samsung galaxy apps

Have you ever thought of what is the differences between Sleep and Hibernate options provided by Windows shutdown function? Both commands provide a easy and quick way to leave your computer in existing last state and come back to work on it at exactly the same state later without waiting too long to system to restore itself. However, fundamentally there are significant different between them that allows users to easily choose whether they should use Sleep or Hibernate.

Sleep is commonly known as Standby in Windows system or S3 in ACPI. In Sleep mode, the power supply to non-essential and non-critical component is withheld, and most system operation is shutdown and stopped. All data in physical memory (RAM module) is still kept in internal memory, and whole system is place in stand-by mode, which can be woke up and used almost immediately. In Sleep mode, the power load reduce considerably, saving a lot of energy. However, the power must not be cut off, and must be continue to supply to the computer. Once out of power, the system will have to start again just like a newly boot computer just started from power off state.

Windows Vista has enhanced sleep mode so that on notebook computer, sleeping computer will automatically hibernate when battery power level is low. It also has built-in Hybrid Sleep mode which ensure that system state is preserved when there is power lost.

Hibernate, or S4 in ACPI, meanwhile will save the data in physical memory to hard disk drive (HDD), and then power off the computer. In Hibernate mode, a file named hiberfil.sys which has the same file size as the amount of system memory will be created on the local disk. When user wants to use the computer again, the computer will boot up and load back the state at the last hibernation. The advantage of Hibernation mode is that no power is wasted for maximum saving of power. In Hibernation dormancy, no electricity is consumed by system. Beside, restore from Hibernate is generally faster than computer reboot, and is totally different from fresh start, as users can return to the exact state of last hibernation with all programs running and documents opened intact, instead of empty desktop. The disadvantage of Hibernate is that after a period of time, there may have fragmentation of file. Users will need to defragment the volume that stores the hibernation file frequently.

The idea of Google Books was first conceived in 2002 when a small group of Google programmers started pondering the question of how many man hours it would take to scan every single book ever written.    We still don’t know the true answer to this question although just eight years from the idea conception there are now over 10 million books catalogued in their database.

While the first scan was done manually on a 300 page book and took 40 minutes to process,Google now use cameras capable of scanning at a rate of 1,000 pages an hour and also work with 20,000 publisher partners who provide content directly.  They have also been able to provide over 1 million books that can be read in full from cover to cover;these unrestricted works are either books that have fallen out of copyright or have been provided with publishers express permission.

As well as simply scanning the books,Google performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the pages,thereby turning them in to pure text which can be entered in to their database.  As a result when you do a Google Search you are now not only returned results from relevant websites but also your search terms are checked against a library encompassing millions of books and appropriate matches are suggested for further reading.

The integration in to the Google Search engine means you may have already inadvertently stumbled across Google Books but if you haven’t and are eager to explore then the Google Books can be found by visiting the site http://books.google.co.uk/  directly.   Being a Google service,it almost goes without saying that the service is completely free of charge and is instead paid for via a minimal number of sponsored links which are in no way intrusive or detrimental to the service.

From the Google Books site you can perform searches,add books to your virtual library or organise your collection in a logical manner.  Searching for a book and then subsequently clicking on it opens an interface which allows you to either view the directly scanned pages from the book or in some instances a ‘plain text’ version.  This plain text can then be copied and passed to another application or simply printed out for reading offline.

Books still under copyright enjoy the protection of a variety of access limitations and security measures which limit the number of viewable pages making the experience somewhat akin to being able to flick through the first couple of pages in a library or bookshop.   Despite this protection there have rather predictably been a number of fairly major lawsuits issued by individuals and publishers alike;some with legitimate grievances and others just seeking money or publicity.

Possibly the most notable case was between The Authors Guild,the publishing industry and Google which resulted in Google agreeing to a settlement on October 28,2008.  This would see them pay a total $125 million not only to pay the court costs of the plaintiffs but also create a Book Rights Registry which will collect and disburse revenue generated by all third party sites such as Google which provide content based on the content of books covered by the agreement.

These issues aside,on the whole I am amazed that again this relatively new company have been able to offer such an incredible gift to the world.  With Google Books we have the potential to preserve centuries of human literacy work for generations to come as well as promoting the spread and availability of knowledge amongst all groups and all classes of people.

I’ve been using an Android-powered HTC Eris from Verizon for over a month now, and it’s been quite an interesting experience. I’ve wanted to check out an Android-powered smartphone for a while now, and honestly, I was dead convinced that after using one, I would hate Symbian forever. While that’s obviously not true, I have come across several things that Android completely dominates Symbian on, and wanted to share them with you.

1. Change the defaults – One of the cool things about smartphones is the abundance of 3rd party applications, including web browsers, messaging applications, and the like. Unfortunately, in Symbian, there’s no way to set these 3rd party applications as the default for certain actions. This is annoying, for instance, if you prefer to use Opera Mobile as your web browser,  instead of the default one. Any link you click on the phone will automatically open in the default browser, no matter what. With Android, you can change the defaults for anything, including the browser and messaging quite easily, with no hacking required.

2. Browsing – the default web browser on Android is noticeably faster than the Symbian one, specifically for large websites. It’s also much smoother to use, and seems to be more accurate when clicking links. The Android browser also offers visual bookmarks, which is handy to get a peek at each webpage, and these are updated when you open them, too.

3. Multiple homescreens – No Symbian-powered smartphone currently offers more than a single customized homescreen, though this is supported in future versions. The Samsung i8910 OmniaHD actually offers 3 ‘panels’ in its TouchWiz UI, but no other Symbian-powered smartphone offers multiple customized homescreens. On the HTC Eris, I have 3 with the native homescreen, or 7 with the HTC SenseUI homescreen. This is awesome and gives me more room for widgets and shortcuts to contacts or applications. The HTC SenseUI even allows me to save my homescreen setups as ‘scenes’ that I can quickly switch between – for home and work, for instance. To be quite honest, though, 7 homescreens is absolutely ridiculous, and I have trouble remembering what’s on each one. 3 is much more manageable and realistic, in my opinion. Both are better than the single option we have with Symbian^1. It should be noted that Symbian^3, which should be on devices later this year, will support multiple homescreens, so there’s some improvement being made. (the white bar above ‘phone’ indicates the current homescreen in the photo here).

4. Integration – this is the big one that Symbian really needs to get on board with, specifically on Nokia’s handsets. When I got my HTC Eris, part of the initial setup process asked if I had a Google account, and if I wanted to login with it. I did so once, and magically, all my Google Mail, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, and Google Talk info was copied down to the device. Others have reported that when they logged in with their Google account on a different Android device, their apps were downloaded, too. On my Nokia N97, I have to separately download, install, or otherwise setup my Ovi Mail, Ovi Contacts, Ovi Calendar, and Ovi Chat accounts, and nothing from the Ovi Store is downloaded, no matter how many times I change devices. I also have to repeatedly login to these services, whereas on Android, my account is always logged in. It’s an incredibly seamless experience, and even better is that it carries over into the browser. When I launch the browser, it automatically logs me into Google there, so I can browse as me, too. The PIM functions also sync automatically in the background on my HTC Eris – no need to download, sign, and install Swim like I do on my N97.

5. Notifications – the top of the display on Android devices is for notifications. In a small strip, you can easily see the time, battery level, signal strength, system indicators (GPS, WiFi, etc), and a set number of application notifications. On Symbian, this same area takes up twice as many pixels and offers a fraction of the information. This notifications feature is perhaps the most convenient part of Android, and one that I feel is overlooked. On every other platform, new messages, emails, etc pop up in your face and you pretty much have to do something with them. With Android, these notifications are tucked out of the way in the notification bar until you pull it down to do something with them. This allows you to manage things on your terms, rather than interrupting your workflow. There is also a convenient ‘Clear Notifications’ button to quickly dismiss everything.

6. Applications – the App Market on my Android phone allows me to browse by popularity or date added, neither of which are available on the Ovi Store (Update: this feature is now available in the Ovi Store). It also has a usable search function that actually returns relevant results, which the Ovi Store search function doesn’t always do. While browsing the App Market on Android, I can click to install an app, and then continue browsing while that application is downloaded and installed in the background. I’m also notified when there are updates available for the applications I have installed, something Symbian doesn’t do (yet), but should.

7. Onscreen keyboards – the onscreen keyboards on Android were clearly designed for touch – specifically the portrait QWERTY. Compare below, and you can easily see why it’s actually usable, compared to the one stuck on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

Also, the onscreen keyboards on the HTC Eris are contextual – if I’m in the browser, I’ll have quick access to a ‘.com’ button and the backslash or @ sign. If I’m texting, those shortcuts won’t be there. On Symbian, all the keyboards are the same, and none of them have handy shortcuts like that to make my life easier.

8. Notification LED – on my HTC Eris, there is a small LED at the top right of the front of the phone, above the display. This is a multicolor LED, and developers can activate different colors for different things. I can also choose which events prompt the LED to flash and for how long. A great example of how useful this is comes with Handcent SMS, a replacement app for messaging. Handcent SMS allows me to setup unique notifications for various contacts, including the color of the notification LED. I could, for instance, set it so that when Mrs. Guru texts me, the notification flashes pink. When my brother texts me, however, it might flash blue, and when I get a twitter notification, it might flash green. This is something that Symbian needs really bad, as I firmly believe that visual notifications on most other platforms is seriously underutilized.

9. Platform Updates – this is a two-part point. For one, any updates to Android devices are delivered over-the-air, period. There is no need to find a Windows-powered PC or any of that – it’s all done over-the-air. Symbian devices have gotten better about this, but both Nokia and Samsung continue to release firmware updates through their PC-only applications, which is lame. The second part is actual platform upgrades. When you buy a Symbian-powered smartphone, you get whatever version it comes with – S60v3, S60v3 Feature Pack 2, S60v5, etc, and that’s all you get. Most Android-powered smartphones shipped with either v1.5 or v1.6 pre-installed, and nearly all of them have been officially slated for the newer v2.0+ upgrade. This is a big deal, and now that the Symbian source is free and open source, I wonder if we’ll start to see opportunities to update later handsets like the N97 Mini to Symbian^2.

10. Sell In The U.S. – as my friend Zach at KnowYourMobile.com pointed out to me, Android does a much better job of getting along with the 4 major carriers in the U.S. That may not seem like a big deal, but when you consider that in the U.S., the vast majority of phones are sold through carrier subsidies, that’s a big deal. Symbian has suffered in the U.S. as neither Nokia, Samsung, LG, or any other manufacturer has been able to really get any major carrier on board with the Symbian platform. To be fair, Nokia has done a decent job, lately, but not without letting the carrier rape the device with countless ‘customizations’ that strip out functionality and freedom. Android, on the other hand, usually launches with little to no customization from the carrier, save for a few preloaded apps such as navigation and whatnot. I’m definitely hoping that Symbian manufacturers are able to grow a backbone soon to get us cool smartphones without the carrier raping.

Welcome to the official XDANDROID AOSP thread which is dedicated to getting Android running on our beloved HTC devices. 

Phhusson: has dedicated most of his time helping users and updating kernel to run Eclair and his work for other msm7k devices. However phhusson is not alone as there are also other members working on this. You can find some of them on http://www.htc-linux.org. I've listed some of the developers i know of that currently are working on and they deserve credits and thanks. We also have to note that before this work done there was quite a substantial number of people starting working on linux for our devices. Without them we may not be where we are today. So respect and credits to everyone involved in working on linux kernel for msm devices. 

I am not responsible for any damages or problems your device encounters. The build is relatively safe and shouldn't cause any problems.

This tutorial will guide you to install Android on the following HTC Windows Mobile Devices, if your device is not in this list, do not worry, we will soon have a tutorial for you too.

Wing Linux’s Android version is designed to be run directly from your storage card — no need for repartitioning or complex installation.

Download the Wing-Linux’s Android Cab file here.

1) Download the latest Wing Linux Zip file and unzip it

2) Install the wing-linux-[version]-rootfs.cab file to your phone (either directly or using

ActiveSync). Ensure you install it to Storage Card (not internal memory) — it won’t run

anywhere else.

3) Now, install the .cab file for your phone. Without this, Wing Linux will not work. Remember

to install it to storage card as well.

4) Click on Start -> Programs -> Wing Linux to start

5) Follow the on screen instructions. First bootup takes a long time — please

be patient.

If you encounter screen problems, skip to the “Troubleshooting” section below.

Once your system is booted, you can follow the section “Logging in Remotely” to connect

to it via SSH.

Installation to a partition has a speed advantage over the normalinstallation method,

but requires more work to set up and maintain.

For these steps, you will need to be using Linux on your computer and have an SD

card reader. You can use the WM5Storage program on your phone to turn your phone

into a mass storage device, but I don’t recommend this method as it’s much slower

than using the SD card directly.

1) Begin by partitioning your SD card on your Linux computer. I recommend the following

scheme:

Partition 1: VFAT (fat32) partition covering most of your SD card

Partition 2: Linux (ext3) partition at least 250mb in size

2) Place your SD card back into your phone and follow all steps in the “Installation”

section above through step 3 to install Wing Linux onto your fat32 partition

3) Remove your SD card again and attach it to your computer. Mount both the fat32

and ext3 partitions.

4) As root, extract the rootfs.tar.gz file (located in the linux/ directory on your

vfat partition) to your ext3 partition. For example, if your vfat partition is

/media/disk and your ext3 partition is /media/disk-1, do the following:

cd /media/disk-1

sudo tar -xzvf /media/disk/linux/rootfs.tar.gz

5) Unmount both partitions and detach the SD card from your computer, reinstalling

it back into your device.

6) Delete the file “/Storage Card/linux/rootfs.img.status” — this will bypass the

installation program that normally installs Wing Linux to your vfat partition.

7) Click on Start -> Programs -> Wing Linux to start Wing Linux

 Wing Linux will start booting from your partition.

and configure your usb0 device (from Linux) as follows:

# sudo ifconfig usb0 10.100.0.2 up

Ubuntu users may have to run this several times before it takes effect.

Now you can ssh into the phone as follows:

# ssh root@10.100.0.1

The password is “wing”.

A: Normally, the video settings for your board configuration should be detected and used   automatically.  If this fails, the display could be white and non-responsive.

In this case, please submit the contents of “/Storage Card/linux/dispdump.txt”   to a new thread on the Wing Linux forums (see http://wing-linux.sf.net) along with   an account of all steps you took to start Wing Linux.  Include as detailed a description   as possible as to what you saw on the screen throughout the whole startup process.  This   will greatly help us debug the problem.

Note that if you’re attempting to run Wing Linux on a device that isn’t supported, there’s   no guarantee that anything will work, but if we have this information, we can try and get   your device supported.  Be sure to try all board configurations before giving up though,   as one configuration may work better than another.

So, you’ve got yourself an eBook reader, smartphone, tablet, or other portable device and you want to put some eBooks on it to take with you. There are many options for obtaining free eBooks as well as purchasing, borrowing, or even renting eBooks.

We’ve listed some sites that allow you to download free eBooks directly or be notified when eBooks are available for free or for a discounted price on popular eBook sites. If you can’t find the eBooks you want on the free sites, there are several sites that allow you to purchase current, best-selling  eBooks singly or through a monthly service. There are even special sites for lending and borrowing Kindle and Nook books with other readers across the U.S. We’ve also listed a couple of sites dedicated to searching for PDF eBooks, documents, etc.

We’ve previously shown you how to find thousands of free eBooks online using sites such as Project Gutenberg, ManyBooks.net, DailyLit, and FeedBooks. You can even find free eBooks on Amazon. We’ve listed additional sources for free eBooks here.

The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of free fiction, popular books, children’s books, historical texts and academic books.

Free-eBooks.net offers unlimited free access to eBooks in HTML format and access to five eBooks each month in PDF and/or TXT format. Download books from all-new, rising authors and independent writers. Many categories of fiction and non-fiction books are available. If you’re a writer, you can also submit an eBook.

VIP memberships are available that provide unlimited access to PDF and TXT formats, as well as the HTML format. As a VIP member, you can also download unlimited books in the MobiPocket and ePub formats, get first access to new books, priority customer service, and storage space for your favorite books. You can pay $7.95 monthly (renews automatically), pay $39.97 for a year, or currently (as of the writing of this article) buy three years for the price of 40% off two years, $49.97.

eReaderIQ is a free service that provides price drop alerts for Amazon Kindle books and watches your favorite titles to let you know when they are available for Kindle. You can also view a regularly updated list of all non-public domain freebies on Amazon.com and sign up to be notified by email when a new free book is released.

eReaderIQ also offers a superior search engine that allows you to search the Kindle Store by genre and keyword, and define the price range, reader age, language, and more.

Hundred Zeros is a collection of best-selling eBooks that are currently free on Amazon. You can download and read any of these books on your computer, mobile phone, tablet, Kindle or inside your favorite web browser. The list is updated every hour.

BookBub is a service that keeps you updated on great book deals. They notify you about free or deeply discounted books, sometimes discounted as much as 90% off the original price. Only high-quality content is listed, books that are best-sellers, from a top-tier publisher, or have received top reviews and ratings from critics and readers. You can specify which categories you want to get notified about so you won’t get emails about deals you don’t want.

NOTE: The deals you receive from BookBub are only available for a limited time, so be sure to act quickly.

Free Par-TAY offers links to free, quality eBooks from many different genres. The free eBooks on their site can be downloaded on specific dates posted on the site. You can also sign up for their newsletter to be notified of which eBooks are going to be available for free. Signing up for the newsletter automatically enters you in a drawing to win $100 in Amazon Gift Cards and in a drawing for a new Kindle.

Freebooksy posts a free eBook at least once a day. The eBooks cover multiple genres, so everyone can download something they like. The eBooks are free for at least the day they are posted, and sometimes for a few days beyond that. The dates the eBooks are available for free are posted.

Getting free eBooks is great, but sometimes you can’t find the book you really want for free. There are many ways to purchase, or even rent, current, best-selling eBooks. We list some of the more popular sites for buying and renting eBooks here, some of which also offer monthly subscription services.

The Amazon Kindle Store offers over one million eBooks, including new releases and New York Times bestsellers. You can read the first chapter of most books so you can decide if you want to buy the book. As mentioned earlier in this article, there are also many free eBooks available on Amazon, including popular classics.

Of course, you can buy the Kindle devices on Amazon, but you don’t need a special Kindle device to read Kindle books. Free Kindle apps are available for every major smartphone, tablet, and computer. Once you buy a Kindle book, you can read it on any device that has the Kindle app installed. Using Amazon’s Whispersync technology, you can automatically save and synchronize your furthest page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights in your Kindle books across all your devices. That means you can start reading a book on one device, and pick up where you left off on another device.

Some libraries offer a service that allows you to check out eBooks, and you can have them delivered wirelessly to your Kindle app.

The Nook Book Store by Barnes & Noble offers something very similar to the Amazon Kindle Store. You can purchase eBooks for Nook devices and free Nook software for mobile systems and computers such as Android, iPhone, iPad, PC, and Mac. You can also sync books you are currently reading across devices, just like Kindle books.

Fictionwise.com is committed to providing the Internet’s most comprehensive collection of fiction and nonfiction in many popular eBook formats. They offer award-winning and high quality eBooks by top authors in all the major genres and are working towards making Fictionwise the most technically advanced eBook website, including providing a sophisticated search and sorting options.

EBooks.com offers a large range of eBooks in every subject category in multiple formats for your Apple or Android device, Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, etc., so there’s something available for everyone. The software required to read books from eBooks.com is free. You can search for eBooks by subject, title, or author, or use the full-text search to search by keyword.

If you want to find out when new eBooks become available in your areas of interest, you can sign up to receive free email alerts.

EReader.com offers eBooks that are carefully prepared to maximize the reading experience. They focus on delivering quality eBooks for a wide range of mobile devices. Their eReader software is free for all of their supported platforms and devices.

The Google Play Book Store offers millions of books to choose from in every imaginable category for reading on Android smartphones or tablets, iPhones, and iPads. You can also choose to download your purchased books as ePub or PDF files for use on other eReaders or for reading on your computer.

Books purchased from Google Play are stored in the digital cloud, which means you can access them from any compatible device, whenever and wherever you want. You can start reading a book on one device, continue reading it on a different device, and maybe even finish it on a third device, as long as each device has an internet connection.

Powell’s Books offers competitively priced Google eBooks, Adobe Digital Editions, and DRM-Free PDFs for reading on your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android phones and tablets, your computer, and a variety of other eReader devices.

There are online services available that make it easy to lend and borrow Kindle and Nook books. You can loan any Kindle book that has lending enabled (not all books are lendable) to one other user for 14 days. At the end of the loan period, the title is automatically transferred back to your Kindle. While the book is out on loan, you are not able to read the book. For more information on lending and borrowing Kindle books, see the Amazon page about lending Kindle books. You can also lend out your Nook books and borrow other users’ Nook books. For both services, any book you own can only be loaned once.

You may not find every book you want to read, but you can borrow a wide selection of books from these websites.

The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library allows you to choose from over 145,000 titles to borrow for free as frequently as a book a month, if you own a Kindle device and you have an Amazon Prime membership. There are no due dates on borrowed books. Available titles include all seven Harry Potter books and over 100 current and former New York Times bestsellers.

NOTE: This only works with the Kindle devices, not with the free Kindle apps on other devices.

Amazon also offers a Kindle Textbook Rental service that allows you to save up to 80% off the list price of the print textbook. You can choose any length of time to rent the book from 30 days up to 360 days. You only pay for the exact time you need the book. Extend your rental time or decide to convert the rental to a purchase. You don’t need a Kindle device to rent textbooks. You can rent and read the textbooks on a PC, Mac, Kindle, or a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet. If you make notes or add highlights in the textbook, they are accessible to you at anytime, even after the rental expires, at kindle.amazon.com.

Now you can check out library books as eBooks without ever setting foot in a library. TheLibrary To Go website mentioned here is for libraries in the Northern California area. Go to the website for a library near you to find out if they offer eBook lending and how to borrow eBooks from them.

Library To Go uses the Adobe Digital Editions software for eBooks and OverDrive Media Console for audiobooks. You can borrow eBooks in Kindle format (for U.S. libraries), EPUB, and PDF. Kindle books can be delivered to both Kindle devices and Kindle reading apps on other devices. EPUB eBooks have “reflowable” text that fits any screen, so they are good on most mobile devices. PDF eBooks have fixed text, but you can zoom in on the text to create a large-print eBook.

Library To Go allows you to check out up to three titles and your cart will hold up to 15 titles. This differs, depending on the library. For example, the Ventura County Library in California (powered by OverDrive Media Console) allows you to check out up to five titles and your cart will hold up to seven titles. The lending period can vary from title to title. Titles are generally removed from your cart after 30 minutes so that other users can have the chance to check them out.

On the Library To Go site, you can place up to four titles on hold at one time. They send you an email when a title becomes available. You have five days to check out your hold after we email you notification that it is available. On the Ventura County Library site, you can place up to five titles on hold at one time and you have four days to check out the books on hold once they become available.

NOTE: Use the OverDrive service to find a public library in your area that allows you to check out books on your eReader. This is a relatively new service, so not all libraries are connected, yet. Check both the OverDrive site and your local library’s website to see if eBook rentals are available at your library. Also, be sure to check out the eBook lending policies for your local library.

Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published. Once registered on the Open Library site, you can borrow up to five eBooks for two weeks each from the growing collection of mainly 20th century titles available now. Each title in the library can be borrowed by one user at one time and can be read in a web browser, or in Adobe Digital Editions, as a PDF or ePub.

eBookFling makes it easy for readers across the U.S. to borrow and share their Kindle and Nook eBooks. Earn credits by lending your eBooks, and use those credits to borrow eBooks from other users. The eBooks are automatically returned in 14 days. If you don’t want to lend an eBook, you can pay to borrow one.

Lendle allows you to lend and borrow Kindle books easily for free. You can lend Kindle books to people you know through Amazon, but Lendle also allows you to lend and borrow Kindle books with any U.S. Amazon Kindle users. Earn Amazon gift cards when you lend your Kindle books. A Kindle device is not required; Lendle works with the free Kindle apps for the PC and Mac computers, as well as mobile devices such iPad, iPhone, Android, and other popular devices.

Lendle pays all users a small credit for every book they loan through Lendle. The price we pay for each book varies based on the price, demand, and supply of that book. Once you’ve loaned out a book, Lendle waits the full 21 day loan period (seven days for the borrower to accept, and then 14 days for the loan) before crediting the lend. Once you reach $10 in credits, Lendle pays out a $10 Amazon gift card. The gift cards are paid in bulk, twice a month.

BookLending.com is a website that matches lenders and borrowers of Kindle eBooks.  To participate in lending and borrowing Kindle books, you must first register as a user on the site or connect using Facebook Connect. Registering on BookLending.com creates a profile, which you can access from the top, right corner of the screen. Your profile page allows you to review the status of your loan offers and requests, initiate loans, and delete loan offers and borrow requests.

The following web pages contain search engines specifically used to find free PDF eBooks, articles, documents, and almost any kind information stored in PDF format.

PDFGeni is a dedicated search engine for finding PDF eBooks, manuals, catalogs, data sheets, forms, and documents you can download and save. You can also preview the PDF files you find. Either search from the website directly or install the provided plugin (see the link in the upper, right corner of the search page) to add PDFGeni to the Firefox search bar.

You do not need to sign up to use the PDFGeni search engine.

PDF Search Engine is another easy-to-use search tool for finding PDF eBooks and other PDF files. Sometimes the results give a direct PDF link. But, in other cases, you might need to download a torrent using a torrent client.

If you use an RSS reader to stay up-to-date on your favorite websites, you can also keep current on the availability of free eBooks with the following RSS and Twitter feeds.

With a Windows computer there are several maintenance tasks you should run on a regular basis, though most of us forget. Here’s how to automate the most important maintenance tasks in XP, Vista & Windows 7 and keep your PC running like new.

We’ll take a look at automating some of the most common tasks, and while it takes a bit of time to set each one up, once you do you’ll have peace of mind knowing your system is clean and up to date.

If you want to make sure you have plenty of space on your hard drive, and get rid of old files you no longer need, you can schedule Disk Cleanup to run in Windows 7 or Vista, which gets rid of plenty of temporary files and other stuff that doesn’t need to be around anymore.

You can setup Disk Cleanup in XP as well as a Scheduled Task. The process is easy following the Scheduled Task Wizard in XP.

If you really want to keep your system automated, however, you can setup the freeware CCleaner tool to automatically run every night, which will clean up more than just the regular temporary files—CCleaner can even clear out your browser history, applications caches, and more.

Note: you’ll want to make sure that you don’t select any toolbars during CCleaner installation, or get the slim download from the optional downloads section.

The most important task Windows users need to do is make sure your data is backed up—that way, no matter what happens to your PC, you can always get to your files, even from another PC. If your PC is completely dead, you’ll be able to restore those files onto your new computer and get right back to whatever you were doing.

Windows 7 includes an easy-to-use, wizard-driven Backup & Restore utility in all versions, which includes creating a system image. For more on which files to backup, check out The Geek’s guide to What Files you Should Backup on Your Windows PC.

The Backup & Restore utility included in Windows 7 allows you to set a schedule from daily, weekly, or monthly. The choice is up to you, but if you backup on a regular basis, you’ll be glad you did.

If you have Windows Home Server, backing up your computers is very easy to configure and automate. You can set it to backup on a regular schedule and also have WHS wake up your machine to back it up at night.

If you want to be really thorough with in your backup strategy, having redundant backups onsite and offsite is a good thing. There’s plenty of commercial backup services, like Mozyand Carbonite. They both work the same way, pushing your data up to their servers and making it available for download from another PC, or allowing you to restore individual files that you might have deleted.

The cool thing with Vista and Windows 7 is that Disk Defragmenter is scheduled to run by default at 1 AM every Wednesday, so it’s something you no longer have to deal with. You can customize the defragmenter schedule if you want, but there’s probably no reason to change it.

If you’re still on Windows XP you can get the same feature by creating your own Windows 7 style auto defrag using Task Scheduler. There’s no reason to have to remember to do it manually, and really no reason to waste money on a commercial defrag utility that does it automatically when you can set it up yourself.

If you’ve got multiple hard drives in your XP machine, you can also setup a batch file that will defragment multiple hard drives at once.

The chkdsk.exe utility in Windows allows you to scan your hard drive for errors and fix them as well, and this task can be automated with the command-line and Task Scheduler as well, though it’s going to require rebooting your PC in order for it to work, so it’s probably best to just trigger this one manually every so often.

If you do want to schedule it to run automatically, you can simply create a new Task Scheduler job that runs chkdsk.exe with the parameters from our guide to check disk.

Then go to the Actions tab of the job in Task Scheduler, and add another action to run after the chkdsk command, and specify shutdown as the command. This will run the chkdsk command, and then run a shutdown afterwards. Make sure to use /R as the argument so that Windows will reboot and run chkdsk, and not just shut down.

You may also want to check the box to make sure that Windows doesn’t reboot you while you’re doing something. You can head to the Conditions tab, and make it only start if the PC has been idle for a while.

Note: Windows will automatically detect when your drive has a lot of problems and prompt you to check the disk, but that doesn’t mean running it manually is a bad idea once in a while.

To manually trigger a disk check for the next time you reboot, right-click on your local drive and select Properties. Then select the Tools tab and under Error-checking, click on the Check now button.

Make sure to select both Check disk options, and click Start.

Unfortunately it can’t start while you’re using your PC, but you can schedule it to run during next restart.

The next time your machine is restarted, Check Disk will run and detect and fix errors automatically. Keep in mind this process can take quite a while depending on the size of your drive and the amount of data on it. For more, check out The Geek’s guide to Check Disk in Windows.

Although it should go without saying, an important task you can make run automatically is Windows Updates. You can configure Important and Recommended updates to download and install automatically, or just download and you choose which ones to install.

For more, check out how to make Windows 7 Update display recommended and important updates.

Another important security task is making sure your Antivirus protection is up to date and runs automatically. Each program is different, but most provide the option to keep definition files up to date and scan automatically. For instance it’s easy to setup in our favorite Microsoft Security Essentials.

Note: of course, most anti-virus applications are set to automatically update their virus definition files, but you should double-check to make sure.

If you’re using another Antimalware utility to compliment your Antivirus software, make sure it’s set to find its latest definition files and scan automatically. Keep in mind though, with most of the free versions of Antispyware apps, you’ll need to purchase a license to get real-time protection, automatic updates, and scanning.

Another important task to automate is checking for the latest hardware driver and other app updates. There are a few good programs that will do it which we’ve previously covered such as Secunia Personal Software Inspector. It will automatically check for software updates at startup and provides continuous monitoring.

To automatically keep your hardware drivers up to date, try a program such as Device Doctor, Slimdrivers, or any of the other non-free utilities out there. They will complete driver scans and make sure that your drivers are updated.

Note: One thing to keep in mind with Device Doctor (or really any application) during installation is to skip installing the worthless Ask Toolbar.

This guide should definitely get you started in figuring out which maintenance tasks you want to setup to run automatically. While there certainly seems to be a lot to keep up with if you’re a Windows user, setting tasks to run automatically will free up some time so you get get to work and get things done.

What about you guys? What Tasks do you set up to run automatically and what methods do you use? Leave a comment below and lets us know!