Published by admin on 3rd December 2008
A UPC code (short for Universal Product Code) is the series of numbers and barcode that you see on all the items you buy in the stores - clothes, electronics, CDs and DVDs and just about every other type of merchandise except for books and fresh produce in the supermarket. UPC codes are very important to retailers as they are all programmed into their master computers to handle inventory tracking and of course the pricing for the register computers at checkout time.
They are so important to retailers that you cannot sell a product into a retail market without having a UPC code for it. That means that no distributors or retailers will be interested in carrying your product. Even many online retailers - like Amazon.com - require UPC codes for the products that they sell in their store - both for items they sell directly and items sold by marketplace sellers. (In Amazon’s case they provide an additional purpose over and above the inventory use so common to UPC codes. In Amazon, they are used to guarantee that marketplace sellers are correctly representing their products for sale as the UPC code must be matched against Amazon’s internal database to list a product. There are exceptions to this rule on Amazon but for most merchandise, you will need a UPC code to sell it on Amazon.) Read the rest of this entry »
Published by admin on 25th November 2008
NASA - in partnership with archive.org - has built a huge archive of images and film clips covering the vast breath of NASA multimedia.
The archive is located at http://www.nasaimages.org and is a dream for public domain product developers interested in space and NASA imagery. Rather than hunt around at 10’s of NASA websites, it is all combined in one easy to search space. Read the rest of this entry »
Published by admin on 25th November 2008
The greatest digital resource for public domain books is archive.org. In their archive, they have more than 1 million books scanned and accessible in digital format. Most of the books are in the public domain but some have license restrictions stating that you cannot use them commercially. But with a million books to work with, there is always plenty of source material for your projects.
The books are presented in a variety of formats (although not all books are in all formats.) The formats are described below. Read the rest of this entry »
Published by admin on 18th November 2008
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Resources, Tips
The folks over at the Pirates of the Public Domain have recently released a tremendous report about public domain comic books. It seems that quite a few of the old classics are in the public domain AND available digitally in a few places online.
The report (which is free) can be downloaded by clicking on the title here: How To Republish Public Domain Comic Books For Fun & Profit. The report is in pdf format and will load directly in your browser when you click on the link. (Alternatively if you want to save it on your computer, just right click on the link and select “save as” from the menu.) Read the rest of this entry »
Published by admin on 21st October 2008
Have you ever dreamed of producing your very own language training course but didn’t know how to go about it? If that describes you, do you think having an entire course that is in the public domain and can be used by you in any way you want could be helpful in making this dream a reality?
Well there is an entire website devoted to foreigh language courses in the public domain. These courses were developed by the Foreign Service Institute to train U.S. diplmatic corps to speak other languages and many of the courses are in the public domain. Thanks to the selfless efforts of many volunteers, many of the FSI courses have been digitized (both the manuals and the audio training portions) and made available for free from http://fsi-language-courses.com/. Read the rest of this entry »
Published by admin on 3rd September 2008
This post is a short one.
There are many directories of public domain materials on the web but they are often difficult to ferret out. Wikipedia has an entry called Public Domain Resources that contains many links to fascinating collections of public domain materials. Read the rest of this entry »
Published by admin on 18th August 2008
Did you know that anyone in the United States can sell books on Amazon Kindle? Did you know that you do not need to be the author of the book provided the book is in the public domain?
Its true. And it is simple. You can publish a book in minutes on this innovative platform. Read the rest of this entry »
Published by admin on 12th May 2008
There is a huge demand for public domain sheet music for a variety of purposes. Some folks need sheet music to create public performances - and with public domain sheet music there are no royalty or performance fees to worry about. Others want to build collections of royalty free music to sell to product developers. Still others build themed collections of public domain sheet music and sell it as books or CDs. Read the rest of this entry »
Published by admin on 8th May 2008
Did you know that there is a hidden treasure trove of some of the earliest movies ever made available for download at the Library of Congress? Did you know that they are in the public domain and you can use them in your very own projects?
The Library of Congress has several fascinating collections of public domain movies. These are movies that represent the very earliest film making efforts. They include movies from 1891 to the 1920s.
Lets take a look at the collections. Read the rest of this entry »
