Posts Tagged ‘free ebooks’
OK, so now you’ve downloaded and configured audiograbber, how are we going to actually record our audiobook from the Radio.
Well, there’s an immediate easy way and the scheduled way.
The easy way is to wait until the programme you want to record starts and then hit the Record button on Real Player or Audio Grabber.
Real Player will tell you if recording is permitted. As I only recommend legal methods of obtaining recordings I’ll concentrate on Radio where recording is allowed.
The scheduled way is more sophisticated. It means you can go out to dinner, go to bed, and when you get back your recording is all ready on your computer in the mp3 format.
Here’s how.
You need to choose your programme.
For the purposes of this tutorial I’ve chosen today’s broadcast of one of my favourite books, Gilbert White’s the “Natural History of Selbourne” on Spoken Word Internet Radio Station. If you’ve forgotten it’s (http://www.audiobookradio.net/index.php).
Go to Programme Schedule and the broadcast is scheduled for 3.39pm / am.
Obviously you can just leave the radio streaming until you’re ready to record but a better way might be to schedule when you want the broadcast to start. If you’ve forgotten how to do this, or haven’t read the Post Tutorial, you can find it here: (Let’s Schedule “The Dead Hand” by Wilkie Collins)
My tip is to set the start time a little earlier than scheduled.
Next, it’s time to open up Audiograbber and set the timer to record the programme when it’s broadcast:
Make sure it’s in Line In Sampling mode and play a sound file to make sure the Mixer is used for recording as discussed last Post – i.e. checking that the record level is working.
AudioGrabber is easy to set up. If your recording is on the same day, just write the day in where it says date. For time use the same system as your computer clock – in my case 17:35:00 and the length is in hours and minutes.
If you get stuck, Audiograbber has excellent help files.
Now you’re ready to go away and leave your computer to make the recording.
You can ask Audiograbber to shut down the computer when it’s finished.
This doesn’t always seem to work for me so we’ll check some other shut down programmes in another post.
For the moment you might like to download these two programmes for the final clean up.
MP3 Cut
and
Vista Shutdown Timer
Details on the Free Resources Page.
So, let’s get straight in and talk about our next free book. The important think now is to look at free books in the PDF format. Many, many e books are produced like this.
E books are electronic books and the PDF format is ideal.
It’s ideal for many reasons some of which are perhaps not ideal from the readers point of view.
One reason why many Electronic Books are produced in the PDF format is because the author can block the use of a great deal of the content. It can be password protected so that the reader cannot copy the book and cannot print the book. I tend to take the view that too much of this is against the principles of our project here at Free Books Plus.
Another thing I want to emphasise again is the Free Books Plus is only concerned with legal books. I say that because you’ll find many many books on the Internet which are often free as illegal downloads using file sharing schemes and also from sites and parts of the world where copyright is not respected or recognized.
If you download these books you do so at your own risk and also run the risk of download the nasties that pervade the Internet such as viruses and trojans.
As this is our first PDF book, I want to make sure that everything is simple and convenient, so I’m going to give you one of my own stories.
As I’ve mentioned, perhaps, I’ve had a number of careers in my life as a photographer, a writer and an educator. Now my writing career has been somewhat sporadic and I’ve often concentrated more on journalism than literature.
Nevertheless I have published a handful of short stories and poems so I’m going to give you as my first free PDF book the first story I ever published and got paid for.
Karl comes out of my experiences working as an auxiliary psychiatric nurse near Edinburgh. I’ll say straight away as most authors do that it’s a work of fiction. The name Karl I took from a man I greatly admired but had nothing to do with the mental health regime of the time.
So, I think it’s a good idea to provide my first free PDF book as one which I know has no restrictions and which you can copy and print as you like – though not use for any commercial purpose.
You can download it, read it on the screen, print it out or share with your friends as you like.
So here are the procedures for dealing with the story called Karl.
The first thing you have to do is download it. (Always make sure you virus check files downloaded from the Internet)
So click here:
Although PDF files are compact you’ll normally find them provided as Zip files.
I’m hoping that most readers will know what a Zip file is but if you don’t it’s just a file or collection of files which are packaged together and compressed or zipped to make them smaller.
When you’ve downloaded the Zip file you’ll have to unzip it.
If you use Microsoft XP as your operating system you’ll find it easy because it has a built in zip extractor – you simply right click on the file and choose extract all.
If you need a programme to unzip your files there are many available. Many are commercial products but I suggest using 7 – Zip which is a free Open Source product.
Once you’ve downloaded your zip file and unzipped, you’ll then have to read it – and I’ve already given details of some PDF programmes to do the job.
Once you’ve opened your PDF file you can read the story on screen, print it out or send copies to your friends.
I hope you’ll enjoy this free book, I hope you’ll enjoy reading one of my stories.
I’m going to ask some other writers if they have free books available too.
I’m going to sign off now, – it’s a bit boring but I’ll suggest again if you’ve got a moment, subscribe to the feed, comment for everyone to read your views, and bookmark me on your favourite Social Sites.
Till next time …
