP for retouching, with correct EXIF data and colour profiles.

The developers claim that Photivo uses the most advanced image manipulation algorithms available, though this powerful and complex tool is geared more towards power users and those with prior RAW experience, rather than complete newbies.

Ubuntu install, in Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dhor/myway

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install photivo

Raw Therapee

Not the most intuitive program to use at first, Raw Therapee is a fairly feature rich and comprehensive RAW editor that’s compatible with Linux. At the time of writing, the team are working on a stable release of version 3.0, which is a major release for the project.

Due to this, the team are keen to hear from anyone who uses the software and encounters bugs and such. The forum is a great place to start, you can report bugs, learn about current and upcoming features and find detailed discussions about compiling Raw Therapee from source.

There are also versions of the application for Windows and Mac OS X, for those interested.

Rawstudio

Rawstudio offers a decent amount of control over your RAW photographs and supports a wide number of filetypes. Using the sliders it is easy to alter exposure, curves and so on, as well as colour management thanks to Little CMS.

You can convert your RAWs to JPEG, PNG and TIFF image formats, and what’s more you can batch process a whole collection of images in one go. Rawstudio can be compiled from source, or download pre-compiled OpenSUSE or Ubuntu packages.

Ubuntu install, in Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rawstudio/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install rawstudio

UFRaw

Unidentified Flying RAW (or UFRaw for short) is a dedicated RAW image editor based on GTK+. It can be used as an application on its own or as a plugin for GIMP (simply open a RAW image in GIMP to be presented with the UFRaw editor window).

The software is especially beneficial to Nikon users as it can easily read the camera’s tone curves (Canon and other users can still apply a Nikon curve to their image if desired). Unfortunately sharpening and the ability to embed EXIF data into images from certain (more obscure) camera brands is still not present.

UFRaw is available in ready-to-install packages for a plethora of Linux distributions and other operating systems, along with detailed install instructions.

Ubuntu install, in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install ufraw

Conclusion

Whilst these applications don’t offer you the immense amount of customization and sheer tweak-ability of Photoshop’s in-built Camera RAW editor, they should at least make post-processing on Linux a bit easier.

If you yourself favour any particular RAW editing program we’ve not featured here, let us know.

Do you shoot in RAW? Do you edit RAW photos in Linux? Let us know in the comments below.

More articles about: photography, photography tips, photos, ubuntu

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If you love your Mac and you love using Firefox, here’s some great news for you. There are a number of useful Firefox extensions designed especially with Mac users in mind. These add-ons fix some of the little annoyances and try to make your life as a Mac Firefox user just a little easier.

Some Firefox add-ons for Mac lovers are used to link your Firefox experience to native Mac OS X functions, while others are for imitating your Mac experience when you’re stuck using a non-Mac machine. Most of these you probably wouldn’t think to look for unless you realised they existed, so we’re sharing them with you today.

1. Mac OS X Dictionary Lookup

You may already know that it’s possible to highlight a word in any native Mac application and right-click to look the word up in the Mac Dictionary. You may have also noticed that Firefox doesn’t do this. But not to worry, there’s a number of great extensions that will let you have a right-click dictionary look-up from Firefox.

• Mac OS X Dictionary Add-On
• Look Up in Dictionary
• DictionaryFox
• Ask Your Dictionary

Why would you want this? Well, if you’ve tricked out your Mac dictionary.app to use Wikipedia and all of your favourite languages, it can be extremely useful to have easy access to those definitions directly from Firefox.

Bonus Tip: If you’re playing with multiple languages on your Mac, you might also like to read this post on Mac shortcuts for accents, this post on Mac language management and use this unofficial Google Translate Firefox add-on.

2. Mac Shortcuts On Windows/Unix

If you love your Mac but occasionally get stuck using a different OS (like perhaps at work), you can use this Mac Shortcuts add-on to bring to life a few of your favourite shortcuts. For instance, CMD+Q for Quit and CMD+, for Preferences. Obviously, the CMD button will change to CTRL and it only works within Firefox, but don’t let that stop you giving it a go.

3. Context Menu Keys For Mac

Here’s a little add-on which reveals the access key for your right-click context menu items. You can see the access key revealed in parentheses () in the screenshot.

Why would you use this? Well, it could be handy for access on occasion. Also, if you were to create an iMacro or do some GUI Applescripting involving Firefox, you could invoke CTRL-Click to access the context menu, followed by the access key from the context menu.

4. PDF Plug-in For Firefox

Does it annoy you when Preview opens your PDFs while browsing? If it does, try the PDF plug-in for Firefox on Mac. This nifty extension makes sure your PDFs open from within Firefox. This extension officially makes PDFs less annoying for Mac users.

More Firefox Add-ons

If you need more to read, MakeUseOf has many more lists of excellent Firefox plug-ins you’ll probably like:

• 7 Useful Firefox Addons For Online Shoppers
• 3 Useful Firefox Add-ons To Help Save You Money
• 10+ Best Firefox Security and Privacy Addons
• 10+ Firefox Addons To Enhance Google Search
• 3 Firefox Add-Ons To Help You Blog More Easily

What are your favourite Firefox add-ons for Mac users? Let us know in the comments!

Image Source: ShutterStock

More articles about: browsing tools, firefox, firefox addons, firefox tips

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/mobiicon.jpg" border="0" alt="books for kindle" />With the availability of so many free or affordable e-reader programs and devices for both Mac, PC, and mobile device users, you can find some good free ebooks – especially classical literature – to download and start reading in a matter of a few minutes. With Kindle being the class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/reader-kindle-ipad-geeks-weigh">most popular of e-readers – both in its software platform for Mac, PC and mobile devices, and its hardware versions – many websites have popped up to provide free downloads of what is called the Kindle or .mobi formats for Kindle e-readers.

First off, if you don’t know how to download free Amazon Kindle ebooks to your PC, check out Karl’s article class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-download-completely-free-amazon-kindle-ebooks-to-your-pc/">here and see my class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/reading-ebooks-ipad-ibooks-amazon-kindle-mac/">article about how to add and read Kindle books on your Mac and Apple mobile devices.

class="vt-p" href="http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2245146011">Amazon.com Free eBook Collection

Before we delve into the 5 other online sources for Kindle books, let’s remind ourselves that Amazon.com has a section of  class="vt-p" href="http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2245146011">free ebooks - mainly older, out-of-copyright and pre-1923 books – that you can browse and download to your Kindle. Popular current features include Leo Tolstoy’s classic War and Peace and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/amazoncom.jpg" border="0" alt="books for kindle" width="497" height="443" />

Amazon’s free ebooks listings are easy to browse and download. You can sort the list by Bestselling, Avg. Customer Review, and Publication Date, and Price: Low to High.

class="vt-p" href="http://www.manybooks.net/">ManyBooks

ManyBooks has a well organized listing of popular free ebooks, including the mobile format. A good place to start browsing on this site is its class="vt-p" href="http://www.manybooks.net/categories/">Categories page which lists over 60 genres of books – including Adventure, Banned Books, Fantasy, Politics, Satire, and Science Fiction.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/manybooks-1.png" border="0" alt="kindle books available" width="580" height="293" />

When you select a book, you need to click on the accompanying pull-down Download button to get a list of ebook formats, many of which include .mobi.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/manybooks.png" border="0" alt="kindle books available" width="233" height="405" />

class="vt-p" href="http://freekindlebooks.org/">FreeKindleBooks

FreeKindleBooks is not a visually appealing site, but it too offers thousands of Kindle-compatible ebooks in the classical category. This is the site you go to if you‘re looking for books by writers like Charles Darwin, Emily Dickinson, W.E.B Du Bois, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Homer, Sarah Orne Jewett and William Shakespeare.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/freekindle.png" border="0" alt="kindle books available" width="476" height="371" />

Titles on this site do include book cover images. When you click on a title, the linked .mobi version, like the above image, will download to your computer or mobile device.

class="vt-p" href="http://www.mobipocket.com">MobiPocket

MobiPocket has over 116,000 listings. What sets this site apart is that it includes Kindle books in various international languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, and Russian.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/mobipocket.png" border="0" alt="download kindle books" width="562" height="264" />

Book categories include Juvenile literature, US politics, Criminology, history and the like. Unfortunately, listings don’t include descriptions beyond the author and title.

class="vt-p" href="http://justfreebooks.info/">JustFreeBooks

If you’re not finding what you’re looking for on any of the sites above, you might try the search engine, JustFreeBooks.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/justfreebooks.png" border="0" alt="download kindle books" width="580" height="381" />

This site searches over 700 websites for free listings. The search results for titles will include the available formats of ebooks, including Kindle .mobi.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/justfreebooks-1.png" border="0" alt="download kindle books" width="482" height="188" />

class="vt-p" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page">Project Gutenberg

Established in 1971, Project Gutenberg has the largest single collection of free electronic books on the Internet.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/projectgutenberg.png" border="0" alt="Projectgutenberg" width="580" height="265" />

You mainly search by title and catalog to find ebooks on this site. But you also can check out its Bookshelf listings, which includes 80 different categories of ebooks. If you’re an avid reader, you could easily spend hours on this site.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/muoscreenshot345.png" border="0" alt="books for kindle" width="580" height="430" />

Clicking on a title also brings up listed ebook formats. There’s also a link to read ebooks online.

These are the free Kindle ebook sites I found the most well established and easy to use. If you know of other sites that should be added to this list, please let us know about them.

Our other Kindle related articles include:

class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/borrow-kindle-ebooks-kindle-lending-club/">Borrow Kindle eBooks From The Kindle Lending Club /> class="l vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-strip-mobi-and-prc-ebooks-of-encryption/" target="_top">How To Remove DRM from MOBI and PRC eBooks /> class="l vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/reading-ebooks-ipad-ibooks-amazon-kindle-mac/" target="_top">Reading Ebooks on The iPad with iBooks & Amazon Kindle [Mac] /> />
/>NEW: href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/makeuseof/id366921965?mt=8" target="_blank">Download MakeUseOf iPhone App. FREE!

/>

 

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