Trifles and Tidbits

While glancing at Arts & Letters Daily I was directed to another great site for the lifelong learner in us all: Open Culture. Open culture is an ever-growing collection of places you can get free college courses from great universities, resources to turn toys into tools, and as the tagline says, offers "the best cultural and educational media on the web". Then a patron directed me to this site that she enjoys, which offers free university courses you can listen to. You can choose from 24 subjects, including history, chemistry, literature, and philosophy to get world-class lectures from professors from the likes of Yale, Stanford, MIT, etc. I was looking for sites to direct patrons to for e-books for their various devices, and good old Project Gutenberg is still with us, and keeping up with the times. They offer e-books for smart phones, the Kindle, Sony e-reader, as well as letting you read on your computer. They also offer a Top 100 downloads list if you are having a hard time figuring out what you want to read. Here are the Top 10 books downloaded yesterday: Maggie, a Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane (989) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (859) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (466) The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana (455) The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (417) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (409) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (405) A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (289) Ulysses by James Joyce (281) The Art of War by Sunzi 6th cent. B.C. (281) Technology is playing an ever-larger part in our day to day lives. How has your life changed the past year? Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, what have you tried and loved, or tried and abandoned? What were your reasons for either? I'll start: I don't get the Twitter thing. Sorry--just don't. One of the big flops of the year was TwitterPeek, which was a device dedicated to following Twitterers, twittering back, and enjoying all things Twittered. For only $99, plus a small service fee, you could follow Paris Hilton or whomever you choose who twits, and never miss a thing--except what is going on around you. Anyone out there follow anyone or thing on Twitter? If it works for you, let me know. Cheers and Happy New Year! Melody

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!