Where do you go online to find more free novels to read? You know there is some site

just one click away with a motherload of free books. After careful selection, I found 10 of them worth exploring.

Free e-book sites have evolved into several categories:

1. Truly free and legal repositories of books that are out

of copyright due to their age – authors

like Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc.

2. Sites that let budding new fiction authors publish for free to raise awareness of their works – readers then get to download their books and comment on them.

3. Link share sites where readers share their library by giving a download link to sites like Rapidshare or Megashare where the reader has uploaded a copyrighted book. Strictly speaking, the complete process of uploading – sharing the link – then someone downloading and reading the book violates copyright law. However, it is poorly policed right now and the sites and uploaders feel that they skirt the law in a gray area by providing only the first stage of the process.

4. User share sites where non-fictional technical papers and how-to-make-money books are posted. Since the works are original, it’s not illegal, but not likely the recreational reading you are looking for.

5. Some sites attempt to create a way to provide free on-site reading of DRM protected content by mimicking what the public libraries are doing. They let readers check out copyrighted e-books for two weeks. Once checked out, they are not available to others until the checkout time has expired. The DRM management, usually done in the Adobe Digital Editions reader for offline reading, provides the ability to disable the book at the end of the two week period.

For this article, I’ll concentrate on the fictional recreational reading genre.

Here are some of the best sites worth checking out from categories 1, 2 and 5:
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worldlibrary.net (category 1 and  2)
World Public Library is a well organized and impressive website for accessing all the out of copyright books and a large number of copyrighted books, too, that authors allowed to be shared. World Library has over 2,000,000 e-books in pdf form which you can read online in your browser or download. Paid membership is optional and costs only $8/year.

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http://www.getfreeebooks.com/ (category 2)
Free registration is required to access this library. There are donation links for individual authors but donations are not required. You can do online reading in your browser on this site or download in epub for general readers or mobi for the Kindle or pdf for general reading on a PC.

There are also a lot of blog-style articles here about free e-book resources for various e-readers – a very useful feature.

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http://www.digilibraries.com/ (category 2)
No registration is required on DigiLibraries, where thousands of modern original short stories, novellas, novels and non-fiction are available for download by new authors. The site is well organized and downloads are fast. There are no pre-1930s books mixed in with the new ones.

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openlibrary.org (category 1 and 5)
The Open Library project is a massive undertaking to get millions of books online. They have put over one million online to date and are a mixture of about 100,000 older free downloadable books (pre-1930s) to modern DRM-protected titles that you can check out for two weeks for free – there is a limit of five books checked out at a time. You can use their online reader in your browser, also, to read their books without the need to download them.

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http://www.free-ebooks.net/ (category 2 and 4)
Registration is not needed to access this library for pla in text, pdf or

in browser reading in HTML format. For ePub or Mobi (Kindle) formats, VIP membership is required and costs $8/mo. Note that the Kindle can read plain text files, too. Fiction, non-fiction and trade magazines are found here and new authors can submit e-books also. The site has a pleasing layout and downloads are fast.

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http://www.gutenberg.org/ (category 1)
This is the original book project that started collecting all

the old public domain books, over 36,000 and counting. All the books are out of print and are offered in ePub, Kindle, HTML and plain text format. The site can sometimes be slow and cumbersome to navigate but is well organized and the library is always growing.

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http://www.manybooks.net/ (category 1)
Over 29,000 free e-books suitable for the Kindle, iPad and most other readers can be found on ManyBooks.
One of the category listings is “Post-1930” and most all the books have expired copyrights, similar to the content found on Project Gutenberg.

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http://www.globusz.com/ (Category 2 and 1)
Globusz Publishing offers free contemporary e-books from new authors who ePublish to their site. It’s a synergistic way for writers to get published easily to achieve recognition and for readers to get new books in exchange for rating and commenting on the books that they read. Note that old books from pre-1930 are mixed in with the new authors to add to the book count.

Registration is required.

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wattpad.com (category 2)
When I first discovered Wattpad many years ago, it was a category 3 site where readers uploaded copyrighted e-books from famous writers so the uploaders could conveniently read them on their mobile devices in a browser window. However, anyone else could access and read them, too. Since then, Wattpad has blossomed into a (slightly more legal) user created short story and novella site. Some of the content reads like a teenage girls’s blog but other content is first class. It’s all in plain text format in a framed window on the Wattpad site.

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http://www.baen.com/library/ (category 2)
Baen is a science fiction/fantasy genre free e-book site.

The 46 or so authors are professional established writers who provide 122 books of their work for free to get you interested enough to buy other books they sell. Some of the more famous are Larry Niven, Harry Turtledove, Eric Flint and James P. Hogan. This method is also used on the Amazon site with a few Kindle books in assorted genres. The nice thing about Baen is that it’s well organized in one place, and easy to use.

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I did not mention the obvious choice of your local library system. Here in the greater Seattle area, the library systems carry a great many e-books and audiobooks, although finding, downloading and only being able to read them on your PC is a less-than-ideal, daunting task.

Smaller rural towns likely won’t be tied into a big library network with e-book capabilities either, so online sources are rural readers best hope for free e-books.

In today’s news, Amazon has announced that it is launching a Kindle e-book lending service with 11,000 US libraries. A physical Kindle is not even required – you can use a Kindle app

on the iPad, PC or a Mac. I tried it using my local Sno-Isle King Library system and it does indeed work well.

I checked out a book and was able to download it from the Amazon site and read it both in the Amazon Kindle Cloud reader and the Kindle PC app. Full sync on all devices worked.

The cultural transition from printed books to e-books has created a rapidly evolving delivery system for the electronically delivered novel. In a year, this list may be mostly obsolete but I will endeavour to revisit the list keep it updated. Meanwhile, happy reading!

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Most on air radio stations now have an internet mirror that streams their talk shows and music selections into cyberspace. Standalone tabletop internet radios are selling well.

Systems evolve, though. Users want to make their own custom stations or have music on demand without really owning it – just streaming it when they want.

Pandora was one that pioneered this concept, letting users create a custom genre, for instance “The Beatles”, and then the listener would hear Beatles songs and songs by similar artists.

You don’t get to choose the exact songs that you want on Pandora but the concept works well for a no hassle, low maintenance way to get tunes that you like.

Pandora has thrived and even went public on the stock market.

Spotify was the next step up the ladder and allowed you to play any song that you like, on demand. Both Pandora and Spotify are free for a limited number of hours a month. The Zune Marketplace works like Spotify but with a very slick user interface and a steep monthly subscription rate.

Rhapsody has a similar service.
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________________________________________________
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Enter iHeartRadio. First, let’s look at Clear Channel, the owner of iHeartRadio. Clear Channel Communications, Inc. has been acquiring radio stations across the US since the 1980s. They now operate 850 radio stations and have 110 million listeners. They created iHeartRadio.com in 2008  in order to have a common portal to stream all their Clear Channel stations online. Six months later they launched an iHeartRadio app for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Listening was free with 22 genres covered.

In 2009, Clear Channel began to offer custom stations available only online built around specific artists. They also expanded the channels beyond their 750 simulcast FM counterparts and added commercial free digital radio channels across 20 genres that are only offered online. In March 2011, Clear Channel acquired Thumbplay, giving them the technology design team to create a Pandora type custom station interface. They chose The Echo Nest, a powerful musical intelligence data system with 5 billion data points on 30 million songs, to be the song selection engine for their new evolutionary user interface.

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On September 14, 2011, the new iHeartRadio PC/Mac interface, dubbed the “Pandora Killer”, will be out of beta and

will now offer Pandora-like custom stations created by you, the listener. It will be available on September 12 for the iPh

one. There are no monthly time limits, nor ads. At the end of 2011, Clear Channel will begin mixing in a few ads to keep it free and unlimited.

The song library is impressive with 11 million songs, nearly ten times that of Pandora and close to the 15 million songs on Spotify.

The new online interface includes album cover, a bio of the artist, a graphic display of albums by the artist and thumbnails of artists that you could use to create more custom stations.

There is a six song per hour limit on skipping over a song, similar to Slacker radio. The six song skip limit is per station, so if you change stations after you use up your six skips, the counter resets to zero. Control are simple, just a Play/Pause button, a Skip (FFW) button and a volume slider.

One unique feature is a three position slider for Station Control of artist diversity. If it is set on “Familiar Artists” then you get only the top played songs in that genre. The other two positions are “Mixed Tunes” and “More Discovery” which will add in rare less popular songs in that genre – the back of the album songs for those remembering LP records.

The actual group that you set up is played less than one in 20 songs but the similar artists are very close in genre and period, much like Pandora.

Songs that are played are famous pop titles and a much better selection than either Pandora or Slacker has offered.

You can share stations with friends on Facebook – they currently have 1.1 million “Likes” on Facebook. There is a Buy Song link that takes you to the iTunes store. There is a Lyrics button but I only saw it have lyrics for a song once out of dozens of songs.

I’ve been listening to the beta version of the new iHeartRadio for hours on two channels that I made. One was around Wailin’ Jennys, a folk group from C

anada.

All the similar songs played were spot on – ones you would find on Folk Alley.com in that tight acoustic folk sub-genre. I created a Beatles station and all the songs were very relevant from that era.

You can also choose from other custom stations that your Facebook friends have created.

Is the new iHeartRadio interface a Pandora Killer, after all? I’m afraid so. I’ve been a user of Pandora, Slacker, XM, Sirius and most recently, Spotify.

The new iHeartRadio is my musical weapon of choice to sooth the savage soul. The 800 pound gorilla wins again.

UPDATE:
In an attempt to do damage control, on Sept 21, 2011, Pandora has lifted the 40 hour per month listening cap for free users and came out with a newly designed HTML5 look for their website.

MOG and Rdio made similar changes on their listening caps as well.

Clearly, Spotify is rattling some cages.

Campbell Memorial Award under his belt. His books are diverse with some revolving around advanced alien contacts, others about alternate earths and still others about web technology gone awry. I have Robert J. Sawyer on my personal must-follow list.

Flashforward (2009) – The novel is based on an event where the whole world of seven billion people black out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. A lot can go wrong in two minutes and millions die as planes and cars crash, among o ther

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Also during the two minutes, everyone has promonitions of events that will happen in

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their future. The rest of the book is centered around those searching to find out what caused the incident and assorted characters dealing with the psychological impact of the premonitions. A popular ABC TV series was created around this book in 2010.

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Rollback (2008) – Dr. Sarah Halifax, 49, decodes a radio transmissions from aliens but no more messages come through until she is 87. Science has advanced   and there is

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an experimental rejuvenation process for humans called a rollback.

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Sarah and her husband both get one and he has a 25 year old’s body again but hers fails and she is left in her 80s. She continues to decode the new message while he tries to deal with his new found youth.

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This and Homonids were my favorite books by this author.

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Calculating God (2009) – A six legged alien lands outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto asking to see a paleontologist. In search of God because of experiencing cataclysmic events on it’s home planet, scientists sturggle with moral and intellectual issues in dealing with the alien.

Wake (2009) – First in a trilogy called WWW (Wake, Watch, Wonder or perhaps World Wide Web), the story centers around a blind teenage girl, named Caitlin, who has experimental implants to correct her sight but instead the implant connects her mind to the world wide web. It is displayed in colorful threads and shapes and then… an intelligent pattern emerges in the web that grows stronger with each passing day and begins to try and communicate with her.

Hominids (2003) – Who doesn’t like a good Neanderthal story? This thought provoking first book of a trilogy is my

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all time favorite from Robert J. Sawyer. In a remote Canadian laboratory, a link to a parallel universe is found where on it’s Earth, Homo Neanderthal dominated over Homo Sapiens as they evolved. Their world is as advanced as ours, even with mind recorder implants for solving crimes, but life is quite different as they still live as hunters and gatherers in a much less populated culture.

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One of the Neanderthal scientists comes through to our side by being swapped with one of our scientists and the rest of the book is about his coping with our culture, being studied by us and dealing with the accusation of the murder of our missing scientist. Did I mention that the Neanderthal falls in love with a woman scientist on our Earth?

Humans (2010) – This is the second book in the Neaderthal Parallax trilogy and has Ponter, the Neaderthal scientist returning from his world

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along with the first diplomatic party of Neanderthals to be with his love, Mary. Lots of cultural issues ensue as Ponter deals in his way with Mary’s rapist while trying to convince her to come back to his world and be his wife.

Hybrids (2010) – Last in the Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy, both Ponter and Mary return to his world. She suffers culture shock when she has to live in the all woman cities where male Neanderthals can only visit once a month. To prevent lonliness, all Neanderthals have soulmates from both sexes.

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Mary gets pregnant and the first hybrid is born, with the help of banned Neanderthal technology. Meanwhile Ponter is tried in hos home world for his crimes on the other Earth.

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Factoring Humanity (2003) – An alien signal is detected from Alpha Centauri and Heather Davis at the University of Toronto, studies the signal which continues transmitting for ten years. Her estranged husband, Kyle, who works on AI machines has created a quantum computer capable of finally decoding the signal. Together they solve the mystery and the decoded messages reveal new technology designs that will advance mankind in unimaginable ways. Are we ready

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Starplex (2010) -Taking a page from Star Trek, Starplex tells the tale of a future where man has developed faster than light travel through the use of wormholes and has made contact with numerous alien races. We travel the galaxy and search out new races in our star ship called Starplex. In this book, the creators of the wormhole show up to confront us in a sealed spacecraft with no windows or obvious communications means. Read about the crew of Starplex as they try frantically to the creators that “We come in peace.” before they destroy Starplex.

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Mindscan (2005) – Jake Sullivan has a new android body with a copy of his consciousness, an option for those of wealth in a future earth. The process involves sending the flesh body with it’s original consciousness to a prison institute on the far side of the moon to live out it’s life. Jack the android meets up with Karen, who is also in a new android body, and falls in love. The story gets complicated quickly when Jack’s original body persona escapes and comes back to challenge him on Earth and Karen’s son sues her over his inheritance he did not get. A courtroom battle ensues over the fundamental rights of androids – Asimov would be proud.

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Watch (2010) – Second in the WWW trilogy, the Webmind has turned sentient and befriended Caitlin. However, the secret government agency, WATCH, has detected Webmind, considers it a threat and is in

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the seek and destroy mode. Skynet is alive! (I couldn’t resist.)

Wonder (2011) – Last in the WWW trilogy, Webmind has emerged form the web and helped mankind by curing cancer and easing tensions in the world – sort of a benevolent Skynet(?). Caitlin, no longer blind, is determined to protect Webmind at all cost, from WATCH, the secret government agency bent on destroying Webmind.

his novel, Spin, and has been nominated for many other awards over the years. His writing style is speculative fiction and often centers around large mysterious planet changing events and the reaction of the characters in his books to these events. His books are great reads, especially if you like advanced alien mysteries and intrigue.

As you can see by the long book list below, this writer is on my must-read list.

Spin (2005) - First in the Spin trilogy, Spin is about a temporal bubble that instantly surrounds the earth, cutting it off from the rest of the universe and causing time to move millions of times slower. A lot of the book is about diverting technology because the satelites don’t work and about trying to understand the bubble.

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Characters are well developed in this book.

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Axis (2007) - Second in the Spin trilogy, Axis continues the story many decades later with different characters.

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It has been determined that the Hypotheticals are the alien beings responsible for the time bubble. An Earth settlement started on Mars right before the bubble appeared has advanced over 10,000 years. Martian technology is shared with Earth and then Mars gets it’s own time bubble.

Blind Lake (2003) – This fascinating book revolves around a federal research facility in Minnesota that has alien technology that lets them study a city of lobster-like aliens on a far off planet.

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The US government mysteriously quarantines Blind Lake and the race is on to find out why. Something related to the alien technology is causing the quarantine.

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Darwinia (1998) – This is a bizarre alternate history tale based on a 1912 incident, called the Miracle,  where a large chunk of Europe is replaced with part of an alien planet teaming with alien plants, deadly creatures and strange artifacts. The book follows the travels of young Guilford Law from America as he explores Darwinia with a doomed expedition. Can the artifacts save him in time?

The Chronoliths (2001) – A hugh alien looking monolith the size of a skyscraper appears in the jungles of Thailand with an inscription about a military victory from a warlord 20 years in the future.

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The story follows software designer Scott Warden as he tries to solve the mystery. Set over 20 years time, more monuments appear and a cult forms to worship them – a cult that includes Scott’s daughter. Scott forms a group to destroy the monoliths and a battle ensues between the cult and Scott’s team.

Bios (1999) - Based in the 22nd century, mankind is exploring the faraway planet of Isis.

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Teaming with diverse plant and animal life, sadly every moelcule of the planet is toxic to humans. The story centers around the newest explorer, Zoe, who has been genetically modified for a special mission on Isis. Only Zoe doesn’ t know

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this yet. A series of deadly disasters occur ending with a tragic finale.

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The Harvest (1992) – Mysterious aliens contact Earth for the first time and offer the gift of immortality to any human who wants it. Those that accept, leave their skins behind and go to a higher place.

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Those that don’t inherit a strangely transformed Earth over the next few years.

A Bridge of Years (1991) - Another time travel book, A Bridge of Years is about a man named Wilson who moves into a cottage in a small town in the northwest that has not been occupied for a decade.

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He discovers that it is one end of a time portal linked to New York City in 1962.

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He travels through, falls in love with a Bohemian girl in Grenwich Village and is stalked by a murderer from the future.

Memory Wire (1987) – In the future, a veteran has his mind wired to be an impartial human camera that records events around him. He and a young woman go on an adventure in search of a mysterious alien artifact.

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This is a very early work of Wilson’s and lacks some of the polish and suspense that his later works are famous for.

Mysterium (1994) - This book is a lot like the earlier Blind Lake but with a more direct alien threat.

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A top secret government facility near the town of Two Rivers, Michigan is built around an alien artifact that was discovered there. Scientists are studying it and one night the lab lights up, creating an effect that plunges Two Rivers into an alternate world ruled by a rigid theocracy. A battle between the old and the new ensues with a climactic ending involving the artifact. This book is in the alternate history sub-genre along with S.M Stirling and John Birmingham’s books.

A Hidden Place (1986) - This is Wilson’s first book and was very well received.

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Centered around a depression era farming community and several “different” humans with special powers living among the rest. The different humans must meet up and transform themselves. The book has a lot of human conflict, escape sequences and an excellent snapshot of life in a small community in the depression era.

Julian Comstock – A Story of 22nd Century America (2009) – This is a post apocalyptic tale, based in 2172 after oil is gone, the cities have fallen and plagues and false tribulation has occured.

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Armies are conscripted forcibly from farming communities for a battle between the Dutch and the Canadians who currently control North America. I bet you didn’t see that one coming. The main character, Julian, is secretly related to President Comstock but wants to fight in the war as an ordinary soldier to prove his worth. There are lots of battle sequences in this fine thought provoking book.

Vortex (2011) - As a sequel to Spin and Axis, Vortex is split between a time a generation after Axis and one 10,000 years in the future. Hypotheticals that created the time bubble commune with humans to fulfill their destiny after characters from the present travel forward in time. All the mysteries are explained and the trilogy gets closure by the end of the book.

Click on picture to go to Connie's home page

Connie Willis (1945-) – A legendary figure in the modern sci-fi book circles, Connie has written many novels and novellas in the last 20 years and won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula awards.

Her writing style is fast paced, character-centric and often includes a good dose

of humor. Many of her best books involve historians that time travel out of an Oxford laboratory in the year 2060. I have read all the books listed below and would

read any new book she comes out with in the future – she draws that kind of loyalty in her readers.

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To Say Nothing of the Dog (1999) – Set in both 1940 and 1888, this time travel romping adventure has romance, mystery, action and a lot of humor as assorted time travelers hunt for the Bishop’ s bird

stump in both Victorian and WWII-era England.

This, to me, is the best book Connie has ever written and near the top of my all time favorite sci-fi books of all time.

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Promised Land (co authored with Cynthia Felice 1998) -

This is a tale of a spoiled co-ed who returns to her home planet after her mother dies and finds that she must stay a year on the family farm in order to inherit it. Besieged with potential frontiersman beaus, it is a coming of age story with lots

of humorous moments.

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Doomsday (1993) – Sent from 2060 Oxford to England at the start of the Black Plague in the 14th century, this is a dark and riveting fictional look at that historical calamity and the desperation and willpower of the people of that period.

The suspense revolves around whether historian, Kivrin, will be rescued by other time traveler’s before she gets the plague. This is a heart-tugging story that you will never forget.

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Blackout (2010) – Set in World War II England, an assortment of time traveling historians experience glitches in their arrival schedules causing some to lose contact with Oxford in 2060. With no way to get back, the historians travel around England trying to find other historians. It looks as if they are changing history – something that time-traveling historians had not been able to do before. This book will make you feel as if you were there in England with them.

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All Clear (2010) – This is the sequel to Blackout and the adventures of Polly, Michael and Merope continue as Blitz bombing nearly kills them and 2060 Oxford frantically tries to rescue them before history rewrites itself. Filled with heroism and comp

assion, this is a fitting sequel to Blackout.

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The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories: A Connie Willis Compendium (2007) – If you can’t get enough of Connie Willis, this book is a collection of 23 of her novellas and short stories. They are really good, about the length of a Twilight Zone episode and with much the same altered reality effect on your mind.

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For most, those amazing 8-bit computing machines quickly devolved into yet another way to play video games and they did give Sega and Atari game machines a run for their money. For the rest of us, they were marvels of technology for learning Basic programming.

As a computer, the C64 could do much more than games.

Before I retired my C-64, I even had it running a BBS in Seattle, WA called High Tech BBS. I used highly modified BBS software written in Commodore Basic with the messages saved to the floppy drive (which was the size of a printer). So many of us still have fond memories of all those early 8-bit computers – the Atari 800, Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo), TI-99 4A, Apple II(GS), Commodore 64 and Timex / Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

There have been emulators out for most of these older 8-bit machines now for years that run on the PC and the Mac. Of course, acquiring the ROM game images is a bit more challenging, although a number are in the abandonware class now. I was curious if any of the emulators had been ported into Cloud apps and discovered that a number of them were!

Here is a quick sample program to type into any of the emulator windows

to test Basic program operation. Note that none of these emulators allows cutting and pasting the basic code using standard PC commands so you have to hand type the program lines. The Basic test program creates an endless loop of printouts on the screen:

10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD.”
20 GO TO 10

RUN

Some of the emulators will escape

the program loop with the PC keyboard escape key and others have an emulator control button to click on to terminate the program.

Mocha – The Java Color Computer Emulator - The site has an emulator for the Radio Shack’s TRS-80 Color Computer that runs Color Basic 1.1 with uppercase only text at 32 characters in width. You can type in simple basic programs or run a number of games loaded from their simulated cassette or cartridge (bin).

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VIC-20 Denial – This emulator won’t let you load any games but is fun to fool around with using Commodore Basic. Note that the Commodore keyboard is mapped differently for punctuation. For instance the quote symbol (“) is Shift 2. You have no idea how long it took me to retrain myself to not use Shift 2 for quotes when I first used a DOS PC. This website also has a user forum and a Wiki.

c64i – Technically, this is not a general purpose emulator, as only the Commodore games have been ported into a Java window but there are a lot of them to play. There are also links for  NES, SNES, Gameboy, Master System and DOS games that can be played in online Java windows.

JaC-64 – This emulator seems to work fine, uses correct Commodore keyboard mapping and has a number of game ROMs. To use it as an emulator, just load one of the games

and hit reset. Then you can enter your own Basic commands and run them.

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Virtual Apple – An Active GS plug-in will be downloaded in order for the Apple II/GS emulator to work. I’m not at all familiar with Apple II operation but did get a Chess game to load and play.

I got my Basic test program to run correctly, noting that this emulator maps quotes using the PC key for the same punctuation.

There are lots of game images to load, a support forum and links to manual pages and other Apple emulators.

CSSCGC 2008 for the Timex / Sinclair ZX Spectrum – I remember marveling over the ads for

the tiny Sinclair computers from Great Britain in the 1980s but never actually saw one in the flesh.

This site uses the QAOP emulator by Jan Bobrowski.  Because of the tiny membrane keyboard, Sinclair used lots of key tokens for programming. For instance, if you type “P” it types “PRINT” on the line.

Quotes are mapped to the equivalent PC keyboard quote keys. Typing “R” gives “RUN” on a line.

When I launched the endless loop program, I got a “Do you want to scroll?” prompt at the bottom of the first page of “Hello World” lines. There are a number of Sinclair games you can load and play on the site.

No online emulators could be found for the Atari 800 or TI-99/4A computers from that era.

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Nostalgia sometimes warps our perception of what might sell in the modern era. Commodore USA has made a comeback and has recreated the C-64 ($999 USD) and is now shipp

ing it. It is built with the original keyboard but has a modern PC motherboard inside that can run Ubuntu Linux or Windows, also.

The Commodore 1.0 OS disk will be mailed to purchasers once it is debugged and ready to ship. The new 1.0 OS is both Commodore and Amiga centric but built on a Linux distribution and will allow classic Commodore games to run in emulation mode.

If I have a weird computer problem, I Google it, sort through the answers and nine out of ten times fix my issue on the first try. Most of the useful answers come from a forum post.

I preemptively check out the problems of gadgets and laptops before I buy them, too.

Besides being a good way to check out whether there is good manufacturer support, it also alerts me

to problems I may encounter the first day or two with a new device.

I decided to compile a list of the best free support sites for computer, general hardware and electronic hobbyist categories for my own future reference and, hopefully, yours. Here is the list:

Computer Help Forums and Websites -

HelpOnThe.Net Tech Support Guy – This site has very active forums

with thousands of users on at any time. I couldn’t get a sub-topic count due to the way they organize things. Started in 1996, they have answers to problems for everything from PC hardware to games and business apps to cell phone, handheld devices and even DIY electrical repair jobs.

They have separate categories for every version of Windows, DOS, Mac and Linux OSs.

5 Star Support – This site has a massive tutorial section, FAQs in addition to computer forums.

 The forums section isn’t as active as HelpOnThe.Net but they have a very large archive of forum posts.

For instance the Windows XP section has 2,912 topics with 11,763 replies. Vista has 857 topics and Windows 7

only 199 topics. Note that this site is 100% about Windows PCs and their operating systems, so no gadget or Mac help will be found here.

The Elder Geek – How could I not endorse a site who’s name describes me

? This site, again, is 100% about Windows and has tutorials on how to install

and reinstall all the Windows OSs from XP through Windows 7.

In their forums, Windows XP has the largest database with 19,756 topics and 116,490 replies as of this writing. There are 948 topics in Vista and 607 in Windows 7. General PC hardware and software have thousands of sub-topics each.

Mac Forums - This is an Apple only help forum with over 180,000 topics and thousands of viewers online at any time. Besides OS X, it covers hardware for not only the iMac and MacBooks but also iPads, iPods, iPhones and Apple TV. It is the largest independent Apple forum.

Macosx.com – More than just a forum site, Macosx.com offers free tech support by e-mail. If you need an answer faster, browse their database of 30,000 questions that have been previously answered. The forum section has over 70,000 threads with over a thousand users on at a given time.

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Electronic Hobbyist Help Forums -

EDA Board – This is a very large electronics forum site with over 200,000 threads and 600 people online at any given time.

Besides normal forum categories, it has individual user blogs and also user groups for specific topics such as motion control , embedded C or VLSI, to name a few.

The forum topics include digital, analog, robotics, pcb layout, power electronics, tubes, service manuals and many others.

Electronic Point Forum –  At first this seemed like a modest forum with about 5000 threads but then I saw the electronics newsgroup section with over 200,000 threads and 1.3 million posts. In addition, they have a nice electronics tutorial section for basic electronics.

The forum questions are well answered by the user base.

Discover Circuits Forum – This forum is part of a site which also includes several schematic databases with over 30,000 schematics and all the issues of their free online Discover Circuits Magazine. The site is run by Dave Johnson, PE, who also does electronic design consulting work.

The forum itself has over 3,000 threads with over 13,000 posts on assorted topics and over 3400 members but only a few dozen viewers at any given moment. The forum questions seem to get good answers.

The above list is of a few of the best independent forums on the net. Of course, Apple has a very good manufacturer’s support section and Google Groups has many good forums for electronic hobbyist and computer topics, too.
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Any serious sci-fi book enthusiast has searc hed out a top 100 list to hunt for those hidden gems that he or she might have missed. NPR Radio has just released a new list in the last few days which is getting lots of press so I thought I would list the seven best top 100 lists for sci-fi books, with comments.

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NPR list -This is the newest list and NPR did a wonderful job in the presentation. The main list takes a while to load and has a decent size book cover shot along with a brief description. Clicking on the cover let’s you read an excerpt from the book.

The list is based on 60,000 NPR listener’s votes on a 5,000 title list and reflects a number of books that recent movies are

based on, deviating from most legacy top 100 sci-fi book lists.

SFF Jazz list -This is my favorite list and top 100 site.

Not only do they separate the top 100 sci-fi books from the fantasy books but they list the second 100 for each, also.

They also have mini links for each book to pages that show the book cover and a mini summary. They have top 100 movie, tv shows and short story lists, also.

Sci-Fi News list – This is a great sci-fi news site with lists for the top 100 sci-fi books, fantasy books, sci-fi movies and sci-fi tv shows.

The top 100 list is pretty basic, showing the title, author, year released and has links to both

the US and UK Amazon page for that book.

Amazon usually has good user reviews and some summary information for each title.

This Recording list – Their top 100 list has very large book cover shots and one

to ten line summaries for each book. It’s fun to see the large cover art but a little more book information would be nice.

Top science Fiction Novels of All Time list – Andrew Kaufman dedicated this entire website in 2010 to be just a top 100 sci-fi book list. He has extensive descriptions, a rating for each book, information on other books in the series and quotes from some of the books.

I only gave him two stars because he quit working on the website after getting to book 83 so you will have to guess what 84-100 are.

Google’s top 100 sci-fi book list – This list is very basic but recently updated in July 2011.

Over 3000 users voted on the list.

There are no descriptions, links, book covers or date released.

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Mega Electronic Parts Suppliers:

Mouser – This company is DigiKey’s arch rival, often undercutting DigiKey’s prices and having more inventory in stock than DigiKey. They offer a mixed media search result with a best guess search result list that is right most

of the time.

DigiKey – They have become the biggest parts retailer online, extremely popular with design engineers.

You must know what you are looking for and their search query system requires many levels to drill down through.

They do carry datasheets on every component that they have in their catalog which is a very useful feature.

Newark – Newark has been around since the 1970s or so, and more commercial than Allied Electronics was then.

Now they are both about equal.

Their parts are expensive but they do carry many legacy parts that you won’t find on DigiKey or Mouser.

Allied Electronics – Allied, my old friend, is much like Newark, has many legacy parts, is very pricey and is one of the oldest mail order part suppliers – around since the 1950s.

I bought parts from them and Lafayette in the 1960s when I was a teenager. They revamped their image in the 1990s and are more of an industrial parts supplier now.
…

Smaller Part Suppliers That Cater Especially to Hobbyists:

Parts Express - This is a good site for audio hobbyists and has good deals on popular hobby parts like speaker drivers, enclosures, crossover parts, audio amplifiers and car audio products.  Many of the better deals are surplus items from audio equipment manufacturers.

Jameco – This is another good hobbyist parts store and has been around 35 years.

They cater to the hobbyist and have over 160 electronic kits in stock (audio, solar, robotics, radio) besides enclosures, hardware, discrete parts, semiconductors, tools and test equipment. Prices are OK.

All Electronics – This company has been around since 1967, not a huge part supplier but the prices are good and the site is easy to navigate.

BG Micro – This is a hobbyist friendly site with deals of the day right on the front page. Their prices look pretty good although they don’t have a big selection. The site is very clean and easy to navigate.

Electronix Express – They are a smaller parts supplier like Jameco and have good deals on resistor kits and off brand test equipment.

Radio Shack – Once the 7-11 of parts stores, Radio Shack started in the 1930s as a ham radio part store, but now they are mostly good for buying cables, a few connectors, batteries, TV antennas and PC accessories. Still, if you are run out of a very common part or need solder or alligator clips, there’s probably a store within a few miles.

…

Electronic Hobbyist Kit Suppliers:

RamseyKits – They carry kits from $10-300, specializing in radio kits such as AM and FM transmitters, ham radio kits and assembled test equipment. Most are enclosed in attractive finished cases, not just a loose circuit board assembly.

CanaKit (CA) – This site has hundreds of kits in the $10-50 range and the entire Sparkfun product line. The kit selection is a mixture of many digital and analog circuits.

Nuts and Volts – This hobbyist magazine site carries many advanced kits from their magazine articles, over 130 in total, priced from $30-200. A great many are microprocessor based circuits and advanced level projects.

Bakatronics – They carry over 500 kits and electronic modules, many in the $2-100 range, catering toward simpler analog circuits. The owner is obviously a model railroad enthusiast since they also carry many miniature railroad electronic kits and assembled modules.

Jameco – They have 160 kits from $4-200 ranging from LED light kits to USB oscilloscope kits.

They also carry a lot of parts (see above).

Altronics (AU) – This great store is a full spectrum Australian supplier of parts, test gear and electronic kits – what Radio Shack should have been.  They have over 120 kits from $10-800, in the audio, automotive, test equipment and beginner categories. Altronics also carries a lot of discrete parts, connectors, transformers, hardware and test equipment, too.

QualityKits (aka QKits) – This site stocks hundreds of kits for robotics, computer interface, audio and beginner electronics (such as every kind of led blinker kit imaginable) in the $4-100 price range. QKits has more beginner hobbyists kits than the other sites.

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BREAKING NEWS: Heathkit, famous for hobbyist kits for hi-fi, ham radio and test equipment from 1947-1992 is going to sell kits again starting in late August 2011.

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You can access the HTML5 based Kindle Cloud Reader webpage at read.amazon.com. If you already have an account set up, it takes

you immediately to the Amazon log-in page and then to the cloud app.

The Good News:

You don’t actually have to download your Kindle books if you don’t want to.

It is an option, of course, and Amazon will prompt you to extend your browser cache size to 50M, if it isn’t already, to hold the downloaded books.

This allows you to keep reading even when you are without an online connection, which is very handy at times. At the top of the library page, on the Chrome browser, bottom of the page on the iPad, there are separate tabs for cloud books vs downloaded books.

Bookmarks are synced for both.

The Amazon Kindle store is well integrated into their Cloud Reader so you don’t have to open another browser tab to purchase or browse new books. In fact, to return to the Cloud Reader is a menu bar item in the regular Amazon Kindle book store, even on unsupported browsers.

Using the Kindle Cloud Browser does not count toward your maximum installed base of Kindles (plus apps) that you can read on. If you have maxed out your count, like I have, this is a major benefit.

The Bad News:

It currently only works on Apple Safari browser (Mac and iPad) and the Google Chrome browser but not on Internet Explorer or Firefox. Maybe, in time Amazon will add those browsers, especially since they represent over 70% of the browser market!

Why Safari before Firefox? Simple. Using the (Safari based) browser on the iPad, Amazon got around the in-app purchase tax that Apple charges.

Why Chrome? Google loves their app widgets and Chrome is the faster growing browser segment of the market.

It is also the only way a Chromebook user could read his Kindle books. It makes perfect sense now as to why Amazon picked Chrome and Safari first.

There is a message at the bottom of the Kindle Cloud reader download page that says “Support for additional browsers coming soon.”

With the stand-alone app, I also enjoyed loading my own mobi books onto the Kindle reader and I could read them with their reader. This obviously doesn’t profit Amazon, nor does the book conveniently sync across devices, but it adds a little more flexibility to their stand alone app. The Cloud Reader has no options to import books externally.

With the Kindle Cloud Reader, you can only see notes and highlights that you have made to books but you cannot change them or add more. If you are just a casual reader, like me, this won’t be an issue.

You cannot read magazines or newspapers that you purchased for the Kindle with the cloud reader. Once you see the design of

the Cloud Reader, it makes sense. It is a text-based, page-turning dedicated reader app much like the one at MagicScroll.

On the Kindle Cloud Reader, there are options for font size, margin width, black on white/white on black/black on sepia but no dual page reading nor font choices.

Many users like to read with Sans Serif fonts.

That said, the default font looks quite good on Google Chrome on a PC as well as on Safari on the iMac.

I’m always excited to see a new cloud app and the Kindle Cloud Reader is off to a good start.

Their goal was to circumvent the Apple tax for in app purchases and to make it easier for casual users to read Kindle E-books on their laptops, without installing yet another app. This may also be the only way a Linux user, running Chrome or Chromium, could read Kindle books. I’ll be looking for that Firefox version soon.

Either they are not free or force you to listen to their structured playlists.

Spotify launched this week in the US and does just that.

Spotify is an insanely popular music on demand service that has been online in Europe since 2008 with currently 10 million listeners. They have raised false hopes several times with rumors that they would be coming to the US soon but it ended up taking longer than they thought to agree with music producers regarding content distribution.

Like Skype, Spotify does not have huge server farms. It is a (legal) peer-to-peer music streaming service.

It is socially skewed towards sharing your playlists on Facebook and Twitter. Once installed, the app will still run in your launchbar after you close it from the main window, unless you intentionally stop the service in a right click menu.

Spotify does download songs (not the ones you chose, however) to your drive, and will send those back out to other peers even when

you are not using the app. Anyone who has used a bittorrent client understands how this works. I checked and did not see any streaming activity in my network monitor with the Spotify service running in the taskbar – who knows when and how it actually uploads to peers.

How do they do it for free

?

For starters, there is no server farm or bandwidth to pay for.

Also, they only offer a limited service for free, not unlike Pandora and Slacker. In the free version you are limited to 20 hours a month, only five replays of the same song and there are visual ads in the sidebar of your Spotify app and occasionally an audio ad appears in line with the songs.

The good news is that that paid versions are insanely cheap. For $5/mo you get unlimited streaming for PCs and Macs (not mobile), you can play a song as many times as you like and the ads disappear. For $10/mo you get all of the above plus you can use Spotify on your mobile devices like iOS Iphones, and iPod Touches.

As of July 24, 2011, free Spotify access is by invitation only. Within a month, I’m sure it will be open to everyone. Based on a tip, I got my invitation through the Chevrolet website so was able to try it out in the last few days. You don’t need an invite if you immediately sign up for a paid plan, however.

The first thing Spotify will do is download a local music client app to your desktop. It’s a nice clean interface and loads within 10 seconds (unlike iTunes). There are no skin options and on Windows, at least, you

are stuck with a two-tone gray GUI.

Visual ads alternate between a right-side vertical one and a bottom horizontal ad.

Down the left side of the Spotify app is a file browser panel and cover art. Down the right side is your Facebook links to other Spotify users. These aren’t your Facebook friends actually, but just other Spotify users whose playlists you have chosen to follow. The middle of the panel has album cover collections or album playlists once you choose an album or artist.

The first time the music client launches, it aggregates your local music files, much like iTunes would do. It creates a separate line item for iTunes, Windows Media Player and Local Files. There is also a “Starred” line item where you can persistently save songs that you played before and liked. Spotify is trying to make this your one-stop music player. It doesn’t include any internet radio options.

How is the selection?

Excellent, for new artists – you will find most all the Lady Gaga songs and all

the other top pop artists on Spotify. Once you drill down to an artist, you can see a bio on them and pictures of related artists to explore. Once you connect to Facebook, Spotify itself becomes one of the people in the right column and will have assorted Euro-centric playlists. I’m sure US playlists will be added soon as it gains popularity here.

The search bar is a good way to discover which of your favorite artists are in their song catalog. You can type an artist, song or album name.

I typed in Simon and Garfunkel and got a decent collection.  I typed in Beatles and got a hugh list including their popular “One” album. I tried old niche artists from the early 60s like Marty Robins and Johnny Horton and it found their song collections with no problem.  I typed in “Ain’t Nobody Hear But Us Chickens” and got 22 tracks from assorted artists that sang it.

Wow. This thing is good!

One warning – there is no spellchecker in the Search bar. You type in Beattles instead of Beatles and it won’t find any of their songs so double check your typing if it finds no

songs or artists.

Here is a link to a Mashable infographics chart that shows how Spotify compares to MOG, Rhapsody, Slacker, RDIO and Grooveshark.

My opinion?

GET IT! This music service is pure bliss.

The iTunes team will have their damage control work cut out for them in the next few months.

For those that are visually disabled and on a fixed income, it would be great if there were a free option for audiobooks.

Guess what, there is!

Podiobooks – the name itself is a combined term of podcast and audiobooks.

The site allows you to listen by an RSS podcast feed to each chapter of the books on their site. You c an set the interv

al to one chapter a day, one per week or one

per month. Many RSS readers now handle embedded media for playback.

Optionally, you can just download the entire audio book to your PC and deal with it there. I personally like to burn the book as an MP3 CD for playback in the car while commuting.

The books on Podiobooks are from new authors that are trying to build a loyal following of readers. You can get free e-books on Amaz

on through a similar process.

The author gives away the first book so you will buy the sequel. The Podiobooks website does have a page set up for donations and links on each book synopsis page but

donations are not required.

There appears to be over 500 books on the search page, almost all ficti

on and favoring sci-fi, mystery and romance. Awards for some titles, based on reader popularity, help you find the better titles.

Clicking on a title brings up a full page synopsis and download options.

Files are in MP3 format. Check out this site if you want to try audiobooks or are just looking for new titles to read.