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Posts with tag reading

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Classic Reader Offers Free Classic (duh) Literature Online

If you're in the mood to read some classic works of literature, head over to Classic Reader and check out their massive library.

No special software is required, as everything is prsented in standard HTML format for reading right in your favorite browser. The library currently contains more than 3,400 works by 346 different authors, including Ambrose Bierce, Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allen Poe, and - of course - Shakespeare.

The works are fully indexed by genre, and the five most recent additions are listed in the top-right corner for quick access to new titles.

It's an ad-supported site, but they're kept to a minimum and aren't very invasive. If you'd prefer, you can also purchase the library in DVD or CD format. It's a pretty good deal at less than $20.

A little intellectual stimulation for free is never a bad thing. As for me, I'm going to go finish reading Sun Tzu's Art of War.

[via Free Download a Day]

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Blogging, Web services

Bloglines finally gets a redesign

bloglines redesign

Bloglines has just packed a bunch of new features into its online news feed searching, subscribing to and reading service, and it all begins with a start page.

Bloglines headlines its new feature developments with a personalized start page. This is the page that brings everything together in a quick and easy view with an AJAX interface. There is nothing like starting feed reading off with a view like this to help you distinguish and gravitate towards your top interests first, before they get lost in a sea of unread material. Users can also now drag and drop feeds to add them into a three panel interface. To make things even easier, Bloglines has integrated mouse over previews to get a quick snippet of the content for a more in depth look at the article. Two other views are also available to complement the three panel view, a full view, and quick view mode. The quick view lists out titles for an easy news scan, with the full view listing out full article content.

This new redevelopment comes more than two years after the Bloglines acquisition by IAC interactive, the company that owns the popular ASK search engine. It can be accessed at http://beta.bloglines.com.

Filed under: Design, Internet, Kids, Text

Create books with friends at Mixbook

Create books with friends at Mixbook

Forget about Google Maps mashups, why not enter the new world of book mashups.

Mixbook is an online tool that allows friends to collaborate and create pages for a book, then mash them up all together and create one loving publication. Layouts and backgrounds can be put together with images and text to create these 8x8" books that can be both printed and viewed online.

Nothing is more meaningful than giving a book, let alone a custom one. Book prices start at $9.99, and get increased August 15th to $12.99.

[via ehub]

Filed under: Business, Internet, Text, Utilities, Web services, Adobe, Social Software

myFeedz social newspaper from Adobe

myfeedz by adobeAdobe released its first look at the newly re-branded myFeedz.com social news site on Friday. The website learns what users like and keeps up with interests in order to serve content. It all started when InterAKT launched their public beta last August, and sold to Adobe a month later. The service is now located deep-within Adobe's Labs, who have been on a web 2.0 kick lately. myFeedz is aimed at finding what's important for the user out there in the crazy overpopulated field of content feeds from the web.

myFeedz helps users keep track of and sift through the endless amounts of information and trends they are interested in, all the while offering relevant information as to their interests. Users begin by importing RSS feeds from favorite websites using OPML, dropping a list of keywords, browsing articles by tags, reading, writing, and rating articles. Articles can then be saved and archived for later reading, and RSS feeds can be exported for you topic of interest.

The site was extremely slow during my testing. Still being in the "lab" format, little issues can be expected. I just hope they get things sorted out fast; This seems like a great little tool!

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, Productivity, Web services, Google, Social Software, Unix

Google issues updates and fixes to Google Reader

Google issues updates and fixes to Google Reader
Since I'm a card-carrying Google Reader convert, I've been loosely following the discussions in its Google Group. I'm constantly impressed with how active some of their engineers like Chris and Mihai are in the conversation, and just the other day they announced some small but much-requested updates and bug fixes to Reader, including:
  • First and foremost: An "Add to folder" menu after using the subscribe bookmarklet, the Firefox 2.0 subscribe button and the "Add to Google" button
  • The "Feed actions..." menu lets you rename the feed and change its folders
  • Some IE 7 display bugs have been fixed
  • Some IE 6 display bugs have been fixed
  • OPML import should be more tolerant of invalid characters
  • The filtering that can be done in the settings page now handles multiple terms (separate them with spaces)
  • The settings page should display faster when you have lots of subscriptions
Nothing major, though that 'Add to folder' button is a God-send (Google-send?) for adding new subscriptions and easily filing them away without breaking one's workflow.

Filed under: Games, Internet, Kids, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services, Freeware

Starfall.com - teaching reading comprehension and phonics

StarfallI was first introduced to Starfall.com by my mother-in-law, who specializes in teaching reading and life skills to adult special needs students. Her classes use the site very successfully to assist in learning to read. She first suggested we show it to my son when he was two, and I was surprised to find that he loved exploring the site, and watching the animations. Now just three years old, he regularly chooses exploring Starfall as one of his favorite computer time activities.

As a free resource, Starfall is staggeringly deep. There's an enormous amount of content for children to learn from, but even more surprisingly there's a large supply of freely downloadable content for parents and educators. Starfall does sell supporting printed materials to go along with the site, but seem to offer most of those products for free in the form of PDF downloads.

Starfall was created by Stephen Schutz and his wife Susan Polis Schutz, who co-founded BlueMountain.com, the animated greeting card site that you probably received a ton of cards from in the late 90's. In a story of truly giving back, Stephen Schutz was a student who had difficulties learning to read, and trailed behind his classmates considerably. So it seems his desire to help make learning to read easier for youngsters comes from a very personal place. You can read more about their story on the About page.

Filed under: Fun, E-mail, Web services

DailyLit: Bite-sized literature in your inbox, daily

DailyLitNot enough time for reading? Want to catch up on the classics? DailyLit might be just what you've been looking for. It's a simple service that will email you classic literature a few pages at a time, so you can split up your reading over the course of a few weeks or months. How long it will take you depends on how long the work is and how often you receive it. You can set the delivery frequency to every day, every weekday, or every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can also tell DailyLit it to send you the next part as soon as you've finished the previous. There's dozens of novels of various lengths available, most of them by familiar authors ranging from Homer to Lewis Carroll, plus nonfiction works by Marx, Descartes, and many others. If you're looking for a little culture, delivered daily, DailyLit is definitely worth checking out.

Filed under: Productivity, Web services, Freeware

ZAP Reader: Web-based speed-reading trainer

ZAP ReaderWant to read faster? Try ZAP Reader. It's a free web app that will, in theory, as much as quadruple your reading speed. It works like this: You find some text you want to read fast, you paste it into ZAP Reader and hit Play, and ZAP Reader starts flashing the words on the screen. You can control the speed it goes at (it starts at 30 words per minute) and pause it, and you can skip backward or forward. I tried it and was surprised at how fast I was able to push myself, though I found that only being able to see one word at a time made my brain skip a beat on words I'm not used to, in particular trade names. ZAP Reader also has a bookmarklet which, when clicked, will automatically feed any text you've selected into ZAP Reader. You can see a video of ZAP Reader in action after the jump.

Read more →

Filed under: Blogging, Web services

How readable is your web site?

Readability TestHave you ever wondered if your writing is going over your readers' heads? No, me neither. But in case you're curious like me about the readability level of your web site, Juicy Studio's Readability Test will tell you. Just enter a URL and it will give you a bunch of data about its readability including its Gunning Fog Index and Flesch-Kincaid Grade which are supposed to tell you how much schooling a person needs before they'll be able to understand what you've written. According to the readability test Download Squad's Fog Index is 7.74, or somewhere between Mark Twain and Reader's Digest.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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