• Audible is the long time leader in audiobooks with over 35,000 audio books available (and yes if you click on the Audible link and buy something I will get some commission). Audible works on a credit system where one credit equals one download. Right now you can get a deal of $7.95 per one download per month. If you want convenient audio books right in your mp3 player this is worth checking out.
• Amazon is another source of audio books. You can find Amazon’s best sellers right here. Unlike Audible you buy a disk or cassette at Amazon for your audio book.
• LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain. ibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

• Simply Audiobooks offers unlimited rentals, books on tape and CD for sale, and downloadable audio books. They offer more than 22,000 titles and a variety of price plans.

• Archive.org offers a wealth of audio books including Gutenberg Audio Books which provides free audio books from Project Gutenberg (many read by computerized voices) may be downloaded here. t also has Audio Poetry where you can listen to poems by well known poets read aloud. These free poetry recordings were uploaded by Internet Archive users.

And one more for luck. iTunes has audiobooks starting at just $2.95 per title, a number of them available exclusively at the iTunes Store.

If you would like a good bittorent client for downloading via BitTorrent. You can get free,
open source bittorrent software called uTorrent at
http://www.utorrent.com/

You can use this software to download files that have been set up
for file sharing via bittorrent.

A long list of other bittorrent applications is available at
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-bittorrent-software

Many of the files you will find on these search engines
are pirated and not legal for downloading in most countries.
You should be aware that the recording industry will sometimes
set up dummy files and track people who are sharing their files.
This can lead to legal action.

SO DON’T STEAL MEDIA PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT!!!

You should also be able to find media that is protected by
a Creative Commons license which is legal for sharing, reuse
and remixing if the content author so designates. These are often
marked with a CC instead of “All Rights Restricted”.

These kind of files can be found at sites like Legaltorrents.com.

DRM is about technologically removing your fair use rights so they can sell them back to people dumb enough to buy them. AnyDVD HD allows you to do two things that are both quite legal, make a personal backup of an HD-DVD and play it on the machines you want to. You don’t have to buy a new HD TV, cables, amp and the rest just to watch the movies you legally purchased any more.

AnyDVD is a must have utility. I simply say get it. If you have a DVD burner, or have a thing for movies, especially foreign ones, this handy utility will make life easy again.
AnyDVD works in the background to automatically remove the copy
protection of a DVD movie as soon as it’s inserted into the drive,
allowing you then to backup the movie using a DVD backup tool
such as CloneDVD and CloneDVD mobile. You can also remove the RPC region code, thereby making the movie region free and viewable
on any DVD player and with any DVD player software.

The exact feature list of AnyDVD HD is that of AnyDVD plus AACS removal, removal of artificial HDCP/HDMI restrictions, playback on the players of your choice, and most importantly it lets you skip those damn ads they inflict on you at the beginning of the movies.  You can also rip the movies for backup purposes, remaster them with a new ‘magic file’, and tweak to your heart’s content.

AnyDVD is still on my very short list of must have products. They update it regularly, it works without any problems, and just does what it says.  The software lists for $49 with an extra $30 for HD totaling, $79.00 but there is a free 21-day trial here, or you can just buy it here. I think that the complete bundle for $119 is the best deal. Worth every cent.

And if you buy it from one of these links I will get a bit of commission.  So if you like it, please give one of my purchase links a try.

USENET is made up of discussion groups called newsgroups on just
about every topic you can imagine. These groups share more than
conversation, they share media files. Video, audio, pictures and
many other forms of media are posted daily into these groups.
The media filesare called binaries. I don’t know why their called
binaries, but that’s what they call them.

To get at the media on the USENET, you need a search engine that
allows you to search the binary files and discover which group has
them posted. I recommend http://yabse.com (Yet Another Binary
Search Engine)

Once you have found a file you want to get at you need a tool
to grab the file and download it. GrabIt is a free application
that finds pictures, movies, MP3 files, software and games on
Usenet news servers. You can find GrabIt at http://shemes.com.

Your internet provider probably provides access to newsgroups, so
I suggest starting there for the list of newsgroups you can access.

You may want to use a service that specializes in USENET access
if you want to get at older posts to USENET. Most Internet
service providers only keep a small amount of USENET around
for you to access.

You can use a service like Giganews.com if you want to get at
older postings. They keep a copy of the USENET binary postings
going back 120 days. They offer a free 3 day trial. Find them
at http://giganews.com

You will also need a couple of other tools to really make
full use of the binary library on USENET. There is a limit
to the file size that can be posted on USENET so files are
broken up into pieces and may need to be repaired if parts are
missing.

To reassemble the pieces you can use WinRAR from
http://www.rarlab.com/

If the files have problems, they can be repaired using
a tool called Quickpar which you can find at
http://www.quickpar.org.uk/

Hope you enjoy the treasure you will find on USENET.

Stickam is one of my favorite streaming video hosting sites. You can sign up for free and get your own streaming video channel. You will need a digital video camera to capture your streaming video, but then Stickam will stream your video for you.

The idea for Stickam (pronounced Stick-cam) is simple: Without having to pay a dime or install any sketchy software, you can fire it up and start a streaming video. All you need is a decent broadband connection and, of course, a webcam. More audacious souls “go live” — Stickam lingo for enabling your webcam. A small window will appear in your browser with a video of you — What else? — staring at a video of you in your browser.

uStream is a another streaming video hosting service. It’s video streaming is very similar to Stickam and it allows you to stream video directly from your site.

The majority of streaming video on the Net is coming right from the same web server that hosts the web site itself. The ability to stream video does not require that your ISP have either a Real Video or Windows Media video server. If they have one, fine. If they don’t, you can still stream video from your web server without any additional cost.

storage size (in megabytes) = length (in seconds) · bit rate (in kbit/s) / 8,388.608
(since 1 megabyte = 8 * 1,048,576 bits = 8,388.608 kilobits)

Real world example:

One hour of video encoded at 300 kbit/s (this is a typical broadband video for 2005 and it’s usually encoded in a 320×240 pixels window size) will be:

(3,600 s · 300 kbit/s) / 8,388.608 = 128.7 MiB of storage

If the file is stored on a server for on-demand streaming. If this stream is viewed by 1,000 people using a Unicast protocol, you would need

300 kbit/s · 1,000 = 300,000 kbit/s = 300 Mbit/s of bandwidth

• Streamhoster.com
• Rackspace.com
• Upstreamnetworks.com
• Advecton.net
• Powerstream.com