Found this today and thought I would share with you. Coldplay are one of the most successful bands in the world. Check out their Wikipedia entry for more information if you aren’t familiar with them Wikipedia: Coldplay.

I was very impressed with their support of the Sound Relief fundraising concerts for the Victorian bushfire victims. They do a lot of charity stuff apparently. And their music is not bad either!

As a thank you to their fans (and also a pretty good PR move) they have made an album of live songs available for free download on their website.

To Download the album go to their website Coldplay.com and click the link on the right (or just click the butterfly image). They ask for your email address and country but they do offer an opt-out if you don’t want emails from them in future. The album comes in a Zip file and is about 55mb. Of course like any mp3 songs it’s fairly simple to burn them to a CD for use in the car or your home stereo too

Give it a try – you can’t go wrong at this price

Updates have been a little quiet for a while but I promise I do have a few things in the pipeline. Ross has asked a question about Virtual PC I intend to answer plus I want to write a recommendation of what software I use as people often ask me.

But today I wanted to offer you some free books – well eBooks actually. They are full novels and are being offered free to download in PDF format which means you don’t need any special software to read them on your PC (Just free Adobe or Foxit Reader). You could print them out if you really wanted to I guess. It would be cheaper than buying the print version but I wouldn’t bother killing the trees myself.

The offer is brought to you by The Book Depository in the UK. I signed up to their newsletter when I bought a book on the site. They offer free shipping worldwide and the delivery on my order took less than a week. Amazing.

We are giving away not one but two new free eBooks!

The titles are quite different from one another; I know some of you will like both, but I'm sure most of you will enjoy one or the the other!

The Two Mrs Grenvilles is Dominick Dunne's stunning novel about Ann Woodward, the shooting of her husband, and her relationship with a writer who can only be Truman Capote:

His mother was blueblood Society. His father was a bank president and a friend of the King of England. But privilege spoils. Their son was tall and handsome. He was also weak and shallow. Billy Woodward had a thing for showgirls. He married one of them -- and, in 1955, after dinner with the Duchess of Windsor, she shot and killed him. Murder? Of course not; Ann Woodward had children, and her mother-in-law didn't want them traumatised by scandal. Better to say that Ann mistook Bill for a prowler. Better that Ann never stand trial for murder. But there are other ways to convict a killer. Rumour is one. In 1975, Truman Capote lightly fictionalised the story and sold it to Esquire magazine. Ann Woodward, ultimately shamed, overdosed on sleeping pills. "Well, that's that," her mother-in-law said.

Download The Two Mrs Grenvilles here (PDF; no special software/hardware needed) or buy the book.

Dan Hind's The Threat to Reason is a powerful and eminently readable reclamation of Enlightenment values:

"In exploring how the Enlightenment continues to operate as a powerful guiding principle in Western politics, The Threat to Reason reveals how the truly pressing threats to free inquiry reside within the allegedly enlightened institutions of state and corporation. In recovering the concept of Enlightenment from its self-appointed defenders, The Threat to Reason demonstrates its crucial importance to a truly democratic politics, rather than a political performance in which we remain merely spectators.

Download The Threat to Reason here (PDF; no special software/hardware needed) or buy the book.

Link to the webpage summarised above Book Depository UK 2 Free eBooks