December 6, 2005

R. I. P. CDs Part 2: The Spoken Word

Aidin Vaziri, music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, has a great article up (thanks to Corante for the link) entitled R.I.P. CDs
Consider the alternatives to compact discs: iPods, satellite radio and hours of free or cheap digital music to download legally. Begone, bright discs and pesky cases! Begone! (that’s a mouthful huh?). He focuses on music so let me offer a quick companion article covering the spoken word. You might want to read his article first to get the full context:

10. Audible.com/Apple iTunes – As much as I sometimes get frustrated that Audible could be so much more than it is, I have to admit that they do a lot right. They’ve got a great selection, affordable pricing plans and a lot of free stuff. Plus, they basically invented portable spoken word audio and for that I thank them profusely.

9. The Teaching Company – Yup, The Teaching Company finally offers digital downloads. This is a very cool development because lugging around their voluminous courses can be a bit cumbersome. Only a smattering of courses are available for download but we’ll hope their entire catalog is made available soon.

8. Nightingale-Conant – Another newcomer to the download world. We’ll never know but my guess is that Nightingale-Conant has single-handedly added billions (I don’t think I’m exaggerating here) to the world’s economy through the people it has helped to inspire and to educate.

7. IT Conversations – I love, love, love what Doug Kaye is doing here. And you’re only going to see more of it as his Conversations Network gathers more steam. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Doug Kaye and the Conversations Network will change the world. You heard it hear first.

6. Net Library and Overdrive – Free audio book downloads for everyone? How cool is that! Sure it’s the Windows Media format (not compatible with iPods) and sure you have to have a library account and sure they expire just like regular library books but did I mention that these audio book downloads are free?

5. Learning Languages On Audio – I can’t tell you how cool it is to be able to learn Spanish when you’re walking to the store or pick up a bit o’ Italiano when you’re running on the treadmill. While a lot of this stuff is still available only on CD publishers like Pimsleur (Simon & Schuster), Berlitz and Living Language have made a good chunk of their foreign language material available for download.

4. Podcasts – A year ago I didn’t know what a podcast was. Now I think I’d have a hard time living without them. There is so much good stuff out there and I think we’re only scratching the surface of what we’ll see eventually. Personally the podcasts that are my must-listens include IT Conversations, Diggnation (from the guys @ Digg.com), a new favorite Venture Voice and our very own Zaadz Daily Wisdom Podcast.

3. Audio Cassettes – For some reason I still love the good ol’ cassette. Sure they’re bulky and all but I love being able to carry them from place and place and always have them remember where I am. A cool thing about cassettes too is that you can find older material from people like Wayne Dyer on eBay that isn’t available anywhere else.

2. Free Audio – I love to pay for my audio but I also like free stuff. Like free speeches from Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Like free audio books such as Common Sense and As a Man Thinketh. That’s good stuff and the more I save on this stuff the more I can spend on other stuff right? (I think I just set a world record for number of times using the word “stuff” in the same sentence…)

1. Audio CDs – Wait…wasn’t this supposed to be about the death of the CD? Yeah, I guess it was but I have to admit that there is still a lot of stuff that I listen to on CD. As far as I know the Sony rootkit wasn’t installed on any audio books so spoken word listeners are in the clear. And most cars only have CD players which means that CDs are often the best option for many people.

The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter whether you’re listening to a download, a CD or a cassette. The important thing is that you’re listening. There are more choices out there than ever before. So get busy and start Learning Out Loud OK? 🙂

December 6, 2005

Another re-design and a DRM primer

Just a day after we announce Audible’s new re-design I notice that Simply Audiobooks now has a brand new site and that they are selling downloadable audio books. There’s certainly a lot going on in the audio book space. This brings the number of major audio book sites that have undergone significant re-launches/site re-designs in the last couple of months to three: Audible.com, SoundsGood.com and Simply Audiobooks.

Simply Audiobooks is selling downloads using the Microsoft Digital Rights Management (DRM). Unfortuately this means that they won’t be compatible with the Apple iPod. Here’s a quick primer on audio book DRM (for those that care):

-Digital Rights Managements or DRM refers to the technology that makes it difficult to illegally copy or share an audio book. For instance, you might be able to listen to an audio book you’ve purchased on two different computers but not on three. That would be an example of DRM in action.

-Apple’s DRM is called FairPlay and they do not license it. The only company that can use Apple’s DRM for spoken word audio is Audible.com and that arrangement is in place through 2007. What this means is that if you are looking to purchase an audio book with DRM you must go through Audible. Of course if the audio book does not have DRM (e.g., an MP3 file purchased here at LearnOutLoud) then you can play it on the iPod with no problems.

-Microsoft’s DRM is called PlaysForSure. Anything you purchase with the Microsoft DRM attached does play for sure…unless you happen to have an Apple iPod. This is definitely a downside of the Microsoft DRM since 75%+ off all portable media devices are iPods. The companies utilizing the PlaysForSure DRM include SoundsGood.com, Simply Audiobooks and Jiggerbug.

-While DRM does offer protection to publishers and content producers it isn’t without its downside. There can be compatability issues and other usability problems such as not being able consume your legally downloaded content as you would like to. There’s also an additional cost to implementing DRM.

Anyway, I’ve probably told you more than you ever wanted to know about DRM so I’ll stop for now. If you’ve got any thoughts or questions about DRM let’s continue the discussion in the forums.

December 5, 2005

In Today’s Audio Learning News…

A few quick newsworthy audio learning-related items to pass along:

AmigoFish Launches – Dave Slusher has launched AmigoFish, a new service to help you find podcasts you’ll like based on your ratings of podcasts you’ve already listened to. It’s about time something like this came out. I’m very surprised that Slusher beat Yahoo, Odeo, Podcast Alley and others to the punch on this. I hope he does well with it. It’s definitely a much-needed service that becomes increasingly valuable as more people use it.

New Audible Re-Design – Audible.com has unveiled a fairly significant site re-design. I don’t what to make of the new look. I think I liked their old site better. It was more inviting. And adding to “Beta” moniker to their logo is just a bit too trendy. If you have a brand new service you’re launching telling everyone it’s still in Beta is kinda cool but I’m not sure you need to do this just because you’ve redesigned your site…

Bookchips to Be Available in Airports – Audiofy announced a deal with Airport Wireless Rental to make their Audiobook Chips available in airport stores. This makes a lot of sense as it’s a great way to business travels and others to grab portable audio to listen to while in the air. I think they’ll do real well with this.

Zaadz Daily Wisdom Podcast Launches – OK, one internal item of news. 🙂 Today we started sending out the Zaadz Daily Wisdom Podcast, a daily podcast of inspirational quotes and teaches. Check it out when you get a chance. We think you’ll dig it. To subscribe go to https://www.learnoutloud.com/wisdom or search the iTunes directory for “zaadz”.

OK, that’s the news and I am outta here!

November 27, 2005

IT Conversations

I’ve been a big fan of IT Conversations ever since I started listening. I simply don’t think that there is anyone else out there producing audio content as consistently solid as what Doug Kaye and his legion of volunteers are doing. And what started out as a lot of conversations about technology has evolved into so much more. Here’s a recent sampling of episodes I enjoyed listening to:

Tim Zak’s interview with Ethan Zuckerman on the subject of Africa and social entrepreneurship from the Globeshakers Podcast
Moira Gunn’s interview with Dr. Andrew Weil on the subject of aging and longevity from the Tech Nation Podcast
John Battelle’s conversation with Vinod Khosla from the Web 2.0 Conference

This is just a sampling of some of the amazing stuff that’s out there. We’ve re-done our listing of the IT Conversations podcasts and added a simple re-direct for you to be able to find them:

https://www.learnoutloud.com/itconversations

You can find all of these programs at ITConversations.com as well. This is just our way of trying to give this wealth of amazing audio content some more exposure. Also, we’ve added in links for one-click subscriptions through iTunes and to product pages on Odeo and Yahoo! Podcasts to make it even easier for you.

Please don’t forget to support IT Conversations as it is a listener-supported non-profit. Here’s a link to go to if you would like to donate. Finally, check out Doug’s Conversations Network. I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record about this but I really feel that what he will be doing with this will change the world.

November 18, 2005

Bono Out Loud

I’ve been a huge fan of U2 since I was back in middle school and it’s been fun to see them grow and evolve over the years. What makes the band special for me is the message behind the music, a message of hope mixed with an urgent call for social activism. I’ve gotten a chance to see them in concert a few times this year and it’s an amazing experience. Really tough to put into words for those who haven’t been to a show.

Anyway, Rolling Stone just published an interview with Bono as a podcast. As far as I know this is one of the first times they’ve done something like this. Very, very cool. We’ve put this up on our site and here’s the link:

Bono: The Rolling Stone Interview Podcast

I cruised around a bit tonight to see what other Bono audio material I could find and found another great interview that was posted as part of the Back Story Podcast from the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s in three parts and you can access it from the following link:

Chronicle Podcasts: Back Story Podcast

I also came across an interview with Bono that we already had up on the site. Haven’t listened to it yet but I’ll definitely check it out soon:

TimesTalks: Bono

Last but not least I’ll have to throw in a couple of links to U2 podcasts. Haven’t listened to these yet but if you’re a big nut like I am you may want to check them out:

The @U2 Podcast
U2Source.com – U2Chatcast

Quick reminder: If you haven’t join the One Campaign yet please do so. If we all do our part our generation can be the one that makes history by making poverty history.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

November 18, 2005

How to “Rent” Audio CD’s from Amazon.com for under $10

I just caught this post from “Robert”, a prolific poster over on iLounge.com. Do note Robert’s disclaimer that in order for this to be legal you need to completely erase the digital file before you sell the used CDs. As long as you do this then you are completely legitimate.

How to “Rent” Audio CD’s from Amazon.com for under $10

A little bit of a pain but not a bad way to inexpensively listen to audio books. Of course, we would appreciate your business so feel free to buy your new CDs from us and then go to Amazon to sell them. 🙂

November 16, 2005

How to Become an Audio Learning Junkie, Part One

A bunch of people have asked for it so I think it’s time I finally produced. It’s time to write the definitive guide to audio learning. The thought of sitting down in front of Microsoft Word and cranking it out bored me so instead I’m going to blog about it in a bunch of installments and then once it’s done we’ll wrap it, put a bow on it and post it in the articles section of our site.

Why Audio Learning?

Let’s start with the most basic and most important question: Why should you learn on audio? For me the answer is pretty easy. I truly feel that how you spend your “dead time” is one of the most important factors in becoming successful and achieving your goals. Sure, you can listen to boring talk radio on your drive to work or pop in that CD you’ve heard 100 times before. But the minute you start to view drive time as learning time everything changes.

A while back I blogged about something from Brian Tracy’s newsletter. It’s so good that it bears repeating here:

Your mind is your most precious asset. You must be continually working to increase the quality of your thinking. One of the best ways is to turn driving time into learning time. Listen to educational audio cassettes in your car. The average driver according to the American Automobile Association, drives 12,000 to 25,000 miles each year, spending 500 to 1000 hours that you spend each year in your car. That is the equivalent of 12 1/2 to 25 forty-hour weeks. This is the same as two full university semesters spent behind the wheel of your car each year.

If you did nothing but use that traveling time as learning time, this decision alone could make you one of the best educated people of your generation. Many people have gone from rags to riches simply by listening to audio programs as they drive to and from work.

So for me that’s the main reason why I love audio learning. Books that I never thought I would listen to. Languages that I never thought I’d learn. Ideas that I never thought I’d be exposed to. All of that is now at my fingertips and the best part is that it doesn’t need to take up one additional second of my day.

What Can I Learn?

Another common question. The answer? Just about anything. Certain things work better with audio. There’s no doubt about that. At the top of my list are foreign language titles. We have a tremendous selection on our site and some of the ones you’ll definitely want to check out include titles from Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone and Transparent Language. The goal of becoming bilingual one day used to seem daunting to me. It no longer is. I fully expect to become fluent in at least one, if not two, or maybe even three, additional languages at some point in my life. It’s not easy but it certainly is easier with programs like this that you can listen to while commuting, exercising, etc.

Next up? University courses. There’s an amazing amount of college and university-level material available on audio. On the best sources of this material are courses from The Teaching Company. If you’ve never listened to a Teaching Company lecture you are in for a real treat. Remember that one great professor you had back in college? Well The Teaching Company scours the country looking for professors like that and makes a high-quality recording of one of their courses. Very, very cool.

I could go on and on but let me offer just one more area of content for your enjoyment and educational advancement. That’s the area of self-development. Chances are that regardless of who you are there is an aspect of your life that you are looking to get better in. Maybe it’s your diet or your spirituality or your relationships. Audio learning offers you a tremendous way to “work on” this aspect of your life without having to take additional time out of your day.

Someone looking to improve their diet could check out Andrew Weil’s The Beginner’s Guide to Healthy Eating or Tony Robbins’ Living Health. Folks looking for spiritual guidance may find it in an audio book from Wayne Dyer or C. S. Lewis. People seeking better relationships could listen a book like The Relationship Cure or Marianne Williamson’s classic A Return To Love.

There is SO much to learn on audio it’s unbelievable. This article isn’t going to be a sales pitch but do check out our Catalog where you can find almost 10,000 different audio learning resources.

OK, I’m Sold. Where Do I Start?

Good, you’ve joined the Audio Learning Revolution. Welcome aboard! The first thing to figure out is where and how you are going to listen to your stuff. For starters let’s pick the obvious time that people have to audio learn: your morning commute. Remember when that used to be a time of drudgery? When your options were limited to bad talk radio, commercials or more bad talk radio (check out this link for a humorous take on those options)?

Those days are over. Audio learning allows you to not only not hate your commute. After a while you actually start to enjoy it. Many of the friends and family that I’ve turned on to audio learning now can’t imagine their lives without it.

So what do you do if you want to turn your vehicle into a “university on wheels?” Well for starters let’s look at your options for mobile learning:

1. Cassette Players – Cassettes are going the way of the dinosaur but many vehicles still have cassette players. There are a couple of cool things about cassettes. For starters, they have a self-bookmarking feature built-in in that you’ll always be able to pick up right where you left off. That’s nice for the times when you want to move your learning from the car to some other place. In addition, cassettes are fairly easy to find at libraries because most libraries have stockpiles of them and they aren’t in as high of demand any more.

The downsides of cassettes? For starters they are bulky. Carrying around a mountain of cassette tapes where you go with is not exactly a good time. In addition, a lot of newer material isn’t even being produced on cassette.

2. CD Players – OK, now you’ve joined the 21st century. Virtually every vehicle being sold these days has a CD player. That’s one of the main reasons that the majority of audio learning content is still sold on CD despite the tremendous growth in the popularity of portable mp3 players. Just about every audio learning title produced these days is available on CD.

I only have two issues with CDs. First, they are also bulky. Not as bad as cassettes but still not ideal (as we’ll see in a minute). Second, they don’t have a bookmarking capability. If I want to listen to part of a CD when I workout in the morning and the remainder when I drive to work I have to write down the track I left off on. Not very elegant. While CDs are currently ubiquitous, they are slowly losing ground to…

3. Portable Audio Players – The iPod Revolution is definitely upon us. You can’t swing a dead cat on a university campus these days without hitting someone wearing those sleek white headphones. Over 30 million iPods have been sold to date and with the holidays approaching and red hot iPod Nanos and Video iPods available, that number is likely jump significantly.

Portable audio players represent the future of audio learning because they allow you to pack an amazing amount of content on a very small device (have you seen the new Nano, they’re crazy small!). In addition, you can bookmark files, speed up or slow down the content and much more. Plus, you can listen to podcasts. (What are podcasts you ask? Check out our article Introduction To Podcasting for the low-down.)

Yes, portable audio players are an audio learning junkie’s dream. I got my iPod Mini abou a year and a half ago and I literally could not imagine life without it. There is just one bit of difficulty though. For many people, getting the iPod (or any other portable media device) to play friendly with a vehicle isn’t always a piece of cake.

I’m going to do the unthinkable and leave you hanging in suspense on that one. When I return we’ll run down the ways to hook your portable media player to your vehicle, talk about the various services, software and companies that are out there to enable audio learning, discuss file formats and what they mean to you and cover some ways to save money. Stay tuned! (Or just get subscribed.)

November 16, 2005

Headphones Redux

A little while back I blogged about my quest to find the perfect headphones to run with. I ended up getting the Shure E2c headphones and the Sony MDR-A34L headphones. I have to admit, I’m happy with both decisions.

The Sony pair is good for running. They are pretty basic but they don’t pop out of my ears at all which is the main thing you’re looking for when you’re out for a jog. They are also entirely plastic so sweat isn’t much of a problem. The only downside is that the cord is bit on the shortish and lightish side so it bounces around a lot when you run. It’s more of an annoyance than anything else though. I would recommend these to runners looking for a basic pair of headphones that gets the job done.

As for the Shure headphones, at first I thought I would hate them but now it turns out that I love them. The first few days they were a pain in the ass. They didn’t stay in my ears and just felt weird. But after a few days they “adjusted” and now I love them. I haven’t tried to run with them yet, in part because they cancel a bunch of noise (minor safety hazard) and in part because I think sweat would junk up the earpieces. But I do love them for walking around outside because they block out traffic noise and allow you to listen to stuff at a much lower volume.

Long story short, both of these sets of headphones are great for other fellow audio learning junkies. While it’s still tough to beat the white iPod headphones for style these definitely offer more in the way of functionality.

November 14, 2005

Audio books can be a great learning tool

Nothing we haven’t said before but a good article nonetheless. 🙂

Audio books can be a great learning tool

November 9, 2005

Stanford Lectures on iTunes

So I figured that since at least two people e-mailed me (thanks Dave and Brian!) separately today about the Stanford Lectures on iTunes I probably had better blog about it. 🙂 The market for academic podcast is exploding right now. At the start of the fall quarter/semester I was aware of probably two or three colleges and universities that were podcasting lectures. Now, according to a glance at Thomson’s academic podcast directory it appears that there are dozens. And this growth will only accelerate as professors have a few weeks off over the winter break and have some time to try to figure out what this whole podcasting thing is all about.

We’ve definitely only scratched the surface of this trend. It’s not too difficult to imagine a future in which virtually every college and university course is podcasted. But that begs a few questions. Are the lectures free or is there a charge for them? Are they open to the public or restricted to students of the school or people enrolled in the class? How will colleges and universities deal with the intellectual property issues surrounding audio (and most likely video in the not-too-distant future)? It’s going to be interesting to watch and I’m sure that there will be a wide spectrum of how universities will handle this ranging from those that take MIT’s apporach of putting as much out there for free as possible to colleges and universities that will be very protective of their content.

It also raises an interesting debate for us. Academic podcasts are a perfect inclusion for LearnOutLoud but at the rate they are coming online it’s almost impossible to put together a directory in-house. So we’re discussing creative ways that we can tie these podcasts in with our directoy which already offers some similar content include lectures from The Teaching Company and Barnes and Noble’s Portable Professor series. We would love to hear your suggestions. If you have some ideas for the best way for us to integrate this rapidly expanding world with our existing site please shoot an e-mail to suggestions@learnoutloud.com. Thanks!