Get your books from Google for free

Google recently announced that they are making out-of-copyright books available as free PDF downloads via Google Book Search. See this Technorati post for more information. Here are some of the books curently available:

Ferriar’s The Bibliomania
A futurist from 1881’s 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century
Aesop’s Fables
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Abbott’s Flatland
Hugo’s Marion De Lorme
Dunant’s Eine Erinnerung an Solferino
Bolívar’s Proclamas
Dante’s Inferno

(information quoted from this Official Google Blog post)

For the complete works of Shakespeare, visit this page from Google.

Several major titles (lke Frankenstein) are not available yet, but the list will be growing all the time. I think back to literature classes I took in college and think of the $200 I spent on Dante, Homer, and other classic authors each quarter. What a great thing this would have been for me, and what a useful thing this will be for students now and in the future (all of these books on your laptop).

E-mail tips from Glenn Wolsey

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders clued me in to this recent post by 14 year old New Zealand blogger Glenn Wolsey. Dealing with e-mail is becoming more and more difficult over time, and it is probably going to get worse rather than better. Even excluding spam (of which I get at least 50 a day), sorting, categorizing, and responding to e-mail is taking up more and more of a person’s working day. How can we deal with this mess?

Glenn’s first tip is really great: stop checking your mail every minute or two. I get into this habit in front of the computer. I have my web mail program open in a Firefox tab and am constantly checking my mail. Resist the urge to stop what you are working on and answer each incoming e-mail. Instead, set aside a little time every hour or two to answer and deal with incoming e-mails. It is similar to using the phone.

Glenn writes about using a three folder system for organizing e-mail: Follow-Up, Interesting & To Do. I have always had a hard time organizing my e-mails this way. I either delete the trash, immediately respond, or make a note in my to do list to respond later. If I read an e-mail and just make a mental note to respond later I almost always lose track of the e-mail.

Merlin Mann has covered similar organizational methods on his very useful blog. Visit his Inbox Zero series of posts–you’ll be sure to get some new ideas.