JOSEPHCS

Download Free eBooks for your eReaders & Smartphones

Joseph — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:26:28 +0000

e-Readers have brought a completely new era in reading. With the advent of e-ink based e-Readers, it doesn’t make much difference between reading on a paper and reading on an e-ink display. Not just e-Readers, your Smartphone supports reading eBooks too. The Kindle App Android & iPhone, the Nook App for Android & iPhone and Aldiko for Android can help you read eBooks on your smartphones. Even if you don’t have an e-Reader, you can have the Kindle for PC or Nook for PC application installed on your computer and read books on them.

Here are some resources to find free eBooks. If you’re downloading from sources other than the official store (Kindle Store or Nook Store, for instance), you will have to transfer it to your device via a USB Cable. Most websites offer eBooks in standard formats like PDF or EPUB, which work with your Kindle, nook, Android or iPhone.

Project Gutenberg: Project Gutenberg has over 36,000 free eBooks available in various formats like the standard EPUB or PDF, HTML, Kindle’s format and plain text. EPUB books can be side-loaded to nook. If you’re interested in reading the book on your computer directly, the HTML version might be a good choice.

Google Books has millions of titles to choose from, most for free. Books can also be purchased right inside Google Books. Google Books supports reading right from your PC, on Android smartphone or tablet, iPhone or iPad. Books can also be downloaded as an EPUB or PDF file and side-loaded to your Kindle or Nook.

Feedbooks has both free and books for purchase. It has over thousands of Free Public Domain books like “Romeo and Juliet”, “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.”

Archive.org has a huge collection of historical books in digital format serving for researchers, scholars and the general public. Books are available in Text format, PDF and EPUB formats which would work on any e-Reader or smartphone.

Barnes & Noble Free Nook Books: BN has over 1.8 Million free titles to download straight to your nook device or nook PC/App. Fidning free Nook Books is easy, simply type “0.00” in the search box on Barnes & Noble page and you’re half way to download free books.

ManyBooks has nearly 30,000 books. Most books are taken from Project Gutenberg 2003 DVD. Has public domain and creative-commons works.

OpenLibrary is an open project, more of a wiki and has over 1 million free eBook titles.

Fictionwise has a huge collection of titles put into different categories. Has both free and paid books, supporting multiple formats.

FreeKindleBooks.org has over 1000s of free classic eBooks specifically available in Kindle’s format, while they do support other formats as well.

InkMesh is a simple yet an awesome search engine for eBook that indexes many eBook providers like Gutenberg, ManyBooks, Nook Books, Kindle Store and Sony eBook Store. Your stop place for book search.

LibriVox has over 1000s of free public domain audiobooks available for download.

Official Download Sources

Amazon Kindle Store
Barnes & Noble Nook Books (Nook Book Store)
Sony eBook Store
Kobo Books

Hopefully, these sources must help you with downloading free eBooks for your e-Reader or Smartphone. Happy reading. :)

WordPress.com allows you to Monetize your Blog

Joseph — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:20:17 +0000

The Automattic venture, WordPress.com, that allows you to have your own blog similar to Blogger/Blogspot, is now allowing its bloggers to monetize their Blog.

Called WordAds, this service helps WordPress.com bloggers to allow advertisements on their blog and earn money. WordPress has partnered with Federated Media to provide advertising representation to their Bloggers. While WordPress.com was primarily against advertisements, saying that WordPress.com is meant for personal blogging and should not be monetized – and users who wanted to have advertisements should move to self-hosted WordPress – this recent move is really appreciable for those who would like to make some money blogging.

WordAds is voluntary and interested users can signup provided they match their criteria – 1. Only publicly visible blogs, 2. Should be on a custom domain, 3. Selection is based on traffic, user engagement and language used on the blog.

If you’re interested in WordAds, you may apply for it on their WordAds Application page.

WolframAlpha can help you solve Boolean Algebra

Joseph — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:22:43 +0000

Logic Gates, Truth Table, Boolean Algebra – If you’re a student doing Engineering, Computer Science or Mathematics, you’re sure to have known about these, and the terms used in it – viz. AND, OR, NOT, NOR, etc. Well..WolframAlpha knows it too. If you’re looking to solve a Boolean Algebra problem, you can take the help of WolframAlpha. Try throwing a problem to it.

I gave a simple problem that involves the use of 3 variables – A,B and C, and the problem was to find the result for this expression: (A & B) | ~C, which is (A AND B) OR (NOT C)]. It was interpreted as

And here’s the truth table for the given problem.

WolframAlpha differentiates ‘True’ and ‘False’ with a pale pink background – something that should be appreciated.

The next smart move is the logic circuit. It creates an AND gate for A & B and a NOT gate for C and joins them altogether with an OR gate, just as mentioned in the problem. Plus, there’s a Venn Diagram generated for the same.

It doesn’t end here. You get to find Minimal Forms, Truth Density a couple of other results. This was a simple problem though, but WolframAlpha is ready to help you with complex ones too, including your college assignments. ;)

Make your Android phone look like iPhone

Joseph — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 02:30:03 +0000

If you’re an iPhone fan owning an Android and you want your Android phone to look like an iPhone with the home-screen and icons typically as that of iOS, or you would want to trick your friend that you’re using an iPhone, here’s a tiny app that does the job for you.

Called Fake iPhone 4S, this full-screen app displays the replica of iPhone 4’s home screen. Since it is a full-screen app, it hides your notification bar so it’s not easy to identify that its Android. You can pull it though, to see your notifications. The app has about two screens with default iOS icons. These icons when clicked open up the relevant Android app. When you click the Messaging icon, it opens up your default Messaging app.

To make it look more real, the app shows your Operator’s name instead of the standard AT&T – Aircel, in my case, including your Android time. And this is not an alternative to your regular launcher/home-screen app. Download it from the Market link and start tricking your friends.

Unofficial ICS for Nexus One [AOSP]

Joseph — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 12:24:16 +0000

There’s was a bit of a disappointment from Google, but the people at XDA have started Ice-Cream Sandwich (ICS) AOSP development for the HTC Google Nexus One, taking the device to the next level.

As of writing this article, only the alpha version of ICS for Nexus One is available for download. While you may give it a shot to test-drive how ICS feels, this release is not stable for regular use as there might be some glitches and some features do not work at all.

As of writing, the features that work are Wi-Fi, MMS, Bluetooth, Touchscreen. Features that do not work are 3G, Audio, Home key, Trackball, Camera and GPS.

Here are few screenshots with ICS in action.

Visit the ICS AOSP Development thread on XDA to read more about the development, contribute or download.

Google disappoints its Nexus One owners

Joseph — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 12:22:40 +0000

Hearing a lot of good news lately regarding Ice-Cream Sandwich being made available across multiple Android-based devices, there’s a bit of a bad news that awaits a particular group – the Nexus One owners, while Nexus S users sure have a good news – pretty obvious.

Google has confirmed that it will update the Nexus S to Android 4.0 ICS while simultaneously dumping its two-year old Nexus One. The upgrade for Nexus S will be made available in the coming weeks, shortly after the release of Galaxy Nexus, whose release has been delayed.

Sadly, the owners of Google Nexus One, a device released during January 2010 manufactured by HTC, are pretty disappointed with the news. While the device’s support was already closed November last year, Google used it as an upper hand to state that the device is simply ‘too old’ to get the ICS upgrade – “the hardware was too old to run the new ICS Operating System.”

There’s not much of a disappointment – unofficial ICS is available! Nexus One ICS AOSP port is being developed and available for download. Read more about it here.

HTC & Sony Ericsson: The early Android 4.0 Adopters

Joseph — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 04:44:57 +0000

While the new Galaxy Nexus comes with Android 4.0 Ice-cream Sandwich (ICS) out of the box, there are only a handful of manufacturers that are interested in upgrading their existing devices to the new Android 4.0 Ice-cream Sandwich.

HTC recently announced the devices that it has planned to upgrade some of its existing range of phones – HTC Vivid, HTC Sensation, HTC Sensation XL, HTC Sensation XE, HTC Rezound, HTC Evo 3D, HTC EVO Design 4G and HTC Amaze 4G around Q1 2012.

Few days after HTC’s announcement, Martina Johansson from Sony Ericsson made an official confirmation on their blog that the entire 2011 range of Xperia phones will be upgraded to the latest version of Android.

…We can today confirm that we plan to upgrade the entire 2011 Xperia™ portfolio* to the next version of Android known as Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich. We are working on merging our current Xperia™ experience with the new features in Android 4.0…

The 2011 range of Xperia phones include Xperia arc and arc S, Xperia PLAY, Xperia neo and neo V, Xperia mini and mini pro, Xperia pro, Xperia active, Xperia ray as well as Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman. That’s quite a good amount. Sony Ericsson added that more information regarding when the upgrades would be rolled would be communicated through their blog.

UPDATE: Samsung has also announced that it has planned to upgrade the new Galaxy S2 phone to Ice-cream Sandwich, while there’s no information on when it would be rolled out. There’s also no information regarding the upgrade for their other bunch of Android devices.

HTC confirms phones that would taste Android 4.0

Joseph — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:25:18 +0000

HTC, known for its series of Android devices lately, has now come up with surprising its Android phone users. The manufacturer has announced the first wave of devices that will taste the new Android version 4.0 – Ice Cream Sandwich.

The phones that are expected to get the new update are : HTC Vivid, HTC Sensation, HTC Sensation XL, HTC Sensation XE, HTC Rezound, HTC Evo 3D, HTC EVO Design 4G and HTC Amaze 4G.

While the all new HTC Vivid that made its debut yesterday is upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich, the other phones mentioned will get the upgrade in early 2012. This is what HTC has to say:

We can confirm the brand new HTC Vivid, on sale beginning today, is upgradeable to Ice Cream Sandwich. In addition, Ice Cream Sandwich is coming in early 2012 to a variety of devices including the HTC Sensation, HTC Sensation XL and HTC Sensation XE, as well as the HTC Rezound, HTC EVO 3D, HTC EVO Design 4G and HTC Amaze 4G through close integration with our carrier partners. We’re continuing to assess our product portfolio, so stay tuned for more updates on device upgrades, timing and other details about HTC and Ice Cream Sandwich.

HTC made this note on their FB page. It’s time that Samsung and other manufacturers kick-start with their phone upgrades.

Google Chrome: Confirm when Closing Multiple Tabs

Joseph — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:29:37 +0000

Unlike Firefox, Chrome does not ask you for a confirmation when you close multiple tabs at once. You might, therefore, end up losing work when you accidentally hit the close button.

Chrome Toolbox, developed by Google themselves, might come handy in this situation. After installing, you’ll find a tiny blue icon near the regular wrench icon. Click the new icon, open ‘Options’, check “Confirm before closing multiple tabs” and that’s it. Your Chrome will now show you a confirmation box when you close it.

The extension also has tweaks on how to handle new tabs, quick launch, saving form data and shortcuts.

Android Mobile Device Updates [Infographic]

Joseph — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 09:44:34 +0000

While iPhone is manufactured, developed and fully supported by Apple Inc., the situation is not the same with Android. With Android Operating System being available under free and open-source license, it is not a big task for manufacturers to incorporate Android on their smartphones. And lately, Android Smartphones have grown by leaps and bounds with a series of phones from Samsung, Motorola, LG and quite many little-known to unbranded ones – good news though, but considering the updates that a smartphone would typically require – there’s not much manufacturers that are interested in testing/developing the current Android version for their phones.

The infographic by Michael shows how Android mobile devices are being supported after their first, second and third year of release.

The Nexus One has always been on the latest release, but sources say that the phone will not get the new Android 4.0 Ice-cream update. Of the 2009 listed phones, Samsung Behold II is behind by 3+ Android updates – pathetic. That’s the case with most Samsung phones.

Among the 2010 phones, Devour, BackFlip and Cliq XT are the sufferers. The BackFlip and Cliq XT were shipped with an outdated version and there has been no updates. HTC has had reasonable updates.

Thanks to Michael from theunderstatement.com for the infographic.

Backup/Sync your Office Documents with Google Docs

Joseph — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:57:42 +0000

Have you ever felt the need to have your local Word/Spreadsheet/Presentation files (in your computer) synchronized to your Google Docs account? Or the vice versa? If you prefer to have a backup on your computer or you’d prefer to edit your local copy instead of visiting the Google Docs page, you might find this article useful.

Syncplicity is what you might need. Syncplicity is a file storage and synchronization service where you store your files and have it synchronized among different computers and devices (2 devices in case of free account), including your Google Docs files. Storage space is 2GB though, but is good enough to hold a massive collection of office files.

To get started with syncing, create an account and install the Syncplicity app on your computer. Open the app you just installed to set up a watch folder. A watch folder is the place where you have your Office files (or) where you want your Google Docs Documents to be synchronized to.

Login to your account on Syncplicity Web, you’ll be taken to the File Manager. Click the ‘Google Docs’ tab to associate your Google Docs account with Syncplicity. You don’t have to provide your username/password since it uses OAuth. Once you have granted permission, select the folder in your Syncplicity account you just setup to synchronize your Google Docs. You will also have to select conversion options.

Give it some time and you’ll find all your Google Docs synchronized to your Syncplicity Account, which is then synchronized to your local folder. Your synchronization progress is displayed on the app’s home screen.

With your files synchronized locally, you can edit them anytime and they are synchronized as and when the file is modified. Also, when you create a new file locally, you can find them created at Google Docs almost immediately.

Call it a backup or an offline version of Google Docs, this app does its job perfectly!

Android-based Yahoo! Phone Announced in Japan

Joseph — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:55:24 +0000

The title of the post might sound weird for two reasons – 1. A phone from Yahoo? 2. Based on its archrival Google’s Android? Well, its true. SoftBank, Japan’s 3rd biggest mobile operator, announced the Yahoo! Phone manufactured by Sharp, which is actually a rebranded version of the SoftBank 009SH (again, Sharp-made)

The rock-solid phone runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread boasting a 4-inch qHD touchscreen (960×540 resolution), 8 Megapixel auto-focus camera, Bluetooth 3.0 and other common features like GPS, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, a microSD slot. Added, the phone sports a Digital TV-Tuner and an e-wallet function.

The phone will be packed with Yahoo Japan apps. Also, SoftBank subscribers get a 2-year membership of Yahoo! Japan Premium, which is $4.5/month regularly, plus they get additional points on purchases made on Yahoo! Shopping for 2 years.

The phone is expected to be available early next month. SoftBank hasn’t announced how much the phone will cost.

SoftBank JP Press Release

Avira gives away Premium Security Suite

Joseph — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 12:40:51 +0000

One of the pretty famous Anti-Virus developer, Avira, is now running a promotion on its Premium Security Suite that would entitle you for a free 180-day license. Avira Premium Security Suite is a complete pack containing the regular features of AntiVir Premium with Firewall and Anti-Spam on top of it.

To get your hands on the Premium Security Suite,

Visit the Promotion page and complete the form to receive an email with the License Key. Download the activation key to your computer and save it somewhere as you’ll need it during installation.

Next, download Avira Premium Security Suite from this page. During Installation, you’ll be prompted for the License Key. Select “I already have HBEDV.KEY License File”, browse to the location where you have saved the file and proceed with the installation.

Your Premium Security Suite is now valid for 6 months!

Create a bootable USB Installer for Windows 7

Joseph — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:00:57 +0000

When you’re left out with no optical drive, or you’re on a netbook and are looking to do a fresh installation of Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008, a USB Installer might come handy.

This quick article will help you create a self-bootable USB drive installer for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008.

Things you’ll need are:

1. Koala
2. Windows Disc / Mountable ISO
3. A USB Flash Drive (4GB or above – formatted)

We’ll be using a tiny app called Koala (download) of a mere 250KB of download. The interface is pretty easy & straight-forward.

Insert your Windows DVD and a USB Flash drive for which you want bootable disk created on. Make sure your USB flash drive has a capacity of 4GB or more. Your USB drive will be formatted automatically.

Click ‘Scan’ against Source and it should read your optical drive and list you with the OS information. Next, click ‘Scan’ against destination and it should list you with available USB drives.

When you’re all set to create a USB disk, click ‘Start’. The process takes about 5-10 minutes and you have a USB Installer in hand!

Your flash drive is formatted to NTFS (File System) during the process.

Koala is developed by freemodding.it.

[How-To] Remove System/Stock Apps on Android

Joseph — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 08:55:07 +0000

Your Android device basically comes packed with quite a good amount of manufacture-installed apps for, say Social Networking. Say you’re not a social networking guy, or you’d just want to save on phone memory space, you cannot remove those apps with regular uninstallers since they are stored in the ‘system’ partition.

To save you from this, there are a couple of apps in the Android Market. And before you proceed with downloading these apps, make sure you have a rooted phone. No root? Skip to the second part of the post.

AntTek App Manager is a one-stop app to backup, freeze, remove cache/data and to remove system/regular apps. The ‘Apps’ tab lists literally all the apps on your phone, including those responsible for Google Accounts & Synchronization, so you should be a little careful as this might lead to serious issues if you remove such apps.

To remove a System app, select from the list of apps and tap ‘Delete’ in following screen. You can freeze an app as well, which means, the application will not consume RAM/CPU Usage but will remain on the phone memory. To download, search for ‘AntTek App Manager’ in the Android Market. Market Link | AppBrain Page

If you’re looking for a light-weight alternative with no frills, but does the job of uninstalling System/Stock apps, Root Uninstaller could be your choice.
Market Link | AppBrain Page

No root? The ADB way!

If your phone has not been rooted, Android Debug Bridge (ADB) might do some help. Before you proceed, this is for advanced users! A little Unix knowledge is appreciable.

Download the Android SDK & extract it locally. Open command-prompt and point it to the /tools directory. Connect your phone to your computer with USB Debugging enabled on phone (Settings->Applications->Development and check USB Debugging).

Check if your device has been recognized

adb devices

If your device is listed, browse to system/app. System apps are stored in /system/app.

adb shell
cd system/app
ls

‘ls’ lists the files in the present directory. Identify the file-name of the app to be removed, and type

rm example.apk

where example.apk is the name of the file with its extension.

If you prefer to back it up to SD Card, you can move the file instead (which also removes from phone)

mv filename.apk /sdcard/appbackup

where ‘appbackup‘ is a directory.

Done! Repeat the steps until all the apks that you want removed are done. Optionally, restart your device.

JOSEPHCS

Download Free eBooks for your eReaders & Smartphones

Official Download Sources

Related Posts

WordPress.com allows you to Monetize your Blog

Related Posts

WolframAlpha can help you solve Boolean Algebra

Related Posts

Make your Android phone look like iPhone

Related Posts

Unofficial ICS for Nexus One [AOSP]

Related Posts

Google disappoints its Nexus One owners

Related Posts

HTC & Sony Ericsson: The early Android 4.0 Adopters

Related Posts

HTC confirms phones that would taste Android 4.0

Related Posts

Google Chrome: Confirm when Closing Multiple Tabs

Related Posts

Android Mobile Device Updates [Infographic]

Related Posts

Backup/Sync your Office Documents with Google Docs

Related Posts

Android-based Yahoo! Phone Announced in Japan

Related Posts

Avira gives away Premium Security Suite

Related Posts

Create a bootable USB Installer for Windows 7

Related Posts

[How-To] Remove System/Stock Apps on Android

No root? The ADB way!

Related Posts