Audible
Since Major Beef started writing about the local NPR station (which might I add – is a fantastic station)! I thought I’d write about one of my favorite services…Audible.com.
Backstory: when I got my first mp3 player – I refused to own an Ipod. I didn’t think I had enought music to put onto a full on Ipod, and seriously they are expensive. So Pete in his absolutely frugel and wonderful wisdom found a refurbished mp3 player on Woot.com. (Love me some Woot!). It was 126 mb mp3 player, with slots for expandable memory (SD cards). I started out witha 64 mb card, and then upgraded that card to a 250 and eventually a 1 GB Card. I found out the hard way that I kept wanting more, and more space on my mp3 player. Then I came across the Audible.com service. Audible is a site where you can purchase and download books on tape. And this opened up a plethora of options for me. The only problem – at the time I couldn’t listen to music at work, and I was having trouble finding a suitble option of interfacing my mp3 player and my car radio. Eventually my poor little mp3 player started having trouble, and passed on. So I finally decided YES, I will get an Ipod, because I obviously want the room.
Well, the interfacing with Audible and I-tunes to download my books is wonderful, and I’ve even found this fantastic option of dowloading a daily dose of the New York Times podcast. It makes life interesting an fun. I listen to my poor little I-Pod everyday at my new job (they are a little bit more enlightened). Everymorning I get my dose of news from the New York Times…It’s about an hour podcast. Then I listen to music, and sometimes all day I listen to a book, or a part of a book. Right now, I’m working my way through the Jasper Fford, “Tuesday Next” series. Which is quite delightful. I have found that for me, the option I like is their membership. It’s a certain amount of money each month, and you get a certain amount of credits. For me I use the 2 credit membership. This usually allows me to download 2 books or on monthly subscription to a Podcast. (If I save my credits up, I can get a year’s New York Times pod cast with 4). Most of the books I download are multiple part books of 8 hours per part, and would cost if purchased seperately around $20 – $50 a piece. So I’m generally running a head each month. And most of the time I tend to forget that I have new credits, so they accumulate. I have a pretty nice sized library through them now, and still have yet to have listened to every book. I’m working through that though.
It’s a nice option, especially if you commute, or for long drives where you know you aren’t going to want to listen to the radio, or to CD’s. And there are classic’s available, and some children’s books – so Beef, you can subject Rowen to the Wizard of Oz, etc, and encourage his reading even further!!!
