-----Original Message-----
From: Janet Ingber [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 9:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Wall St. Journal Article
Hi Everyone,
There was an article about Audible in today's Wall Street Journal. It talks
about how to subscribe, get books etc. This is really good publicity for
Audible. I scanned the article and saved it to text format. It's at
the end of this e-mail.
Enjoy.
Janet Ingber
GADGETS
The MOSSberg Solution /By Walter S. Mossberg
Downloading Books Off the Weh
You Can Have Your iPod Read You 'War and Peace' While You Drive to Work
IF YOU TRAVEL OFTEN-whether commuting to work or jetting away on
vacation-you may be fond of audiobooks. But anyone who listens to these
books on tape or CD knows that buying them can get expensive, renting and
returning them via the mail can be cumbersome and time-consuming, and
borrowing them from a library limits your selection.
Audible Inc. aims to change that. Its Web site, www.audible.com, sells
downloadable audio literature, including books and subscriptions to
newspapers, magazines, radio and original programs. You can get a book this
way in a very short time after making a decision without juggling any tapes
or CDs, and without using the mail.
These downloads can be purchased a la carte or in monthly membership
programs. Once downloaded, the media can be played back directly on a
computer, burned onto CDs or uploaded onto one of 14 mobile devices,
including Apple's iPod and Audible's own player, Otis.
You can buy audio books one at a time from Audible, ranging from $6.95 to
$24.95. Or, you can buy one of two Audible membership plans, called
BasicListener and PremiumListener. The $14.95 monthly BasicListener
membership includes one subscription and one audiobook every month, while
the $19.95 monthly PremiumListener membership allows you two audiobooks per
month. If you sign up for a 12-month commitment to either plan, you get the
$119 Otis player free.
So this week, my assistant Katie and I rested our eyes and gave Audible,
corn a listen. Audible is Windows and Mac compatible, and we tried it out
on both operating systems. In Windows, you must first download special
AudibleManager listening software. On the Mac, the downloads are managed
directly in Apple's iTunes jukebox program along with your music.
The AudibleManager screen is divided into three boxes. A panel on the left
organizes all of your downloads into folders such as Audio Inbox,
Subscriptions and Trash. The top right portion of the screen displays the
folder that you have opened, and the bottom right of the screen shows the
programs that are copied onto your Otis player when it is plugged into the
USB port, or files that you are burning to CD.
Audible content comes in four different quality formats for downloading
(labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4), and each format takes up a different amount of
space on your PC. The Otis player holds 64MB, runs on battery and is about
an inch smaller than the iPod, which measures about the size of a deck of
cards. The iPod is vastly roomier, holding from five to 20 gigabytes, and
is rechargeable.
In format 3, Otis's highest-quality format, the player can hold about three
three-hour books, while a 5GB iPod can hold 208 three-hour books in the
same format. If files are copied in the 5GB iPod's highest-quality format,
4, it can hold 104 three-hour books.
Otis's setup is simple, with a monochrome screen that displays the title,
time remaining and track information for your audio. Volume and
section-advancing adjustments are on its left side, while a hold button and
USB port are on the right.
You can choose from a list of 20,000 titles on Audible's Web site. The
content is well organized at the top of the site into categories such as
fiction, foreign language, kids, radio and exclusives. You can also browse
lists like New York Times bestsellers, award winners and Oprah's picks, or
just use the search box. Almost every title includes a short paragraph or
two of description, as well as customer reviews and ratings. You can even
listen to a sample of each book before buying. We liked having the freedom
to browse through selections before ever entering any credit-card
information.
Katie finally decided on "The Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler's popular
one-woman play. Instead of buying the audiobook alone for $11.95, she chose
to buy a BasicListener membership for $14.95, which includes one book and
one subscription. She entered her name, e-mail, country of residence,
username and password, and then entered credit-card information for
purchasing the membership. She then downloaded the title on the iMac, and
it dropped into iTunes. When she logged onto Audible on the Windows
computer, the "My Library" section of her account showed that she had
purchased "The Vagina Monologues," and could download it again onto her
Windows PC.
Audible does limit your use of each book to two computers to prevent mass
redistribution. But once a file is purchased, it remains in your account
and can be downloaded or transferred over and over again on those two
machines.
On the iMac, I burned the audiobook onto CD, but the process wasn't as easy
as it should be. I first had to create a separate play list that contained
the audiobook file. I then had to manually adjust the start and stop time
to properly burn the first CD because one CD holds about 70 minutes worth
of audio, and this audiobook is an hour and 44 minutes long. I used
cLsecond disk to burn
the rest of the file, but had to mam enter the start and stop time, which
wrote down on a piece of paper.
Copying "The Vagina Monologues onto my iPod was a snap-I just plugged it
in, and the file automatica copied onto the player. However, files copied
and burned from Audible on a Mac don't show tracks, or chapters, and
instead group the whole book into one track. Audible plans to release more
Mac-friendly solutions in April.
Katie listened to "The Vagina Monologues" on the iPod during her commute to
and from work on the DC Metro at rush hour, and found herself laughing out
loud at its hysterical stories. Needless to say, she got some weird looks
from other commuters condemned to riding in silence.
She found that burning a book to disk on the Windows PC was a much more
automatic process, complete with a message that told her the download
wouldn't fit onto one disk. The software automatically adjusted the start
and stop times and notified her to insert the second CD. Windows computers
also enable tracks to show up in files when they're burned and copied onto
players, and they also let you print custorn labels for your CDs
We also tested the Audible Otis player (which is both Mac and PC
compatible) by uploading "The Vagina Monologues" onto the player. Katie
used the AudibleManager software to drag and drop the file from Hie
cornputer to the Otis, and it worked without a problem.
For the subscription part of her BasicListener membership, Katie chose a
daily subscription to National Public Radio's daily program, "Fresh Air." By
6 a.m. EST from Monday through Friday, a copy of this program was
automatically added to her "My Library" section under "new subscription
programs."
Overall, Audible provides a smart, highly flexible alternative to standard
books on tape or CD, especially for people who are comfortable with PCs and
the Internet, and who love small digital audio players.
-With reporting by Katherine Boehret
E-mail me at [log in to unmask]
----------
GADGETS
The MOSSberg Solution /By Walter S. Mossberg
Downloading Books Off the Weh
You Can Have Your iPod Read You 'War and Peace' While You Drive to Work
IF YOU TRAVEL OFTEN-whether commuting to work or jetting away on
vacation-you may be fond of audiobooks. But anyone who listens to these
books on tape or CD knows that buying them can get expensive, renting and
returning them via the mail can be cumbersome and time-consuming, and
borrowing them from a library limits your selection.
Audible Inc. aims to change that. Its Web site, www.audible.com, sells
downloadable audio literature, including books and subscriptions to
newspapers, magazines, radio and original programs. You can get a book this
way in a very short time after making a decision without juggling any tapes
or CDs, and without using the mail.
These downloads can be purchased a la carte or in monthly membership
programs. Once downloaded, the media can be played back directly on a
computer, burned onto CDs or uploaded onto one of 14 mobile devices,
including Apple's iPod and Audible's own player, Otis.
You can buy audio books one at a time from Audible, ranging from $6.95 to
$24.95. Or, you can buy one of two Audible membership plans, called
BasicListener and PremiumListener. The $14.95 monthly BasicListener
membership includes one subscription and one audiobook every month, while
the $19.95 monthly PremiumListener membership allows you two audiobooks per
month. If you sign up for a 12-month commitment to either plan, you get the
$119 Otis player free.
So this week, my assistant Katie and I rested our eyes and gave Audible,
corn a listen. Audible is Windows and Mac compatible, and we tried it out on
both operating systems. In Windows, you must first download special
AudibleManager listening software. On the Mac, the downloads are managed
directly in Apple's iTunes jukebox program along with your music.
The AudibleManager screen is divided into three boxes. A panel on the left
organizes all of your downloads into folders such as Audio Inbox,
Subscriptions and Trash. The top right portion of the screen displays the
folder that you have opened, and the bottom right of the screen shows the
programs that are copied onto your Otis player when it is plugged into the
USB port, or files that you are burning to CD.
Audible content comes in four different quality formats for downloading
(labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4), and each format takes up a different amount of
space on your PC. The Otis player holds 64MB, runs on battery and is about
an inch smaller than the iPod, which measures about the size of a deck of
cards. The iPod is vastly roomier, holding from five to 20 gigabytes, and is
rechargeable.
In format 3, Otis's highest-quality format, the player can hold about three
three-hour books, while a 5GB iPod can hold 208 three-hour books in the same
format. If files are copied in the 5GB iPod's highest-quality format,
4, it can hold 104 three-hour books.
Otis's setup is simple, with a monochrome screen that displays the title,
time remaining and track information for your audio. Volume and
section-advancing adjustments are on its left side, while a hold button and
USB port are on the right.
You can choose from a list of 20,000 titles on Audible's Web site. The
content is well organized at the top of the site into categories such as
fiction, foreign language, kids, radio and exclusives. You can also browse
lists like New York Times bestsellers, award winners and Oprah's picks, or
just use the search box. Almost every title includes a short paragraph or
two of description, as well as customer reviews and ratings. You can even
listen to a sample of each book before buying. We liked having the freedom
to browse through selections before ever entering any credit-card
information.
Katie finally decided on "The Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler's popular
one-woman play. Instead of buying the audiobook alone for $11.95, she chose
to buy a BasicListener membership for $14.95, which includes one book and
one subscription. She entered her name, e-mail, country of residence,
username and password, and then entered credit-card information for
purchasing the membership. She then downloaded the title on the iMac, and it
dropped into iTunes. When she logged onto Audible on the Windows computer,
the "My Library" section of her account showed that she had purchased "The
Vagina Monologues," and could download it again onto her Windows PC.
Audible does limit your use of each book to two computers to prevent mass
redistribution. But once a file is purchased, it remains in your account and
can be downloaded or transferred over and over again on those two machines.
On the iMac, I burned the audiobook onto CD, but the process wasn't as easy
as it should be. I first had to create a separate play list that contained
the audiobook file. I then had to manually adjust the start and stop time to
properly burn the first CD because one CD holds about 70 minutes worth of
audio, and this audiobook is an hour and 44 minutes long. I used cLsecond
disk to burn
the rest of the file, but had to mam enter the start and stop time, which
wrote down on a piece of paper.
Copying "The Vagina Monologues onto my iPod was a snap-I just plugged it in,
and the file automatica copied onto the player. However, files copied and
burned from Audible on a Mac don't show tracks, or chapters, and instead
group the whole book into one track. Audible plans to release more
Mac-friendly solutions in April.
Katie listened to "The Vagina Monologues" on the iPod during her cornmute to
and from work on the DC Metro at rush hour, and found herself laughing out
loud at its hysterical stories. Needless to say, she got some weird looks
from other commuters condemned to riding in silence.
She found that burning a book to disk on the Windows PC was a much more
automatic process, complete with a message that told her the download
wouldn't fit onto one disk. The software automatically adjusted the start
and stop times and notified her to insert the second CD. Windows computers
also enable tracks to show up in files when they're burned and copied onto
players, and they also let you print custorn labels for your CDs
We also tested the Audible Otis player (which is both Mac and PC compatible)
by uploading "The Vagina Monologues" onto the player. Katie used the
AudibleManager software to drag and drop the file from Hie cornputer to the
Otis, and it worked without a problem.
For the subscription part of her BasicListener membership, Katie chose a
daily subscription to National Public Radio's daily program, "Fresh Air." By
6 a.m. EST from Monday through Friday, a copy of this program was
automatically added to her "My Library" section under "new subscription
programs."
Overall, Audible provides a smart, highly flexible alternative to standard
books on tape or CD, especially for people who are comfortable with PCs and
the Internet, and who love small digital audio players.
-With reporting by Katherine Boehret
E-mail me at [log in to unmask]
----------
GADGETS
The MOSSberg Solution /By Walter S. Mossberg
Downloading Books Off the Weh
You Can Have Your iPod Read You 'War and Peace' While You Drive to Work
IF YOU TRAVEL OFTEN-whether commuting to work or jetting away on
vacation-you may be fond of audiobooks. But anyone who listens to these
books on tape or CD knows that buying them can get expensive, renting and
returning them via the mail can be cumbersome and time-consuming, and
borrowing them from a library limits your selection.
Audible Inc. aims to change that. Its Web site, www.audible.com, sells
downloadable audio literature, including books and subscriptions to
newspapers, magazines, radio and original programs. You can get a book this
way in a very short time after making a decision without juggling any tapes
or CDs, and without using the mail.
These downloads can be purchased a la carte or in monthly membership
programs. Once downloaded, the media can be played back directly on a
computer, burned onto CDs or uploaded onto one of 14 mobile devices,
including Apple's iPod and Audible's own player, Otis.
You can buy audio books one at a time from Audible, ranging from $6.95 to
$24.95. Or, you can buy one of two Audible membership plans, called
BasicListener and PremiumListener. The $14.95 monthly BasicListener
membership includes one subscription and one audiobook every month, while
the $19.95 monthly PremiumListener membership allows you two audiobooks per
month. If you sign up for a 12-month commitment to either plan, you get the
$119 Otis player free.
So this week, my assistant Katie and I rested our eyes and gave Audible,
corn a listen. Audible is Windows and Mac compatible, and we tried it out on
both operating systems. In Windows, you must first download special
AudibleManager listening software. On the Mac, the downloads are managed
directly in Apple's iTunes jukebox program along with your music.
The AudibleManager screen is divided into three boxes. A panel on the left
organizes all of your downloads into folders such as Audio Inbox,
Subscriptions and Trash. The top right portion of the screen displays the
folder that you have opened, and the bottom right of the screen shows the
programs that are copied onto your Otis player when it is plugged into the
USB port, or files that you are burning to CD.
Audible content comes in four different quality formats for downloading
(labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4), and each format takes up a different amount of
space on your PC. The Otis player holds 64MB, runs on battery and is about
an inch smaller than the iPod, which measures about the size of a deck of
cards. The iPod is vastly roomier, holding from five to 20 gigabytes, and is
rechargeable.
In format 3, Otis's highest-quality format, the player can hold about three
three-hour books, while a 5GB iPod can hold 208 three-hour books in the same
format. If files are copied in the 5GB iPod's highest-quality format,
4, it can hold 104 three-hour books.
Otis's setup is simple, with a monochrome screen that displays the title,
time remaining and track information for your audio. Volume and
section-advancing adjustments are on its left side, while a hold button and
USB port are on the right.
You can choose from a list of 20,000 titles on Audible's Web site. The
content is well organized at the top of the site into categories such as
fiction, foreign language, kids, radio and exclusives. You can also browse
lists like New York Times bestsellers, award winners and Oprah's picks, or
just use the search box. Almost every title includes a short paragraph or
two of description, as well as customer reviews and ratings. You can even
listen to a sample of each book before buying. We liked having the freedom
to browse through selections before ever entering any credit-card
information.
Katie finally decided on "The Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler's popular
one-woman play. Instead of buying the audiobook alone for $11.95, she chose
to buy a BasicListener membership for $14.95, which includes one book and
one subscription. She entered her name, e-mail, country of residence,
username and password, and then entered credit-card information for
purchasing the membership. She then downloaded the title on the iMac, and it
dropped into iTunes. When she logged onto Audible on the Windows computer,
the "My Library" section of her account showed that she had purchased "The
Vagina Monologues," and could download it again onto her Windows PC.
Audible does limit your use of each book to two computers to prevent mass
redistribution. But once a file is purchased, it remains in your account and
can be downloaded or transferred over and over again on those two machines.
On the iMac, I burned the audiobook onto CD, but the process wasn't as easy
as it should be. I first had to create a separate play list that contained
the audiobook file. I then had to manually adjust the start and stop time to
properly burn the first CD because one CD holds about 70 minutes worth of
audio, and this audiobook is an hour and 44 minutes long. I used cLsecond
disk to burn
the rest of the file, but had to mam enter the start and stop time, which
wrote down on a piece of paper.
Copying "The Vagina Monologues onto my iPod was a snap-I just plugged it in,
and the file automatica copied onto the player. However, files copied and
burned from Audible on a Mac don't show tracks, or chapters, and instead
group the whole book into one track. Audible plans to release more
Mac-friendly solutions in April.
Katie listened to "The Vagina Monologues" on the iPod during her cornmute to
and from work on the DC Metro at rush hour, and found herself laughing out
loud at its hysterical stories. Needless to say, she got some weird looks
from other commuters condemned to riding in silence.
She found that burning a book to disk on the Windows PC was a much more
automatic process, complete with a message that told her the download
wouldn't fit onto one disk. The software automatically adjusted the start
and stop times and notified her to insert the second CD. Windows computers
also enable tracks to show up in files when they're burned and copied onto
players, and they also let you print custorn labels for your CDs
We also tested the Audible Otis player (which is both Mac and PC compatible)
by uploading "The Vagina Monologues" onto the player. Katie used the
AudibleManager software to drag and drop the file from Hie cornputer to the
Otis, and it worked without a problem.
For the subscription part of her BasicListener membership, Katie chose a
daily subscription to National Public Radio's daily program, "Fresh Air." By
6 a.m. EST from Monday through Friday, a copy of this program was
automatically added to her "My Library" section under "new subscription
programs."
Overall, Audible provides a smart, highly flexible alternative to standard
books on tape or CD, especially for people who are comfortable with PCs and
the Internet, and who love small digital audio players.
-With reporting by Katherine Boehret
E-mail me at [log in to unmask]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Make Money Online Auctions! Make $500.00 or We Will Give You Thirty Dollars
for Trying!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/yMx78A/fNtFAA/46VHAA/5qlxlB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[log in to unmask]
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask] In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html
|
