Jupiter Need-To-Know Things

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter is a gas giant, along with Saturn, with the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptun

1. The Biggest Planet
If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, the Earth would be the size of a nickel and Jupiter would be about as big as a basketball. About 1,300 Earths could fit inside Jupiter.

2. Fifth in Line
Jupiter orbits our sun, a star. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun at a distance of about 484 million miles (778 million km) or 5.2 Astronomical Units (AU). Earth is one AU from the sun.

3. Short Day / Long Year
One day on Jupiter takes about 10 hours (the time it takes for Jupiter to rotate or spin once). Jupiter makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Jovian time) in about 12 Earth years (4,333 Earth days).

4. What's Inside?
Jupiter is a gas-giant planet and therefore does not have a solid surface. Jupiter may have a solid, inner core about the size of Earth.

5. Atmosphere
Jupiter's atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen (H₂) and helium (He).

Read About:Juno probe successfully enters Jupiter's orbit after 'amazing' mission

6. Many Moons
Jupiter has 53 known moons, with an additional 14 moons awaiting confirmation of their discovery -- that is a total of 67 moons.

7. Ringed World
Jupiter has a faint ring system that was discovered in 1979 by the Voyager 1 mission. All four giant planets in our solar system have ring systems.

8. Exploring Jupiter
Many missions have visited Jupiter and its system of moons. The Juno mission is arrived at Jupiter in June 2016.

9. Ingredients for Life?
Jupiter cannot support life as we know it. However, some of Jupiter's moons have oceans underneath their crusts that might support life.

10. Did You Know?
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a gigantic storm (about the size of Earth) that has been raging for hundreds of years.

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Juno probe successfully enters Jupiter's orbit after 'amazing' mission

After an almost five-year journey to the solar system’s largest planet, NASA's Juno spacecraft successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit during a 35-minute engine burn.  Confirmation that the burn had completed was received on Earth at 8:53 pm. PDT (11:53 p.m. EDT) Monday, July 4.

“Independence Day always is something to celebrate, but today we can add to America’s birthday another reason to cheer – Juno is at Jupiter,” said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. “And what is more American than a NASA mission going boldly where no spacecraft has gone before? With Juno, we will investigate the unknowns of Jupiter’s massive radiation belts to delve deep into not only the planet’s interior, but into how Jupiter was born and how our entire solar system evolved.”

Confirmation of a successful orbit insertion was received from Juno tracking data monitored at the navigation facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, as well as at the Lockheed Martin Juno operations center in Denver. The telemetry and tracking data were received by NASA's Deep Space Network antennas in Goldstone, California, and Canberra, Australia.

“This is the one time I don’t mind being stuck in a windowless room on the night of the Fourth of July,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The mission team did great. The spacecraft did great. We are looking great. It’s a great day.”

Preplanned events leading up to the orbital insertion engine burn included changing the spacecraft’s attitude to point the main engine in the desired direction and then increasing the spacecraft’s rotation rate from 2 to 5 revolutions per minute (RPM) to help stabilize it.

The burn of Juno’s 645-Newton Leros-1b main engine began on time at 8:18 p.m. PDT (11:18 p.m. EDT), decreasing the spacecraft’s velocity by 1,212 mph (542 meters per second) and allowing Juno to be captured in orbit around Jupiter. Soon after the burn was completed, Juno turned so that the sun’s rays could once again reach the 18,698 individual solar cells that give Juno its energy.

“The spacecraft worked perfectly, which is always nice when you’re driving a vehicle with 1.7 billion miles on the odometer,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager from JPL. “Jupiter orbit insertion was a big step and the most challenging remaining in our mission plan, but there are others that have to occur before we can give the science team members the mission they are looking for.”

Over the next few months, Juno’s mission and science teams will perform final testing on the spacecraft’s subsystems, final calibration of science instruments and some science collection.

“Our official science collection phase begins in October, but we’ve figured out a way to collect data a lot earlier than that,” said Bolton. “Which when you’re talking about the single biggest planetary body in the solar system is a really good thing. There is a lot to see and do here.”

Juno's principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. With its suite of nine science instruments, Juno will investigate the existence of a solid planetary core, map Jupiter's intense magnetic field, measure the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere, and observe the planet's auroras. The mission also will let us take a giant step forward in our understanding of how giant planets form and the role these titans played in putting together the rest of the solar system. As our primary example of a giant planet, Jupiter also can provide critical knowledge for understanding the planetary systems being discovered around other stars.

The Juno spacecraft launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. JPL manages the Juno mission for NASA. Juno is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

More information on the Juno mission is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/juno

What the Juno mission will look like

The Juno mission will cost Nasa $1.1billion.

After an epic five year journey, where it slung-shot around the Earth to gather speed and travelled for 2.8bn kilometres, it will now circle Jupiter for 20 months, before plunging to a crushing death in Jupiter’s harsh and dense atmosphere.

Any reports we get from Juno actually happened 48 minutes and 19 seconds earlier – that’s how long it takes light to get from Juno to Earth. As a result, it gets sent directions ahead of time, and is flown essentially on auto-pilot.

Despite Juno’s sensitive electronics being encased in a one-inch thick solid titanium box to shield it from the intense radiation around Jupiter, eventually it will succumb to the harsh environment. At that time – currently estimated to be in about 20 months – it will be commanded to dive into the atmosphere.

But in that time, it will use it’s nine instruments to learn everything it can about Jupiter’s interior and atmosphere.

It will map Jupiter’s gravity and magnetic fields and track how much water is in the atmosphere. Its colour camera dubbed JunoCam will snap close-ups of Jupiter’s swirling clouds, polar regions and shimmering southern and northern lights. 

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Google Web Fonts and How to Use

As a web designer, you’re probably well aware of the importance of typeface. With the growing amount of businesses engaging in content marketing, font selection is becoming all the more crucial.

There’s nothing worse than coming across a website with awesome content and horrible typeface. One of your main goals as a designer is ensuring a positive experience for the end-user.

After the release of Google Web Fonts, it’s become a lot easier to incorporate beautiful typography into your websites. The only difficulty is sorting through the 600+ styles that are offered.

For this reason, we’ve put together our top 20 Google web fonts that are sure to bring out the best of your design.

But first, let’s walk you through the installation process.

How to Use Google Web Fonts

Step 1

Step 2

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<head>   <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans' rel='stylesheet'  type='text/css'> </head>

Step 3

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body { font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; }

Recommended Google Web Fonts

Open Sans

Droid Sans

PT Sans

Lato

Oswald

Droid Serif

Roboto

Lora

Libre Baskerville

Josefin Slab

Arvo

Ubuntu

Raleway

Source Sans Pro

Lobster

PT Serif

Old Standard TT

Volkorn

Gravitas One

Merriweather

Google Web Fonts is a free, open-source and hosted service. The fonts are compatible with a wide variety of devices, browsers and operating systems. You don’t need to create an account and you’re not restricted to using them in any way. It’s definitely one of the best solutions for adding nice typeface to your site.

Head over to Google Fonts and pick out a font. Don’t worry, we’ll provide you with a bunch of suggestions down below. Once you have one picked out, click the quick use button shown below.

You’ll then be brought to a screen where you can choose the style you want (ie. light, bold, extra-bold, etc…) as well as the character sets. After that, you will be given a piece of code that you will add into the <head> of your website. For this example, I chose Open Sans.

Google API will generate the necessary CSS code to add to your stylesheet. Simply add the generated code to your CSS file.

Now that you know how to install them, let’s go ahead with the recommendations.

Open sans is a sans serif typeface designed by Steve Matteson and it’s the most popular Google Web font available.

Open Sans is an upright stressed font with open forms and a neutral but friendly appearance. It was optimized for print, web and mobile interface and has gained extreme popularity over the excellent legibility of the typeface.

Recommended pairings: Roboto, Oswlad & Lato.

Similar to its open sans counterpart, this font was also designed with an upright stress, open forms and a neutral but friendly appearance.

Droid was heavily optimized for user interfaces and to be comfortable for reading on a mobile handset in menus, web browser and other screen text.

Recommended pairings: Droid Serif, Lobster, Open Sans.

PT Sans is based on Russian sans serif types of the second part of the 20th century, but at the same time has distinctive features of contemporary humanistic designs.

Recommended pairings: PT Serif, Lato, Ubuntu

Lato is another sans serif typeface designed by Warsaw-based designer Łukasz Dziedzic. Lato gets its name from the Polish word meaning “summer.”

The font is based off classical proportions which are particularly visible in the uppercase in order to give the letterforms a familiar sense of harmony and elegance. The semi-rounded details of the letters give off a feeling of warmth, while the strong structure provides a sense of stability and seriousness.

Recommended pairings: Open Sans, Source Sans Pro, Roboto.

Oswald is a reworking of the classic style historically represented by the ‘Alternate Gothic’ sans serif typefaces. The characters of Oswald have been re-drawn and reformed to better fit the pixel grid of standard digital screens.

Oswald is designed to be used freely across the internet by web browsers on desktop computers, laptops and mobile devices.

Recommended pairings: Open Sans, Droid Sans, Roboto

The Droid Serif font family features a contemporary appearance and was designed for comfortable reading on screen. The font features slightly condensed letterforms to maximize the amount of text displayed on small screens. Vertical stress, sturdy serifs and open forms contribute to the readability of Droid Serif while its proportion and overall design complement its companion Droid Sans.

Recommended pairings: Droid Sans, Open Sans, Raleway.

Roboto is the font we’re using for our blog which features friendly and open curves. The goal of the this font was not to allow distorted letterforms to force a rigid rhythm. In contrast, Roboto doesn’t compromise by allowing letter to be settled into their natural width. This makes for a more natural reading rhythm more commonly found in humanist and serif types.

Recommended pairings: Open Sans, Lato, Droid Sans.

Lora is a well-balanced contemporary serif with roots in calligraphy. It is a text typeface with moderate contrast well suited for body text.

Lora is optimized for screen appearance but works equally well in print.

Recommended pairings: Open Sans, Lato, Ubuntu.

Libre Baskerville is a web font optimized for body text (typically 16px.) It is based on the American Type Founder’s Baskerville from 1941, but it has a taller x-height, wider counters and a little less contrast, that allow it to work well for reading on-screen.

Josefin Slab is a Scandinavian style font with typewriter style attributes. It was developed by Santiago Orozco who wanted to stick to the idea of Scandinavian style, so he put a lot of attention to the diacritics.

Recommended pairings: Open Sans, Pacifico, Oswald

Arvo is a geometric slab-serif typeface family suited for screen and print. The flavour of the font is rather mixed. Its monolinearish, but has tiny bit of contrast (which increases the legibility a little in Mac OS X.).

Recommended pairings: Droid Sans, PT Sans, Ubuntu.

The new Ubuntu Font Family was started to enable the personality of Ubuntu to be seen and felt in every menu, button and dialog. The typeface is sans-serif, uses OpenType features and is manually hinted for clarity on desktop and mobile computing screens.

Recommended pairings: Open Sans, Droid Sans, Roboto.

Raleway is an elegant sans-serif typeface family. It was initially designed as a single thin weight and later expanded into a 9 weight family.

Recommended pairings: Droid Sans, Lobster, Droid Serif.

Source Sans Pro, Adobe’s first open source typeface family, was designed by Paul D. Hunt as a sans serif typeface intended to work well in user interfaces.

One of the important  design considerations was to create a typeface that reads well over extended periods of time.

Recommended pairings: Lato, Open Sans, Roboto.

The font draws many versions of each letter and a lot of different letter-pairs (aka “ligatures”) so it always uses the best possible variation of each letter depending of the context of the letter inside each word. All this happens automatically in any browser that supports ligatures.

We recommend Lobster for headings and titles but not so much for large paragraphs of text.

Recommended pairings: Droid sans, Raleway, Open Sans.

PT Serif is a transitional serif typeface with humanistic terminals. It is designed for use together with PT Sans, and is harmonized across metrics, proportions, weights and design.

Recommended pairings: PT Sans, Open Sans, Droid Sans.

Old Standard TT uses a classical style of serif typefaces commonly used in various editions of the late 19th and early 20th century

It’s considered a good choice for typesetting scientific papers, especially on social and humanitarian sciences, as its specific features are closely associated in people’s eyes with old books they learned on.

Recommended pairings: Droid Sans, Lobster, Vollkorn

It intends to be a quiet, modest and well working text face for bread and butter use. Unlike its examples in the book faces from the renaissance until today, it has dark and meaty serifs and a bouncing and healthy look. It might be used as body type as well as for headlines or titles.

Recommended parings: Droid Sans, Lobster, Open Sans.

Gravitas One is modeled on the “UK fat face” which is a kind of very heavy advertising type created during the industrial revolution in England.

The letter forms are characterized by an attention getting and strong contrast between the very heavy vertical shapes and the thin horizontal ones. The contrast of the design means that it will be most useful when set from medium to large sizes.

Recommended pairings: Paytone one, Open Sans, Lato

Merriweather features a very large x height, slightly condensed letterforms, a mild diagonal stress, sturdy serifs and open forms.

Recommended pairings: Open sans, Oswald, Merriweather

Source: https://bootstrapbay.com/blog/google-web-fonts/

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Websites To Help You Learn Web Development Online

Since the beginning of the web, it has been a tradition for designers and developers to share knowledge and keep learning out in the open. For that reason, there are a number of resources available to anyone who wants to learn web development from scratch. Over the years, various programs have emerged which allow you to learn the basics of web development, build a portfolio, and start on your career.

here are lots of online resources that can help you get started. We are lucky to be working in an industry that is growing exponentially, and the skills needed are out there for you to learn. But you also will be required to drive yourself and push to complete your skill set. For those hungry to acquire knowledge, and eager to get started, there are several places where you can learn web development right away.

Treehouse

One of the leading premium online learning resources is Treehouse. The program comes at a monthly cost with two pricing tiers. It works by guiding you along various “tracks” which are meant to teach you a specific skill or programming language from beginner to advanced. In each track, you will take several courses with videos from an instructor, accompanied by structured code walkthroughs and sample quizzes to keep you on pace. Treehouse has tracks that can help with all aspects of building websites and apps, from building the most basic website with no knowledge of HTML or CSS to back-end languages and iOS app development.

Treehouse comes closer than most at replicating an actual university structure, as its tracks are highly structured and assume no previous knowledge. But it will be up to you to make sure you keep up with a course, and engage with all of the examples provided. But Treehouse also gives you access to a lot of external resources related to learning, including small workshops, a library of books and audiovisual materials, and exclusive conferences. And as you gain more experience, Treehouse also offers help with job placement and internships, which is a pretty big bonus.

Lynda

Lynda is a bit like Treehouse, in that it offers a range of video courses taught by online instructors for a monthly fee. However, rather than break things into tracks, Lynda simply gives you access to thousands of courses which range from beginner to intermediate to advanced. Lynda is not just focused on web development, and has courses on animation, photography, film, music, and even education. But Lynda’s core strength and most comprehensive course offerings are available in web design and development. To get started, you simply need to find the course you want and take it.

It will be up to you to structure your own path, but once you do, there will be a course on just about anything you can imagine. You might want to start learning a bit of basic Javascript, then dive into the fundamentals of a Javascript library like Backbone or Ember. Or maybe you want to learn some front-end development before moving to advanced WordPress theme development. Each course comes with a series of videos, and depending on the course, a few examples for you to walk through and some sample code. Instructors are vetted by Lynda, so you can be sure they are high quality.

If you’re the kind of person who likes to jump straight into things, and works best by example, then Lynda is probably the right choice for you. It will offer you a full range or learning opportunities, and you can work at whatever pace you feel comfortable with.

Codeacademy

Codeacademy is another course-based online learning site, but it takes a slightly different approach. For one, it is completely free. And rather than offer you a set of videos to learn from, you are walked through interactive examples which get you coding right away. Each example will show another facet of a particular programming language, like HTML, CSS or PHP, and through these examples you build up knowledge of the code’s structure and semantics. Samples allow you to type code right in the browser, and your code is evaluated on the fly by the platform, accompanied by explanations and walkthroughs.

Without the background that comes through videos, you may miss some of the theory behind programming, but you will also get started building websites almost right away. And once you’ve learned how to use a language, it might be a bit easier to go out into the world and figure out the why.

Codeacademy has a fairly small number of courses available. Most teach a specific programming language from beginning to end, but the site also offers two courses on how to make a website with no knowledge of development at all. If you’re a “learn by doing” type, then Codeacademy might be the right way to go.

Udemy

Udemy serves as more of a platform than a structured approach to learning. Using Udemy, instructors can set up courses which are meant to be extremely comprehensive and independent learning tracks that teach you a particular skill. Like Lynda, Udemy offers a wide range of course offerings, both in web development and related fields. The strength of Udemy courses rests on the skills of the instructor, so before taking a course there it is worthwhile to research the instructor’s credentials.

Each course has a price, and you get unlimited access to the videos for that course, as well as a connection to the underlying Udemy student community. Like some of the other resources listed here, Udemy is more of a skills-driven website, and is best if you are trying to get started with a specific skill, like HTML5 or CSS fundamentals, rather than a start to finish solution. Udemy features a range of courses on all topics in web development, from the basics of code to building a full website using HTML, CSS, Javascript and WordPress.

WPSessions

If you’re looking for a learning resource that’s a bit more WordPress focused, then WPSessions might be a good option. The site was started by Brian Richards, and works by organizing groups of video tutorials into sessions. Some sessions are free, though most are paid, and each focuses on a new topic in web development. For instance, the “Working with BuddyPress” session deals exclusively in how to use BuddyPress and WordPress. Though the site is more WordPress focused than any other listed here, many of the sessions take you through the basics of web development before moving on to how they apply to WordPress. The “WordPress and Backbone.js” course, for instance, focuses on the fundamentals of Javascript before moving on to how to get started with the Backbone Javascript library

Each session has three speakers, at about an hour each. And Brian adds a unique twist to the site, by allowing you to attend the session live, and interact with the speakers in real time. After a session is over, it goes up on the site for purchase. WPSessions is in the midst of an expansion right now, and is going to offer more and more courses, comprehensive dives into different areas of WordPress development.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy was founded by Salman Khan in 2006, and has since grown into a full non-profit online education platform. It offers courses in a range of subjects, though it’s focus tends to be on Math and Science. Each course has a series of videos that help you learn a new skill, and interactive challenges that guide you along.

The web development section of Khan Academy is still very new, and right now focuses on how to use Javascript. If you’re looking for a good resource on HTML and CSS, you may want to look elsewhere, but it offers a great, free way to get started with JS. I mention this only because at the moment, Khan Academy is in the process of building out their web development section, so it’s something to keep an eye on in the future.

Codrops

Codrops is a resource for web developers at any level, looking for a little inspiration. The site is filled with tutorials and code demos that push front-end code to the limit. Tutorials usually begin with a stunning demo, with animations, or transitions, or dynamic interactions. The demo’s focus on a sole feature, like adding an off-canvas menu, or a preloader. Then, the tutorial walks you through the code and shows you how to get the example up and running. All of the tutorials come with a code package that you can download and look through yourself, so you can see how it all comes together.

Codrops won’t take you from novice to expert, but it is great for those learners looking to stretch their imagination a bit. It takes a “do as I do” approach, coding things up using cutting edge technologies and best practices. One of the best ways to learn web development is to simply dig around existing code, and Codrops offers you lots of opportunities to do so.

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Free Books 50 Places to Find Free Books Online

Free books can be found everywhere--if you know where to look. Below you'll find 50 places offering free books online, including fiction and nonfiction ebooks, audio books, poetry, reference books and even free textbooks.

Free Fiction and Nonfiction Books

Authorama - You can find more than 100 free books from a variety of different authors on Authorama. New books are added to the site each month, and they've all been translated into plain ASCII or HTML so that no e-reader is required.

Book Stacks - Book Stacks hosts tons of ebooks that you can download and read as PDFs.

Bored.com - More than 10,000 free books are available at Bored.com. Book categories include but are not limited to: American literature, British literature, world literature, children's literature, cookbooks, travel books and history books.

Chest of Books - Visit this site to access hundreds of free nonfiction books. A wide range of topics are available.

Classic Authors - This site, also known as Great Literature Online, offers dozens of free, HTML-formatted classic books.

Free Classic Books - This library offers readers free online access to a selection of literary classics.

Classic Bookshelf - Classic Bookshelf uses a Java applet to allow users to fully customize the ebooks they're reading, which makes this a nice place to read classic books online.

Classic Reader - Classic Reader provides more than 3,000 classic books, plays and short stories. Users can read books, print books and add their own annotations.

Daily Lit - You can read free books via email or RSS on Daily Lit. Offerings include classic books and contemporary works and it can all be delivered to your personal computer or mobile device.

Ebook Lobby - Ebook Lobby is flush with free nonfiction books. Categories include art, business, computing and education.
Fiction.us - This site is a great place to find full-length novels, plays, short stories, poetry, picture books and other free digital books.
Fictionwise - Although this site is primarily focused on selling ebooks, readers can download an impressive selection of free fiction and nonfiction 'sample' books.

FullBooks.com - This site offers thousands of free, unabridged books. Both fiction and nonfiction are available.

GetFreeBooks.com - This free ebook site has thousands of books on every topic imaginable. GetFreeBooks.com is a great place to find modern works by lesser-known authors.

Internet Archive - The Internet Archive, also known as Archive.org, is one of the web's largest sources for free media. It offers over 2.5 million free ebooks and electronic texts.

ManyBooks.net - 20,000+ free books are available through ManyBooks.net. Most books are designed to be enjoyed on an iPod, PDA or ebook reader.

Microsoft Reader - Get the free Microsoft e-reading device for access to more than 1,500 free books via direct download. Offerings include fiction, nonfiction and reference material.

Page By Page - Lovers of the classics will find hundreds of books to read on Page By Page. The site includes works by renowned authors like Dickens, Doyle, London and Poe.

Project Gutenberg - With more than 25,000 titles, Project Gutenberg is widely be considered the ultimate source for free books online. The site has tens of thousands of volunteers, which means that new books are constantly being added to Gutenberg's online catalog.

Public Bookshelf - This online library allows users to read romance novels and stories for free. Public Bookshelf offers both classics and modern works, all in the romance genre.

Public Literature - This site offers a fantastic collection of free books, plays and poetry. Modern and classic works are both available.

Questia - With more than 5,000 free books, including classics and rare works, Questia's online library is a must see for any reader.

The Literature Network - Designed for students, teachers and enthusiastic readers, this free literature library offers over 1,900 books, 3,000 short stories and hundreds of poems. Users can also access free author biographies and quizzes.

UPenn's Online Books Page - You can find more than 30,000 free books on the University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Page. Search books by author or title.

Free Education Books and Textbooks

Free Tech Books - This site offers a wide range of free computer science and programming textbooks, lecture notes and ebooks.

Open Book Project - This site, which is dedicated to the free and open dissemination of knowledge, is a great place to find free textbooks and other educational materials.

Textbook\Media - A wonderful selection of textbooks and educational materials are available for free download at Textbook Media. Students can get free access to these materials by choosing 'sponsored' books, which include brief 'study break' ads.

Textbook Revolt - Students fight back against the high cost of textbooks on this site by offering up their used books for free or renting them for a low cost.

Textbook Revolution - Textbook Revolution is one of the best sites on the web to find free textbooks and other educational materials.
Free Reference Books

Bartleby - Reference books on every topic imaginable, including literature, government, anatomy, mythology and religion.

Biblomania Reference - The Biblomania Reference Section contains a decent collection of dictionaries, thesauruses, books of quotations and other free reference materials.

Encyclopedia.com - Free access to information from the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Oxford University Press and the Columbia Encyclopedia.

Internet Public Library - This site provides an impressive collection of almanacs, dictionaries and encyclopedias.

Ref Desk - The Ref Desk is a fantastic place to find all sorts of free reference materials, including information on recent news and current events. One section of the site that is definitely worth checking out is the Encyclopedia Collection
Free Audio Books

Books Should Be Free - This site is a great place to find free fiction and nonfiction. Users can download plain text files and MP3 audio books files.

Free Classic Audio Books - A wonderful collection of free classics. All audio books are available in MP3 and in M4b formats for iTunes and iPods.

Gutenberg Audio - The Gutenberg Audio Book Project has a wonderful collection of audio books read by both humans and computer generated voices.

Internet Archive Audio - In addition to millions of free electronic texts, the Internet Archive offers over 6,000 audio books and poetry recordings for download.

Kiddie Records Weekly - Hundreds of free recordings of classic children's albums. Kiddie Records features golden age characters like Bugs Bunny, Howdy Doody and Walt Disney's Robin Hood.

Kids Audio Books - 200+ free audio books for kids in MP3 format. Most books are from the 40s and 50s.

Learn Out Loud - Learn Out Load is the Internet's largest directory of free audio learning resources. The site also offers educational videos and podcasts.

Librivox - There are nearly 2,000 free audio books available on this site. Librivox is attempting to make an audio recording of all of the books in the public domain, so new books are constantly being added.

Lit 2 Go - A nice collection of free stories and poems from the Florida Educational Technology Clearinghouse. Users can download MP3 files or play MP3 files on their computer and read along as they listen.

Literal Systems - A modest selection of free classics in audio format.

Naropa Poetics Audio Archives - The Naropa University Archive Project features more than 5,000 hours of poetry recordings.

Podio Books - Free serialized audio books that can be delivered to you on a schedule that you set up. More than 200 modern titles are currently available.

Poet Scoop - Poet Scoop offers hundreds of free MP3 recordings from spoken word artists. The site also includes videos of poets reading their work.

Simply Audio Books - This site offers free classic audio books. A new download is available every month.

Spoken Alexandria Project - This Creative Commons library provides free AAC, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 audio books. Classics and modern works are both available.

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