Audible.com
I was recently turned on to audio books by a TWiT episode sponsored by Audible.com who offered a free book for signing up. During the work-week I spend about an hour a day driving to work and back. I normally listen to podcasts (like TWiT) to pass the time, but thought there might be other useful ways to make use of my commute. Audible.com seemed to be as useful a way as any, so I decided to give it a try. The TWiTers recommended On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins, which was neat because just a few weeks ago I had added that book to my amazon wishlist. So, I decided to give On Intelligence a listen. I have now finished listening to On Intelligence and have just started The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. In this particular post I am just going to comment on my experience with Audible.com. Look out for a review of On Intelligence after I get the "dead tree" (paper) version of the book to go back through some of the more complicated parts.
Audible.com, like many companies distributing copyrighted works, assumes their customers are criminals so they lock their content in DRM. What makes it even worse is it is a format I haven't seen before, ".aa", and I also haven't found any software to free the audio from the grasps of DRM. Also, they have their own Windows-only software that downloads and manages (and imports to iTunes) your audio files. They seem to support many devices so I guess they think they have done everything they can do.
Because of all this DRM and Windows-only software, I have had no luck doing anything other than finding and buying the audio books in Linux. To download the audio and load it to my iPod I needed a vmware install of Windows.
This may seem like a lot of restrictions and a lot of work, which it is, but for me it is tolerable. As far as the restrictions go, I only listen to them on my iPod. As far as a lot of work goes, it is far easier and quicker than going to the store or ordering it online.
I don't really have anything to compare Audible.com to, so there may be far better options, but for me it satisfies some minimal needs. I give them a thumbnail up.
Audible.com, like many companies distributing copyrighted works, assumes their customers are criminals so they lock their content in DRM. What makes it even worse is it is a format I haven't seen before, ".aa", and I also haven't found any software to free the audio from the grasps of DRM. Also, they have their own Windows-only software that downloads and manages (and imports to iTunes) your audio files. They seem to support many devices so I guess they think they have done everything they can do.
Because of all this DRM and Windows-only software, I have had no luck doing anything other than finding and buying the audio books in Linux. To download the audio and load it to my iPod I needed a vmware install of Windows.
This may seem like a lot of restrictions and a lot of work, which it is, but for me it is tolerable. As far as the restrictions go, I only listen to them on my iPod. As far as a lot of work goes, it is far easier and quicker than going to the store or ordering it online.
I don't really have anything to compare Audible.com to, so there may be far better options, but for me it satisfies some minimal needs. I give them a thumbnail up.
posted by Joe at
12:58 PM
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