Dan Greene

U32 Library Media Specialist....and audio geek


What a difference a year has made! There are many new devices that will play audio-books, or let you read them on a tablet. There is even a new iPad.


It used to be fairly simple, books came in one format. Bound, on paper. Sometimes the covers were hard, sometimes soft. Maybe they were available in different print sizes, but that's pretty much it. Not anymore. Books are available in a wide variety of formats. They can be read, listened to and even watched. If this isn't enough, there are many ways to do each of these.


If you need to be persuaded that audiobooks have value, click on the articles below:


Hear and now: Connecting Outstanding audiobooks to library and classroom instruction.


My Secret Stash of Books on Tape


The Benefits of Audiobooks for children



Wednesday, April 27, 2011

What is DRM? and What is MP3? and How does MP3 work?

Digital rights management (DRM) is a generic term for access control technologies that can be used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to impose limitations on the usage of digital content and devices...


MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of data compression. (approx. 1/12 the size of a traditional wave format).  It is the  standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players. MP3 is an audio-specific format that was designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group as part of its MPEG-1 standard. The group was formed by several teams of engineers in 1991.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Managing Audio-books on a small capacity iPod


I have a collection of audiobooks — purchased on CDs and downloaded from Audible and the iTunes Store — that runs to more than 30 gigabytes. I also have a couple gigs of podcasts, and a few hundred CDs worth of music. In all, my iTunes library runs to almost 50 gigs, in terms of the disk space it requires to store it.
Holding all of that on a full-size hard disk-based iPod, with capacities up to 160 gigabytes, would be no problem. But I personally choose to carry an iPhone, and for working out I use (and recommend) an iPod nano. Both of these devices have far smaller capacities, holding a maximum of 8 gigs of content. That requires careful management of what goes onto my iPod / iPhone, and I’ve developed a few tricks to make it relatively easy.   Continued