Where To Download Stuff for Free Part Two: Free Online Resources for Research and Production (And finally do chillax with a lil' leisure too)

Probably the most depressing thing next to a computer without power to do things is one that is hungry for resources with which to create things. Let alone one without entertainments.

I’m not saying an empty setup is a bad thing. But sometimes the user has ideas and wishes about the stuff he or she would like to furnish her or his computer with, but what's missing are good channels to acquire those goodies.

Research Materials

Documentaries

Top Documentary Films

If documentaries are your thing, use the search feature of this portal to get the cream of the crop in that department. This site has many good documentaries that can teach you a great deal. It may look kind of bloggy, but the docus are great.

DTube is not YouTube. While you can find a lot of quality documentaries on YouTube, its monetization model doesn't allow for new participants to make anything in the vein of what dominant channel owners earn.

Enter DTube. A crypto-decentralized video platform built on top of the STEEM blockchain and the Interplanetary File System P2P network. Read more about it here. If you want to monetize your documentary, you should join Steemit to be able to post on DTube. As I see it, DTube holds more promise than YouTube for documentary distributors.

Readables (Ebooks, Magazines, Articles, Papers)

These sites carry ebooks, magazines, academic papers and more.

Project Gutenberg

The original and oldest e-text project on the Internet. You can find all the classics and scads of others that have expired copyrights.

Archive.org

More than ten million texts (by texts they mean books, magazines, academic papers, etc), including the digitization of dozens of libraries around the world.

Scribd

More than one million titles. Most are free to download. It has a ratio system, so after a certain amount of downloads, you have to upload something to reset the ratio. Once you uploaded a document, you can continue downloading until your ratio runs out again.

PDF SEARCH ENGINE

Used to be PDFSearchEngine.org. One of its kind. I wonder why this site or another like it wasn’t available earlier. Anyone knows how to tweak a search in one of the search engines to come up with PDF results, but having a site especially for PDF files is more comfortable.

Lulu

One of the most important self-publishing platforms, one can refine the search to get downloads for $0.00. This site boasts that it’s the biggest independent publishing outlet on the web.

Smashwords

Another self-publishing platform. The same trick of searching for free books can be performed for a sizable quantity of downloads.

kindle Store

Has promotional periods in which popular books and comics are given completely free of charge. Just select books, and then type FREE in the search field on top of the page, and they will appear.

Rakuten's kobo

Kobo's portal has a streamlined interface. One only needs to enter the word free in the search bar to be presented with piles of free books. Kobo’s Android app is great too.

nook Books

The way to find free ebooks in Barnes & Noble Nook portal is the same as in Kobo and Kindle. Just by entering free in the search field on top of the page one can get different complete ebook free deals.

Library Genesis

With the rise of this Russian site, things start to get seriously interesting. Ethical considerations aside, here you can grab any book you need. It's the most valuable portal and it lets Scribd and the others eating the dust.

Resources for Production

Re-Usable Music and Footage

There are sites to download music to listen for free. And then there are other sites, where you can actually download music to use in commercial enterprises. Like for instance, in the creation of your commercial.

The Internet Archive (Archive.org)

Not satisfied with YouTube and similar sites like Vimeo? Do you want to build a meaningful collection of movies? Do you need free stock footage? Try Archive.org!

There you can stream and download classics, and not so classics, that are in the public domain. More than two million videos are waiting! They can be streamed in real time, or download to your hard disk to watch whenever you want.

INCOMPETECH

Allows to use the music for YouTube, streaming, live productions, store muzak, on-hold and more. Must credit the site's owner. It has four types of licenses, one is CC.

Photos, Images and Clipart

Photos

Compfight

It has Creative Commons search to reuse the photos commercially. It uses the Flickr API. After one performs a search it shows an image search result of ten rows. The top two rows are the site monetization scheme, the other eight rows have either CC or Commercial Allowed licenses.

Photos and Images

flickr

Using the advanced search it's possible to select commercial use allowed. Using this option you can use the photos for anything, provided you'll give appropriate attribution.

FREEIMAGES

Over 300.000 photos and images. Free for commercial and personal use.

Clipart

openclipart

Built by its community. It has some excellent contributors.

ClipArt ETC

Over 71,500 pieces of quality clipart. Retro TIFFs.

Leisure

Videos

Deturl.com: download any video from streaming sites. YouTube, Vimeo, whatever your choice, Deturl has you covered.

Video Games

STEAM

The way to find free games on Steam is as follows:

1. Create a Steam account (it’s free)
2. Download and install the Steam client
3. Once connected, click on STORE
4. Click GAMES in the top ribbon menu
5. Choose Free To Play

At the time of this writing, I could find 80 free to play games on Steam. These are new, high-quality titles, otherwise, they wouldn’t be featured on Steam.

There is a trick to unlock hundreds more of free Steam games. Search for any keyword of your preference related to the kind of game you want to play. A list appears, but this one shows another category of free games besides the Free To Play one: the Free category.

Facebook's gameroom

A games portal in the vein of Steam, with the difference that there aren't any download or installation processes involved. Well, they might be, but they are transparent to the user. Some games have payment models like subscriptions, mobile payments, in-game gifting, and other features that do cost money, though.

Google Play

Wide choice of games for Android. It even has MMOs. Many good ones are free, but the best need micro-transaction payments. Others are monetized by advertising, and the free version may have advertisement banners or something else that takes up screen space.

^{Image Credit: unknown
Content © Martin Wensley 2018}