Quintessential Me

Keith got married, and I discover Audible.

My brother who has been living in Utah for some time is now going to be in Dallas for the summer. He and his wife will be within weekend-visiting distance and I think my wife and I will take full advantage.

My wife has met Keith's bride somewhat briefly. I myself have met her only a touch more.

While my wife was too chicken to fly, I have always enjoyed flying. Until I was 10, my dad was a military man and we traveled the globe. As a kid I found take-offs very fun. Landings were ok, but they lack the fun. As an adult, I find the seats more cramped and the cabin-whine annoying, but it is still my preferred way to travel for trips that are more than a day's drive.

I flew to his wedding in Utah.

When Keith and Leslie made their first trip to Texas, her father recommended Audible. (It's often too easy to ignore good advice.) Audible is an online audio book club. There are only two real ways to enjoy legal downloaded audiobooks: the iTunes store and Audible. There are other services, but their selections are limited as most publishers require some form of Digital copyRights Management commonly referred to as DRM. Audible and iTunes provide DRM.

iTunes is a great music source that also sells some audiobooks. Audible is an incredible audiobook source that also sells miniscule musical selections.

My wife could spend hundreds at iTunes. I could spend hundreds at Audible. This is the very reason that I joined one of their monthly listener programs. For $15-22/month one can get one to two audio books a month. (It's a little complicated because you get credits, but I haven't found a book yet that required multiple credits.) This means I scale my purchases back from what I want to one audiobook a month. One of the perks of signing up for a 1 year commitment to audible is that they will sell you an iPod for one-hundred dollars cheaper than you can otherwise get one. We decided to take advantage of this and purchase the entry level iPod video for my wife since I already had a Nano.

It is remarkable that my iPod drove the desire to subscribe to audible which drove the desire to take advantage of the iPod savings.

iPods are great products that I would heartily recommend with only a single complaint to Apple: The screens are back-lit but the buttons aren't... At night, skipping a track on a car-docked iPod requires flipping on cabin lights or fairly good memorization of control location. Believe it or not, it's more difficult than it should be. While switching a playlist could result in a dangerous situation, simply skipping a track should be easy and is sometimes an ordeal without back-lit buttons. It's simply too easy at night to hit the center button or the wrong part of the outer ring.

This complaint is somewhat minimal when I consider the number of hours I use it in the daylight and the enjoyment and ease of having over 20 CDs stored into a player that is smaller than a credit card except for being about an 1/8th to a 1/4th of an inch thick instead of being a few millimeters thick.

When I see Keith's wife this summer, I'll be sure to tell her to thank her dad for telling me about his Nano and Audible subscription. And by the way, should you decide that Audible is the way for you to go, please let me know!

Happy Listening!

posted by mokru @ 2:34 PM