Playaway - the digital audiobook for people who hate digital technology
posted Jun 28th 2005 12:50AM
What do you get when you marry the inconvenience and bulk of
hardbound books to a single-function audio player reminiscent of those bulky audio tour guides they hand out at
museums? If you're a marketer looking to convince customers that the simple audiobook is a quagmire of convoluted and
confusing technology, you get the Playaway, an audio player and audio book all in one. The idea — as far as we can get
it via the breathy copy on Playaway's site — is that you'll buy a single player for each book you want to listen to,
saving you from having to "figure out the computer or lug around cassettes or CDs." Even if we could get past the idea
that carrying around a separate player for each book is somehow meant to be more convenient than carrying an iPod
containing 100 books, or a CD player with a few unabridged volumes on discs, we still can't understand why anyone
shopping anywhere but an airport departure lounge would have any interest in one (or more) of these. We somehow see
this taking its place in the landfill right next to other great products like the
self-destructing DVD and
single-use digital video camera. Bring on the hackers!
I think this is the perfect product for people such as my grandfather. They absolutely hate computers, but wouldn't mind that. They would never get an iPod, because they'd never touch a computer.
This would be perfect as Alternative Media. Students with disabilities that currently need to scan their books and then turn them into audio would have a solution. Instead of going through the time consuming and resource consuming process of converting one book (paper or electronic) to audio, the student just orders one of these and goes on with life. My father, too, would also like one of these. Assuming that these books are read by people and not computer generated voices, these would be a great way also to learn English. My father speaks Spanish (first language) and some English (second language) and he likes to listen to books on tape or radio shows in English. These things would be perfect for him. Now of course, for all of this to happen I am assuming that the prices would not surpass those of the paper printed counterparts or the e-book versions by more than a few dollars. I mean, it is much easier to make an electronic copy of a book than it is to print it a hundreds or thousands of times so I would expect these things to be economically accessible.
it looks like a good idea, but i'm not giving up my audio book rental membership yet. it's got to be easier/work better than audible, but there's no way it's as reliable as http://www.simplyaudiobooks.com. i'll suffer through shipping times and skippy cds of that kind of service in exchange for consistency and simplicity.
it looks like a good idea, but i'm not giving up my audio book rental membership yet. it's got to be easier/work better than audible, but there's no way it's as reliable as http://www.simplyaudiobooks.com. i'll suffer through shipping times and skippy cds of that kind of service in exchange for consistency and simplicity.