Aldoblog

OK, lots of people are pointing to this “parody” video, Microsoft Redesigns the iPod Package, but since it involves the iPod, I thought I’d call a little more attention to it.

I’ve just published a ridiculously long explanation of why the iPod Nano is the best playback device for audiobooks. If you’re interested, here’s the article:

Which iPod Should I Buy?

I want to take screenshots of an iPod screen, to add more documentation and information to Aldo on Audiobooks, but I can’t figure out how to take them. Apple includes terrific screen captures from iPods — both old and new — in their iPod 101 site. How do you do it? Do you just take photos of the screen using a normal camera? The quality of Apple’s screens is too high for that…

Anyone know? Please tell me!

There’s not much about audiobooks (except how to buy them in the iTMS), but Apple’s new iPod 101 is likely to be an extremely useful resource to all the many visitors who are coming here after getting an iPod for Xmas.

When I posted my instructions for importing audiobooks into iTunes and the iPod, it quickly became the single most popular post on this site, both in page views and in comments. I followed it up with a companion piece, covering the differences for MP3 CD audiobooks, and that quickly became the 2nd most popular page on the site. After weeks of on-and-off-again writing, I am replacing those posts with a whole new section of Aldoblog: Aldo on Audiobooks. Please check it out.

Our preferred method for obtaining audiobooks is from Audible.com. Second is from the public library. Third is buying them on MP3 CDs.

I’ve written how Rochelle and I listen to audio books on our iPods. It’s by far the best way we’ve found to fill commute and other dead time, and I frankly barely use my iPod for music; probably 95% of the time, it’s on for audio books. And one character rises above them all: Harry Bosch.

Phillip Torrone’s Audible does Podcasts – the complete guide is a nice write-up of a new feature at Audible.com that supports the automatic download of periodic audible content. Although his article uses the very nice iPodder application to demonstrate the features, there’s no reason why you can’t use the built-in podcasting features of iTunes 4.9. Here are instructions and a couple of screenshots.

Rochelle and I have fallen in love with listening to books on our iPods. We’ve signed up for two books a month through Audible.com, and for me, that pace is actually pretty good. Rochelle goes through them faster, though, and recently started going to the SF Public Library to get more books to listen to. Importing them onto an iPod is not terribly intuitive. This post describes what I think is a fairly optimal process, using only iTunes to do the importing.

2004 was a decent year for us, and as always (at least since I started this blog), I like to take a few moments to reflect on some of the important things that happened.