Recently Jason Calacanis turned me on to audio books via Audible.com and I have to say i’m really enjoying it. So far I have listened to two books First In Thrist by Darren Rovell and Trade-Off by Kevin Maney, and currently on my third.
I have been listening to the books on my commute to and from the office and I find that I no longer care if the subway is taking a little more time or if Bloomberg’s plan to make the city more congested is working.
The audio format is great for those books that you can continue reading if you skip a chapter or two. For me they work great for biographies and general business overviews. I don’t think the audio format is as good for highly technical books as if you space out the audio keeps going, unlike actually reading and you may miss important parts.
In the future I expect to see more interactive audio books including features like search, sharing, graphics, commenting, etc. All these features will help to improve the overall experience and grow the usage base.
Overall I highly recommend audio books for anyone who has a commute and doesn’t feel they have time to ‘read’ you will find yourself getting thru a few books a month and your blood pressure much lower!!!
Wow, SpeakerText looks very promising indeed!But for audiobooks, my wish would be a lot more modest. Wouldn't it be nice if audiobook productions' meta-data would include time-coding info so that the player can show you where exactly in the text you are and synchronize ebook/audiobook UX.From the looks of it, SpeakerText could easily achieve this without needing the audiobook to be produced that way upfront but I'm not clear how complex your technology is. for example, can it be embedded in my iPhone audiobook player? Come to think of it, if it must be a server based solution, here's a nice application for your technology. Input audiobook (mp3 or whatever format). Output audiobook + time-coding (and maybe + text) meta data.Just thinking out loud...
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