21 Nov 07 Podcasts
I’ve been adding to my podcast “portfolio” a little more this morning. I already get the Wall Street Journal each weekday morning.
Today, I added some of the Time Podcasts. I also get the daily newspod from the BBC, which gives an interesting round up, and some analysis of current world events, and is about 35 mins in length
SDR news is another interesting, and short podcast I get each day.
All these Podcasts can be subscribed to, and one can also listen to them as and when, without a subscription. They are all free.
Tags: bbc, podcast, podcasts, sdr, wall street journal, weekday morning
14 Nov 07 Sandisk Sansa m240
After reading reviews about various mp3 players I settled on this little blighter.
It’s small and compact as you can see. It’s the 1GB model, which is sufficient for me to be able to get 8-10 hours of music and podcasts onto.
I got it primarily to play audiobooks, and podcasts, but as it has DRM built in, I can also use it on Napster’s To Go service as well, which in my opinion is darn good value for unlimited downloads for only $14.99 a month.
It takes an AAA battery which has an advertised life of around 19 hours, and it seemed to hold to this quite well.
The sound quality is excellent. It’s much better than I expected it to be. Usually the earplugs you get with such a product are quite tinny and nasty, but these are quite good, with a decent bass response and clear treble.
You can play MP3, WMA, and Audible Audiobooks on this device.
It also has an FM radio, with 20 presets, and you can also record your own voice. It synchronizes flawlessly with Windows Media Player ( I have version 11 on the Windows XP machine here). I’ve not yet tried it on a Linux set up.
This little baby set me back $38.99 at Office Depot, as they were doing a special deal on them when I walked in.
Tags: aaa battery, audible, audiobooks, baby set, bass response, drm, earplugs, fm radio, linux set, little baby, mp3 players, mp3 wma, napster, office depot, podcasts, reading reviews, sound quality, treble, windows media player, windows xp
07 Nov 07 Audiobooks
I’ve listened to pod-casts for some time, but not audio-books.
What’s the difference you may ask? Well, a pod-cast is often a mixture of music and chat or simply spoken word on it’s own. It can be likened more to a radio show, than a book.
An audio book, on the other hand, is the reading of a book! They are usually quite professional productions, (as are many pod-casts), and unlike many pod-casts, they are NOT usually free.
I recently took out a trial at audible.com, and got a PDF copy of a very interesting magazine called Audio File. I printed it out and found it a most enlightening read, as it explained what goes into an audio-book production.
For my trial audio-book I downloaded the unabridged version of “Roots” the now 30 year old epic starting in 1750 and ending some 200 years later.
Once I get to actually listen to it (and it’s over 30 hours long), I’ll write a short review.
Tags: audible, audio book, audiobook production, audiobooks, enlightening, mixture, Music, pdf copy, podcast, podcasts, professional productions, radio show, roots, spoken word, unabridged version, years later
