Aldoblog

I’m still waiting for a deluxe boxed set of all the audiobooks, like the deluxe print books set, but if you’re just looking for a great deal on a complete set, packaging be damned, here’s all seven Harry Potter audiobooks at Amazon.com, at a 40% discount from full retail.

It’s still $275, but considering what they cost individually, if you want to own all seven, this is the way to go. The total running time is almost five days — at under $2.50/hour, it’s hard to imagine a better value for your entertainment dollar. Enjoy!

There’s a new web site launched this week, EveryBlock, that aggregates together all of the “news” and makes it available on a very geographically-specific basis — that is, specifically for your block. They launched covering only three cities, but San Francisco is one of them.

Want crime reports for your neighborhood? Got ‘em. Want restaurant inspection reports? Got ‘em. Want reviews of local establishments on Yelp? Got ‘em. They compile standard news outlets, public records, other local sites, and even geo-tagged Flickr photos.

Go to the site, type in your street address, and then spend the next hour (or more) browsing the different pieces of information available. This is seriously interesting. I think in the long run it’ll be as influential as craigslist.

(I have no affiliation with EveryBlock, I just figure that everyone has an interest in what’s happening in their neighborhood, and this looks like a compelling way to find out.)

If you follow the instructions I offer for importing audiobooks on audio or MP3 CDs into iTunes, you end up with a single album with the title of the book, that is composed of sequentially numbered tracks, which make up the chapters or discs of the book. These separate tracks are kind of painful to manage on an iPod (the iPhone and iPod Touch make it a little easier), and are definitely not aesthetically pleasing when viewed in lists in iTunes. One of the most common questions I get from readers is how to merge all of the tracks into a single file, ideally with chapter marks at the right places.

This post isn’t a thorough tutorial on how to accomplish this, merely an expansion of the existing FAQ on the subject. There are all kinds of extra details you might want to consider if you’re as anal retentive as I am about getting all those details “right.” Still, this should give you most of what you would want to know.

This year’s MacHeist includes 11 applications in the bundle, which individually would sell for $368.75. When bought as part of the MacHeist promotion, the whole collection is under $50.

Now, it’s a rare person who would want and use every single one of these applications; there’s just too much variety to have everything fit perfectly. But if even half of them would be useful, then you’re way, way ahead.

For me, the big winners are 1password, TaskPaper, CSSEdit, Snapz Pro, and Pixelmator. Pixelmator alone costs $10 more than the bundle, and I’d been meaning to buy it for over a month, since this terrific review of Pixelmator appeared in Macworld magazine. So buying the bundle was an easy decision.

Maybe it will be for you as well.

If you pay much attention to the technology industry or consumer electronics, you may be aware of a new “e-book” reader from Amazon.com, called the Amazon Kindle. An ebook reader is an electronic device that can display the text of books or magazines onscreen, more crisply than a standard computer, and with the benefit of being able to “fit” more books into one package. That is, an ebook reader can store hundreds of books in a form factor similar to (or smaller than) a single hardback book.

The Amazon Kindle has a bunch of innovative features that are new in an ebook device, the two most important being an always-on wireless connection to the Internet, and the services provided by the (always connected) Amazon Kindle Store. You can learn more about the device’s specific features at the Kindle Store.

There has been a wide range of opinions expressed about the Kindle, from violent dislike to sighs of bliss. Probably the two best, most reasoned opinions come from Andy Ihnatko at the Chicago Sun-Times, who likes the Kindle a lot, and John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who hopes and believes it will fail. (And here are two more that also bring intelligent perspectives.)

Since I don’t own and haven’t even held a Kindle, I hesitate to express an opinion about it. On the one hand, looking at the features list, the device gets a lot of things right. But having a feature is not the same as doing it well; just look at the iPod vs. its competition. The devil’s in the details, and without using one, I can’t say if the feature list is a bunch of checked off boxes, or capabilities that are a delight to use (these reviews make me think the former). And there are also some small-but-serious omissions; for me the number one issue is no backlight, which means I can’t use it in bed without turning on a reading light, which wakes Rochelle up if she’s sleeping — a big no-no.

So I think it’s too early to tell. I would predict success for it, if it was not so relentlessly unstylish, trapped in a case designed for the 1980s. It’s not that style is the most important thing, but it is important.

In the end, the only reason I’m bothering to post about the Kindle at all is because among its many features, it can play audiobooks from Audible.com. As I wrote above, I have no idea if this feature is well-implemented, and I have a hard time imagining it as a good fit for audiobooks in a car while commuting (the form factor is all wrong). But if you’re the sort of person who “goes both ways” with their books (print and audio), you might find the Kindle very interesting.

Disclosure: If you buy a Kindle through the links above, I’ll get a kickback from Amazon. I’m not particularly recommending you do that, but just so you know.

Roxio recently released an update to Toast Titanium 8, which includes, among other things, TiVo Transfer, the officially-sanctioned application for using the TiVoToGo feature of a Series 2 or Series 3 TiVo with Mac OS X. This application is used to move recorded shows off of your TiVo and onto your Mac, where you can play them back, convert them for viewing on your iPod, or archive them to DVD, etc.

The thing is, when I downloaded the ~175 meg update, and opened the disk image, there were five updated applications, but none of them were the updated TiVo Transfer. WTF?

Turns out you just need to run the main Toast application, and use the Extras menu to activate TiVo Transfer. The updated application will be written to the same directory as Toast.

Instead of working on updated versions of my instructions for importing audiobooks into iTunes, I have instead branched out, adding a new section covering a new topic. Announcing Aldo on TiVo!

Currently there is only one article in the section, Playing BitTorrent Downloads on a TiVo Series 3, reflecting a new trick that I figured out for my TiVo, namely downloading video from the Internet and playing it back, in high-definition (HD). It’s not nearly as easy-to-use as iTunes and an Apple TV, but it does work, and with the much wider variety of video content available on the Internet, something that iTunes can’t handle.

Playing BitTorrent Downloads on a TiVo Series 3

The article covers installing and configuring TiVo Desktop software on your computer, downloading video from the Internet using Miro, converting it to a TiVo-compatible format with VisualHub, and transferring it to your TiVo for playback.

Currently the instructions are Mac-only, but a reasonably savvy person could easily figure out how to use them on a PC, with slightly different software (pointers are given in the article).

The unabridged version of The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer is currently free at the iTunes Store. Freebie audiobooks usually last about a week, so get this while you can. (Requires a valid iTunes Store account.)

Here’s the book’s description (from the iTunes Store):

What would you steal if you couldn’t get caught? It started as the perfect crime. Then it took a turn for the worse. Charlie and Oliver Caruso are brothers who work at Green & Greene, a private bank so exclusive you need two million dollars just to be a client. But when the door of success slams in their faces, they’re faced with an offer they can’t refuse: three million dollars in an abandoned account. No one knows it exists, and even better, it doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s a foolproof crime. More important, for Charlie and Oliver, it’s a way out of debt and the key to a new life. All they have to do is take the money. But when they do, they quickly discover they’ve got a lot more on their hands than the prize. Before they can blink, a friend is dead – and the bank, the Secret Service, and a female private investigator are suddenly closing in. Trapped in a breakneck race to stay alive, Charlie and Oliver are bout to discover a secret that will test their trust and forever change their lives.

Note: I haven’t listened to this, so I have no idea if it’s any good. The reviews on the iTunes Store are mixed. But what the heck, it’s free, right?

On Saturday I took 13 BeBoxes to the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, with the intent of offering them to passers-by, getting them out of the house and into a good home.

I spent a bit of time creating a flyer to advertise them, and packed up a kit with stapler, tape, marker, etc., so that I could put them up in good places. Then I drove 45 minutes to the Computer History Museum, where the festival was taking place.

The second person who saw the flyer said, “OK, I’ll take them.” I hadn’t even posted it yet! After 10 minutes of transferring from my car to his truck, the BeBoxes had a new home, and better prospects for being refurbished and restored to their former, if not glory, at least functionality.

Rochelle hasn’t stopped smiling since I got back with an empty car. And I have to admit, with the CRAP efforts we’ve made in the last two months, it seems like we might recover the use of our third bedroom before the end of the year. That will make us both smile!

Overheard at the office:

“I haven’t seen you in class recently, given up the gym?”

“Yes. Vodka is the new Spinning.”

(Spinning is a form of exercise, usually very high intensity.)