audiobooks
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Letting the iPhone read to you
With apologies to Steve Jobs, who pretty much implied reading was dead, there are more and more applications coming to the iPhone/iPod touch to allow people to do just that -- read books.Today, Traveling Classics has released several public domain titles that you download as applications. A voice reads the book to you while the text stays in sync. The books are narrated by volunteer readers from the Librivox Project, who record the complete text and release their narration into the public domain. It is a bit like open source for books.Among the titles are: (click on them for their App Store links)* Treasure Island * Art of War * The Curious Case of Benjamin Button* Adventures of Huckleberry Finn * The Tell-Tale Heart* The Adventures of Tom Sawyer* The Gospel of John * Pride and PrejudiceAll the books are US $0.99 until February 20th, then they are all $1.99.The Gospel of John is free. I tried two of the books, The Art of War, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both presentations sounded professional. The text did scroll along with the spoken words. You could exit the book, and when re-starting you are given the option to resume where you left off. That worked well. Audio quality was quite good on headphones, and clear enough through the iPhone speaker, but I don't think that is the preferred way to listen.These books compare with other Audio Books available from the App Store, and are certainly cheaper than the same titles from Audibile.com, the iTunes Store or Amazon. On the other hand, those titles from other sources can be played back through a car audio system with an iPod adapter, or burned to a CD, where with the self contained books from Traveling Classics, you'd have to use the headphone jack to get access to the sound. Also, you can get current books from Audibile.com, but the Traveling Classics are just that -- Classics in the public domain. There are other versions of almost all these books. There is, for example, a free version of The Art of War on the iTunes store, but it is text only, no narrator.The Traveling Classics are a nice variation of the standard audio book that people started buying on cassettes years ago, then on CD, and now by downloading them from the Internet. This latest option will appeal to some, but many readers will stick with something they can download and use with other media players.For those of us who like books, despite what Steve Jobs thinks about the market for them, having more to read, and more ways to read, can only be a good thing.
Interview with Dick Hill, voice of Blizzard's audiobooks
Our friend Medievaldragon has an interview up over at WorldofWar.net with Dick Hill, voice of the upcoming Warcraft audiobooks. Reading the books is a great way of catching up on old lore and new characters found in the new expansion, and considering that lots of players like to listen to books while playing (me included), these will probably end up being pretty popular.Hill isn't a huge Warcraft fan (though his son has played a few of the games), but he is an audiobook veteran, having read over 500 books, including works by Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, and Anne McCaffrey, so he's got the chops for sure. It'll be very interesting to see what kinds of characterizations he has come up with -- while there are some very familiar voices already from the World of Warcraft, we'll have to see if he drew the same conclusions in terms of voicing the characters as they did. He says that you can't really research a Gnome's voice, or find any recordings of Elves, but we've actually talked to both in game, some of us every day.The first audiobook, Day of the Dragon, is due out sometime this month, with two more scheduled releases to follow next year.
Knaak signing at a midnight launch in Arkansas, Blizzard to release audiobooks
Live in Arkansas and can't make it to one of our meetups around the country tomorrow night? Author Richard A. Knaak will be holding a book signing at a store in Fayetteville, Arkansas. There will be copies of the new Night of the Dragon and Warcraft Legends vol. 2 available, but it's at Hastings Bookstore, so I'm not quite sure they'll have copies of Wrath there -- you may have to make a stop at a game store before or after. But if you're in AR and missing out on the festivities elsewhere (and are a fan of Knaak's Warcraft fiction), it's a place to be.And speaking of Warcraft fiction, Blizzplanet has the news that Blizzard is publishing three of the extended lore books in audio form, read by Dick Hill, an award-winning "Golden Voice." No news yet on whether the books will be in iTunes (that's pretty much the only way I listen to an audiobook these days, is downloaded onto the old iPod), but it's probably what'll happen. So if you've been putting off reading up on the lore because words hurt your eyes, maybe your ears will be able to do the job for you.
Convert any file to iTunes audiobook format
This week, Lifehacker pointed out a handy feature of iTunes 8. Specifically, you can convert any file into audiobook format. That way, it will be categorized as an audio book and more importantly, remember where you stopped listening last time.Last year, a friend sent me some audio of a conference he attended. I was glad to have it, but it was a single, 40-minute track. That would have been a perfect candidate for this tip.Lifehacker even explains how to convert multiple files at once. Check it out.If you want file conversion that's more powerful than this simple trick, consider Switch by NCH Software. Switch converts a great number of file formats into any of several options. For example, convert aif/aiff, gsm, vox aac, mp2, or m4a (plus a lot more) into Mp3 or wav. You can even import video files and extract audio (avi, mov, mpeg). There's both a free and paid version of Switch.
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.
Not reading enough books these days? Here's how to play and 'read' at the same time
If you're anything like me, then you may find that the more engrossed you become in a particular MMO, the more your leisure time formerly spent on reading gets whittled away. Thankfully, our friends over at WoW Insider have come up with an excellent solution that doesn't involve helper monkeys, a secondary cyborg head, or time manipulation -- but feel free to go for any of these ideas too.WI's fix for the problem is simple, but effective -- audiobooks. Sites like audible.com contain a large range of titles to choose from, and this way, instead of just listening to the same ambient sound collection replayed over and over during your next multiple-hour grind session, you could be catching up on the work of your favorite author. Aside from allowing you to keep up with your list of must-read books, you may even discover that what was previously a very tedious grind could become a lot easier, as your brain disengages from the repetitive in-game actions and focuses on your riveting audio novel.So there you have it. Hopefully you didn't rush out to the pet shop after the first paragraph, and now have a practical way to keep on top of your reading while you play games. You can check out the full article at WI through the link below.
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.
