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Audible audiobooks now flying onto Kindles via WiFi
Heads-up, Kindle owners -- digging into your next audiobook just got a lot less troublesome. Audible has just announced that over 50,000 of its audiobooks are now available to download directly onto Kindles everywhere through WiFi. Granted, that's still one step away (3G) from being as good as it could possibly get, but it's still a tremendous improvement over the tried-and-true USB sideloading method. For those looking to get started for the first time, the outfit's offering a 30-day free trial of AudibleListener Gold, detailed in the source link below. Happy listening, bookworms.
myFry: Stephen Fry's second autobiography becomes an interactive app
I've been following actor, all around wit, and Apple enthusiast Stephen Fry's career since I saw him play the wonderfully droll and brilliant butler, Jeeves in the English TV series Jeeves and Wooster back in the early 90's. Hugh Laurie, probably better known as Dr. House, played Bertie Wooster over the four seasons of tales from the P.G. Wodehouse's books. Since (and before) then he's done an amazing amount of work, from appearing in V for Vendetta to narrating the English versions of the Harry Potter Audiobooks books. The second volume of his autobiography entitled: The Fry Chronicles has been released in England as a hardcover book (UK£20.00), AudioBook, iBook (£12.99) and an iPhone app titled myFry (£7.99) in the British iTunes store. It's not yet available in the US store. The digital versions are enhanced with seven videos. The myFry app looks quite intriguing. Instead of linearity, (which is so passé) these days Fry opted for a color wheel that can take you to any themed section of the book where you can read sections of that theme. So the book isn't meant to be read in any particular order, at least on the iPhone. Without seeing it, (being a bloody Yank), I can see this working, since Fry's writing is quite anecdotal and randomly breaking it up might be just the thing. I can't wait to get my hands on it. [via 9to5 Mac]
You Can't Always Get What You Want: Great book, lousy app
You Can't Always Get What You Want (US$4.99 until the end of August, to celebrate Jerry Garcia's birthday), is one of the best Rock and Roll books I've ever read. It is written and read by Sam Cutler, the tour manager of the Rolling Stones and later the Grateful Dead in the late 60's and early 70's. The centerpiece of the book is the free concert at the Altamont Speedway in Northern California that took place on December 6, 1969, which was made into a gripping documentary film titled Gimme Shelter by Albert and David Maysles. The line up included: Santana, the Jefferson Airplane, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead, who later decided not to play since it was too dangerous. What most people remember about the concert is that during the Stones performance, quite near the stage, Alan Passaro, a Hells Angels member, stabbed and killed Meredith Hunter after Hunter pulled out a gun. Although horrible and headline grabbing the full story is much more gripping and is only one part of the book. Sam Cutler, is a gregarious guy who was smack in the middle of the rock scene at the time. He's a great story teller, and has the perfect voice to tell his story. He reads his book in a grizzled and sometimes tired English accent that gives instant credibility to his words. He knew everyone and remembers everything in amazing detail. Naming the cast of characters would go on for pages, but Sam was there at the start of arguably every English rock and roll band at the time and later knew just about everyone in the San Francisco music scene.
The Bookmark App: Audiobooks finally done right
The Bookmark app [iTunes Link] has solved a number of problems I've always suffered while listening to audiobooks on an iPhone. It isn't pefect yet, but what is currently in the app store is the best implementation of digital audiobook listening I've found. It's earned a place on my home page and that alone is quite a recommendation. I'll get to a play-by-play in a bit, but first a bit of context is in order. I have always been a fan of audiobooks. Long before the inception of the iPod, I was a constant Books on Tape customer. I'd choose a book and in a few days, receive a sizable box filled with anywhere from two to over forty cassette tapes. It was worth it to me to go through all the hassle of keeping the tapes in order and carrying a stack of them with me to play on a portable cassette player when I wasn't listening in my car. When the iPod came out, I found Audible.com and life became much easier. I always carried at least a dozen books with me on my iPod Classic. The books usually downloaded in one or two big files making a book easy to manage. A few years later, Audible.com started embedding chapter markers in their books so jumping to a particular chapter was a snap, but I always had a problem with the iPod losing my place in a book. It could have been due to syncing, or being knocked around, but it was constant and always annoying. When I bought my iPhone, I found the way the iPod module handled audiobooks had changed. Instead of downloading a few big files, what wound up in the library was a separate file for each chapter. So, for example, Fool by Christopher Moore, which my iPod Classic saw as one file with twenty-six chapters, appeared to be twenty-six files on the iPhone. That would have been fine, except for the fact that the iPhone was no better than my iPod Classic in losing my place seemingly at random. Worse, I never knew which file I was on when my place got lost. Read on to see how Bookmark has solved this dilemma for me.
Inside iPhone 3.0: Enhanced controls for podcast & audiobook playback
It's on the master list of 3.0 features, but we've been sent enough tips and suggestions about it to conclude that the advanced podcast/audiobook controls came as a pleasant surprise for lots of iPhone and iPod touch owners who upgraded. In the 3.0 version, from the playback display for a podcast, tapping the screen brings up a set of expert controls: a button to email a link to the podcast's page on iTunes; a 30-second "What's that, now?" instant rewind button; and a playback speed control to give you 1/2 speed, normal or 2x "FedEx mode" playback. The scrubber bar itself has been given a charge, even though it doesn't look any different until you tap it; it displays the relative playback position within the episode being played. Dragging horizontally gives you high-speed scrubbing (previously known as "just plain old scrubbing"), but if you keep your finger on the screen and drag down, your scrub rate lowers step by step through half-speed, quarter-speed and 'fine scrubbing.' This detail control makes it a lot easier to cue up a particular spot in a long show or book chapter. I've started to enjoy listening to some of my longer subscriptions in 2x mode, especially when I have a fixed amount of time to listen to the podcast but I still want to cover as much of it as I can. Even shorter news-centric podcasts can sometimes benefit from a speed boost. If any of you try out the 2x mode on an audiobook, do let us know how it works for you. Surprisingly, I find myself using the 'email this' button quite a lot, especially to let friends and family know about some of my favorite shows. I imagine they'll be getting tired of that pretty soon.
The Daily Grind: Lore-to-go?
To some people, lore in MMOs is very important. Others may not really have a great deal of time to dig into the game, and thus are likely missing lots and lots of great back-story. We know in our case, the novelization of the Warcraft universe has made for pretty interesting reading when on lunch hour or stuck in airports. (If there is an audiobook version out there, we'd recommend that more for sheer portability.) We also can't help but think that those LotRO folks have the unfair advantage on the rest of us; they have a good solid idea of what's going on before they ever step foot in the game -- assuming they've ever read the books. For today we'd like to ask you this; if game companies made the lore of your world available in book or audiobook format, would you be inclined to check it out? Or is the idea of reading up on the lore not something you'd do when there are so many sites out there that give you the necessary strategies and information in bite-sized packages? Have you, like us, already gotten your geek on with some of the lore books? How did you like them?
Nokia Beta Labs releases Audiobooks app
Entrenching its Nseries devices just a little deeper in the wide world of multimedia, Nokia's Beta Labs group has released its Audiobooks application which -- you guessed it -- plays audio books. The phone app itself works on pretty much any S60 3rd Edition device and reads books encoded using AMR-WB (read: optimized for the spoken word and very well compressed). A matching Windows-based app comes with the setup, too, enabling users to convert files to the AMR-WB format and compile 'em all into individual chapters. It's available now from the Beta Labs site; of course, you'll want to be careful on account of the whole "beta" thing, but it looks pretty solid so far.
How to enjoy grinding and read books at the same time
For a long time now I've been a big fan, not only of WoW, but of audible.com, where they have a great library of audiobooks for sale and download to your portable audio device of choice. Without realizing how or when, I have developed a habit of blending these two loves together for a marvelous effect: grinding plus audiobooks equals a great time.The basic problem with grinding in an MMO, after all, is that it doesn't require your full attention, especially if your goal is straightforward and you've done it before in one way or another. It's relatively easy to just put yourself on autopilot and do the job while your mind does something else. Listening to an audiobook is the perfect companion to this, because it fills up your mind, and leaves your hands and eyeballs itching to do something of their own. Also, I'm a person that has trouble reading with my eyes. I can do it for short periods without any trouble, but with long books, I tend to fall asleep or get distracted very easily. Through Audible, I might have read more books with my ears than I have read with my eyes by now, and although I know some people must have the paper copy of a book in their hands, there's probably a large number of WoW players out there who find themselves not reading as much as they would like, and would love to know that there's another way to get their literary fix.
Olympus voice-activated DS-50 records days of audio
Olympus might have halted production of its DAPs, but it's still taking time out from busting out wicked zoom cameras to dabble in the portable audio realm. The DS-50 is a handheld audio recorder / audiobook player hybrid, and aside from its ability to hold between 17 hours (STXQ stereo mode) and 275 hours (paltry LP mode) on the built-in 1GB of storage, it also touts voice-activated record / playback controls, a backlit LCD screen, MP3 / WMA support, and the obligatory integrated microphone. You'll get around 26 to 31 hours of battery life on a pair of AAA cells, USB connectivity, and Audible support as well. So if you're looking to capture days and days of audio, and want to break up the podcasting sessions with a few books / tunes along the way, the DS-50 can be snapped up now for a stiff £249 ($487).[Via ShinyShiny]
Turn audiobooks into Audiobooks
Playlist Magazine has a nice little tutorial for converting audiobooks you obtain from somewhere other than Audible.com or the iTS into iTunes recognized Audiobooks. For instance if you rip an audiobook CD, or download free audiobooks from any of a number of sites, you can convert them so that they will appear as Audiobooks on your iPod and in iTunes which gives you access to bookmarking and speed controls. Basically, it consists of joining the tracks and converting the result to a special type of AAC (.m4b), but check out the tutorial for full details.
John Hodgman's (aka PC) Areas of My Expertise Free on iTS
As many people have observed already, if there's one problem with the Get A Mac campaign, it's that PC (John Hodgman) often comes off as more likable than Mac (Justin Long). Mr. Hodgman is a talented comedian, appearing often on Comedy Central and This American Life. Well now Apple and Audible.com have an early Christmas present for you: an abridged audio version of his recent book Areas of My Expertise is available for free on the iTunes Store (and don't worry, the abridgment is still nearly 7 hours long). It's read by the author in his inimitable deadpan style and offers humorous observations about a whole variety of topics. Erica already mentioned this as part of our weekly iTunes Free Weekly post (and a couple of commenters realized Hodgman is PC), but I thought some of you might have missed it. Thanks Alexis Cordova!
PodcastConverter Automator action: automatically turn your podcasts into audiobooks
The other day, I said that slowing down podcasts sounded like a great job for automator. TUAW reader Dave agreed, and sent us a link to his PodastConverter (jpg) Automator action. Dave takes the long way around and follows the conventional wisdom of turning the podcasts into audiobooks rather than using QuickTime to manipulate the MP3s directly. The advantage to this approach is that the 'casts will be listenable at much higher speeds. Many people claim to be able to listen to most podcasts at 2.5x or faster. That's almost twice as fast as what you can get from QuickTime, where things start to sound garbled around 1.5x in most cases. On the other hand, converting a bunch of podcasts from MP3 to AAC takes time, processor power, and storage space, so YMMV.Dave hasn't posted the action for download, but he has posted a JPEG of the entire action, complete with detailed instructions. So in addition to being a useful little app, this is also a great introduction to Automator if you aren't already familiar.
