About.com

There are websites I keep going to over and over.  One of those sites is About.com.  No matter what I´m searching for, the About websites always show up and are usually the most helpful ones.  For example, I use their Spanish page for grammar explanations.  I also signed up for the email word of the day.  They also cover a lot of other languages, so check it out.

Each area - whether languages, travel, health, cooking, computers, history, etc.- is run by a specialist in that area.  The sites are constantly updated with new articles, discussions, newsletters, blog entries, and emails.  You can find quality daily or weekly email courses covering tons of topics at About U.

Watch Movies Online

I love watching movies on my laptop, but hate downloading the movies to my harddrive. It´s slow and takes up a lot of space on your disk... besides the whole "being illegal" thing. Luckily there are a lot of sites that let you stream movies directly from the Internet without any sort of downloading. Sites that I´ve mentioned before for watching TV also have movies, but the best source for movies I´ve found so far is Watch Movies.


The site has nearly every movie you´ve ever wanted to watch. For most of the movies there are different links to try with user ratings. The quality of course varies and can be anywhere from perfect to pixelated with chinese subtitles. But for me, at least, it still beats downloading.

LibriVox Free Audiobooks

A really cool site a friend showed me a while back is LibriVox.  If you´re at all interested in audio books, you have to check it out.  Volunteers record public domain books that you can download for free.  You can also volunteer to read and record for others to download. 

Right now they have nearly 10,000 audio clips in English and of those 3000 are complete books.  Through the advanced search you can also find hundreds of books and articles in different languages.

Schon vor Längerem hat mir jemand LibriVox gezeigt, eine Internetseite auf der man kostenlos Unmengen von Hoerbüchern herunterladen kann.  Obwohl die meisten der tausenden Bücher und Artikel auf English sind, gibt es auch einige auf Deutsch und in anderen Sprachen.  Man kann sich auch freiwillig als Vorleser anmelden und mithelfen.

Use Your Local Library

Unfortunately, it's already the last day of Easter break and I'm definitely not ready to go back to school/work.  But in the meantime, I want to share something that I'm surprised people (including myself) don't use more: public libraries.  It's like a Borders with free books, music, and movies.  If you're lucky, you can find anything a nerdy heart desires, from manga to computer games to foreign language software.  They don't have what you want at a library close to you?  Most deliver free to your house.

The Orange County Library Systems in Orlando and surrounding area has tons to offer, and other libraries aren't any different.  They have really interesting free classes, either in person or online.  The selection is huge, and some of them, like Photoshop and Microsoft Access, are expensive if you take them at other places.  Other classes include help with taxes, job searching, computer repair, web design, and networking.  In Orlando and other areas classes are offered in Spanish and even in Hatian Creole.

A new page I came across today deals with bookclubs.  Libraries offer book clubs in English and Spanish, but what I never realized is that they have online bookclubs.  For example, OCLS will send you a few pages of a book everyday by email.  They have a new book every week.  Apart from that they have guides for creating your own bookclubs and the option to borrow "bundles" of books for your whole group.

Although libraries are moving more and more online with email bookclubs, online classes, and downloadable ebooks and audio books, it's definitely worth checking out the programs they offer at the library.