Read the Classics for Free!

Want to read some of the world famous classic stories, but don’t want to buy them? At Project Gutenberg you can find over 28000 classic books ine electronic form. You can find such great stories as (the number after the title is the number downloads over the last 7 days):

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1724)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1185)
History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary Ritter Beard (1182)
Ulysses by James Joyce (994)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (972)
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete by Leonardo da Vinci (917)
Dracula by Bram Stoker (899)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (835)
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (796)
The Marvelous Land Of Oz by L. Frank Baum (646)
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (637)
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (630)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (617)

The books are available in a variety of formats including PDF, HTML, Text, and formats that can be read on your Smartphone. You can even download audio versions.

Be sure to read the information about use and distribution of the books. The books are in the public domain in the United States but you’ll want to check the rights if you live in a different country. The books are free to use, but not necessarily free for you to distribute to others.

To learn more, get books or even get involved with the project, visit Project Gutenberg.

Get Paid for Your Old Cell Phone

PaceButler is offering a program in which it will buy your old cell phones paying up to $50 (even more for iPhones). The process is simple.

1. Gather your old cell phones.
2. Print a FREE shipping label from PaceButler.
3. Box and ship your phones.
4. PaceButler will cut you a check within 4 business days of receiving your phone.

But don’t expect to get rich. Most phones are only paying a few bucks. My Treo 650 is worth only about $5. But it’s $5 more than I have letting it sit in my junk drawer.

Besides helping individuals get money for their old phones, PaceButler also has a fundraising program whereby organizations can collect old phones from members of the community and receive money back.

PaceButler provides information on how you can recycle or donate your phone if you’d rather do that.

Free GIMP Graphics Editor Rivals Expensive Software

Need a robust graphics editor but don’t want to spend money on expensive software? Try GIMP a free open source program that will allow you to fix, correct, retouch, and enhance your photos. You can save your projects in a variety of formats including JPEG (JFIF), GIF, PNG, TIFF and even special use formats such as the multi-resolution and multi-color-depth Windows icon files.  And its compatable with Linux, Windows (XP, Vista), Mac OS X, Sun OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD. And did I mention its FREE?

GIMP received 3 1/2 stars from PC Magazine which said that “The GIMP 2.0 is a good image editor that’s worth a look if you’re on a tight budget.”

You can learn more and download the program at GIMP.org.