iPod has a brush with fame
the barrow | David Frith
DECEMBER 07, 2004
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/
0,7204,11584776%5E15388%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

WHEN The Barrow flew from Sydney to Perth recently, our companion for
much of the five-hour trip was Bill Clinton.

The former president was in great form, regaling us with lively stories
of growing up in Hope, Arkansas, New Orleans, Georgetown and Oxford.

The Prez wasn't there in person, of course.

But we did have the pleasure of his company via the spoken version of
his Random House autobiography, My Life recorded by Bill himself,
downloaded to a G5 Power Mac desktop and transferred to an iPod.

On the flight home, we mixed bits of Bill's life with excerpts from
Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, and a bit of Mozart, Miles Davis, Abbey
Lincoln and Norah Jones.

Here at The Barrow, we have become fans of Audible.com, a New
Jersey-based outfit that specialises in spoken-word recordings, of
books, newspapers, magazines, US public radio commentators, comedians,
poetry, political speeches and more.

Audible.com says it has 22,000 titles online, ranging from classics
such as Anna Karenina to the latest Stephen King, Dan Brown or Tom
Clancy thriller.

You can buy them individually – prices range from a few dollars to $30
or so – or you can sign up for a flat-rate monthly subscription. For
the equivalent of $19.25 you can download any audio book each month
plus take any one-month subscription to journals or radio commentaries.

Premium subscribers pay $25 a month, which allows them to download any
two audio books each month.

You don't have to own a Macintosh or an iPod to access Audible.com's
titles. You can audio-stream or download a file to virtually any PC and
either listen from there, transfer it to a music player or handheld
computer, or burn it onto compact disc.

However, the system works especially smoothly with the Mac/iPod
combination.

Apple is a senior partner of Audible.com; its iTunes Music store – only
available in the US and Europe – offers direct access to the Audible
catalogue.

While we wait for the iTunes store to come down under, Australians need
to go through Audible.com.

But, from there, its dead simple, especially if you're a registered
subscriber. Just hit the download button and the Mac's built-in iTunes
software takes care of everything.

In most cases, you're offered a choice of formats: AM-radio quality, FM
quality or MP3 – all will transfer automatically to your iPod if its
connected.

The FM and MP3 files can be big: Bill Clinton's six-hour My Life is
22MB and that's just part one – there's a second volume to come.

Dan Brown's thriller Angels and Demons, a big seller this month, takes
up 49MB.

So you do need a Mac with a fair bit of hard disc space – and
preferably a broadband connection.