Oh, Discoveries!
No matter how well I think I know the internet, there’s always something new that will surprise me. I thought I knew the cool places, and I knew the places from where, for the love of all that is holy and the last remaining traces of my innocence, I am to stay away. I knew what was good for fansites, for roleplaying, for news, for gossip… but I didn’t know about this. Until now.
What have I discovered? The Internet Archive.
The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
And through Archive.org, I have discovered Librivox.org, a site that offers free, volunteer-read audiobooks. So far on my list of things I want to download are: Grimms’ Fairy Tales and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. I have only just started to scratch the surface, so I will probably make some more discoveries before too long.
Have a look and let me know what you find!
The Best Things In Life Are Free
Like most people at Snark, I keep a blog. And like most people at Snark, I visit the sites of other people for what they have to say in their blog.
But like many people (and I am totally assuming this) I have a love of free stuff. Therefore, it is always a bonus to see that other people offer free stuff. Like Jem and her scripts.
It still amazes me that, on the internet, there is this whole idea of creating and sharing stuff for free. I’ve told people (who, unlike me, don’t spend every waking moment on the internet) about some of the things Wordpress, SimpleMachines and the GIMP can do, and the first thing they inevitiably ask is, “How much?”
It doesn’t occur to them that things might be free - and not because it has been illegally uploaded/downloaded. On the internet, it seems people like to make things… and then share them. Is it some sort of “pay it forward” mentality? Say, if I were to use mediashelf, instead of making something for Jenny, do I make a wordpress theme for Blogger X to download?
Or do we just do it because it’s fun?
Either way, I think I need to do more for my visitors’ page. I’ve made a whole bunch of stuff that I can just tweak and make available for download.
