Weekly Roundup Plus the Best Free Things on the Internet

Matt Mason, our Executive Director of Marketing, on the future of publishing: “There’s not a business model for content in the digital world. There’s a new business model for every piece of content you release.”

This week, we helped make The 4-Hour Chef the first BitTorrent bestseller, thanks to users like you. We discussed the future of media distribution with The New York Times. We talked new business models for the music industry with TechCrunch. And we got into what it takes to build a better web with our own Patrick Williams, creator of the Torque API.

Best week ever, maybe. Close it out with these three amazing (free) Internet objects, courtesy of the intrepid preservationists over at Internet Archive.

The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

153 years ago this week, Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published. Science has not been the same. In equal parts pivotal and controversial for challenging traditional religion and suggesting natural selection, it remains the foundation of evolutionary biology. And it remains preserved and protected in the public domain through the Internet Archive. Pass it on.

Download Darwin’s The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: https://bit.ly/originofspeciesia

Guster

More good music news this week. Guster announced they’ll release their first full-length album in two years (and their first live album in eight):Guster: Live Acoustic. Featuring 16 tracks from the band’s 2012 tour, the self-released album will be available on January 8, 2013. Want a preview? Done + done. Check out this live performance from earlier this year.

Download Guster Live at Paramount Theater on 2012-04-21: https://bit.ly/gusteria

Great Expectations

It was gloomy in SF this week. And we were feeling literary. A re-read of Dickens’ Great Expectations, published 152 years ago this week, felt pretty on-brief. Get reacquainted with Pip, Miss Havisham, and early 19th century London with this classic story; kept in common by the Internet Archive.

Download Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations: https://bit.ly/greatexpectationsia