April 11, 2005

Tips for Audio Learning

I’ve been scouring forums at iPod lounge and just wanted to share some points of interest on the nature of audio book listening:

“Do you exercise, mow the lawn (special ear buds necessary), run errands, clean out the garage, clean out closets, sit in the bright sunlight of a beach or pool where reading is difficult, etc? If you do even a few of these, you would be surprised how much time you can clock every month. As long as an activity is not mentally consuming or involves other people, why not capitalize on that time to listen to a book. Also, sounds like you might prefer sitting in a chair and listen to a book — I do that myself when into an engrossing book.”

“Actually, reading a book makes me very sleepy. When I sit down to read, I’ll more often than not be able to read only a few pages, without much comprehension, before I feel like sleeping. On the other hand, while listening to a book, I can move around and do things like work out, laundry, dishes, drive, etc.”

“I listen to audio books while, driving, exercising, doing yard work, housework, anything that does not require concentration to the other task.”

“I find there is a thin line where you can focus on the audible book and perform another task simultaniously, and perform both well. There seem to be an inbetween brain state where I can drive, work, etc. and listen to a book. If I am not in that place the book goes into the back ground or the task suffers. It’s hard to explain, but there a place I can go to where I can multitask. I find as I get older the line gets thinner and thinner.”

“I listen to audio books when I go to bed. I do a 15 minute sleep timer EVERY night. Sometimes I’ll do 30 minutes. I usually fall asleep in about 5 minutes. But it’s such a great way to get to sleep. Other than that, I try to pick some sort of house project to work on at night – sewing curtains, re-wiring a switch, painting a room, building shelves, etc – that is a perfect time for the books.”

So there you go. Learn Out Loud.

April 8, 2005

Kiyosaki and Some Audio Book Forums You Should Enliven

Heya, today I put up the Robert T. Kiyosaki page for all you guys and gals that are wondering how to handle your money. The Rich Dad series is quite, quite… QUITE extensive and could probably make anyone rich if they listened to it enough. Hope this page is of some help!

I’m also going to give you some links to some web forums me and David have been haunting this week. Some of them could use a little new blood and I think the good people visiting our site are just the kind of well, blood that needs to be put into these forums.

The first one I want to point your direction to is Audio Books Central. This site has quite a few members but the traffic ain’t so hot. Nobody responds to me and I’m getting lonely. There’s some good topics however and its a shame people are picking up the baton a little more over there.

The next one I’ve been looking at is the MSN message Board On Audio Books. This one has a real proffessional layout and it informs me of when I’ve got replies via my email address. Real handy. Me and David have been talking on this one alot.

Then there’s a new monster: the ipod lounge forums. This one is so busy and so cool that you could probably spend a day posting on it. In fact, I think david just did today. Excessive, but fun. I reccomend this one the most, not only if you want to talk about audio books in the spoken word section, but also if you have any (and I mean ANY) concern with regards to your IPOD. Don’t worry, I don’t have an Ipod yet either and I’m still finding ways to be relevent on this forum. Go there right away!

Hope all is well friends. I’m going to go jog now and get the rest of the day’s light before it gets too dark. Bye.

April 8, 2005

Indie Audio Book Scene

I was just turned on today to what may be an underground independent audio book and spoken word scene. And it seems there should be. Who’s going to stand up against Simon & Schuster Audio and Time Warner AudioBooks of our feudal corporate globe. Because let’s face it. Even though hundreds of thousands of books are published each year, the stuff that makes it to audio book is usually the junky best sellers. As the audio publishing industry expands (and it is the fastest growing sector of the publishing industry) then hopefully some more obscure and more intelligent material will be recorded for our listening pleasure.

In the meantime though there is an independent spoken word scene. And with digital download this is a lot easier. Today I was suggested a few sites:

www.mperia.com
www.cdbaby.com

And these are independent music resources with spoken word sections from indie authors and narrators who charge nominal fees for their stuff to be downloaded. Here’s another punk rock label with spoken word titles I found:

www.alternativetentacles.com

Granted I don’t think a lot of indie rockers are intelligent enough to lay down their own high quality audio book but they go to Noam Chomsky and get him to do it. Any way it’s interesting. I don’t think the state of audio content is anywhere near the dire straits of the popular, radio-played music world, but with the world of podcasting and more digital downloading of spoken word, popular independent producers of great audio learning content could start popping up. And I guess by independent I mean not owned by giant multinational corporations, but I think a lot of audio book publishers are more or less independent or so we think but the AOL-Time Warner’s and Rupert Murdoch’s Harper-Collins’s of the world cast a wide swath. What I’m saying is we need a punk rock genre of audio book. Maybe.

April 8, 2005

Audio Samples For Rent!

Just wanted to give a note to all of you that the Brian Tracy Author Page is up and running and looks to be a great addition to our other author pages. Tracy is best suited for those that are interested in pursuing or enhancing their business career. From what I’ve looked over today, he has many titles that zero in particularly on sales and marketing.

In other news, I wanted to give you all some more links to sites that feature audio samples. This time I’m focusing on audio membership sites, figuring they have to feature some kind of sample right? Well…..

Audioqueue is first up. With categories like “Appearance” and “Feelings” I felt like their page layout was a little too… inaccessible maybe? I went on, hoping for detailed product descriptions repleat with 20 minute audio samples for you all to hear. I was again, as per usual in this hard, hard life, disapointed. No samples, just a picture (sometimes even that isn’t available) and a brief description followed by a plea to sign up for their 20 buck a month club. I might check the competition out before I go with you guys.

Audio-To-Go features no samples and their product pages are so brief they just fit them all on one big page insteand of breaking them up individually. I think I like them, but I guess their presentation doesn’t it really do it for me either. Seems to me, these audio book clubs are forming a pattern of no audio samples. How am I supposed to know what I’m getting from a picture? What if I’m one of those guys that’s just casaully browsing. What if I’m not an avid reader and I don’t know who an author is? This stuff seems catered to people in the know and I feel like a loser.

Audiobookclub, what my good friend and co-worker david has called the BMG of audiobooks, has alot of samples! I’m listening to this one from James Patterson’s “3rd Degree”. I have absolutely no idea what this book is about other than that it seems to be some kind of detective story involving avid runners. Hah. The audio sample is ok. For some reason I want GREAT quality audio samples because I feel I deserve nothing less when I get something for nothing.

Simplyaudiobooks was by far my favorite of the audio book rental sites. This is just the tops as far as presentation and product description. They basically have all your basic top sellers but alas, they don’t have any audio samples. My search was in vain, but I left the place with a smile so I guess the world isn’t so bad after all.

Ok, so this sort of turned into an amateur hour referendum on the state of audio book rental subscription sites. I didn’t mean for that to happen and I think its giving me an idea for a new article. As it stands, i found no audio samples on any of these sites but I hope the information is useful nonetheless. At least it was for me. I think I’ll go now. Final thoughts? Uh, the grapes I’m currently eating in front of the computer are real sour. Yeah! Have a good day wherever you are.

April 6, 2005

Found a Great Forum For iPod Audio Book Listeners

Today I found some very popular forums at www.ipodlounge.com. This site looks like an awesome resource for iPod lovers and I’ve just begun to look at it. I downloaded their free 2005 iPod Lounge Buyers’ Guide. And I also checked out their Books and Spoken Word section in their forums which discuss Books on CD, Audible.com, and Podcasts all relating to your iPod. Check out the forums for yourself: http://forums.ipodlounge.com

April 6, 2005

Audio Samples On The Web

We’ve been recording some podcasts recently and to spice things up a bit we’ve been giving a showcase of a few handpicked audio samples culled from various web resources. Not every retailer has an audio sample of a given book so it became a search that yielded only a few results. I want to give you a look at the websites that offer samples. As you’ll see, some of them offer an extensive selection (audible) while others are just plain paltry (Audio Renaissance)

First off we’ll start with the aforementioned audible.com. They basically have every title they carry repleat with a good sample Most are good quality here’s one for “America: The Audiobook ”

By far the most generous with their audio samples is Nightingale Conant’s website. They offer multiple samples from a given book with added bonus of each sample being an average of about 15 minutes long. You basically can hear the whole book at that rate. Quality is crummy but you get what you pay for on this count. Here’s some words of wisdom from Brian Tracy’s “The Power Of Clarity”

By far the worst supplier of audio books is Audio Rensaissance. I hate to rage on AR because I believe they are one of the best providers of quality audio books and lets face it, audio samples are a perk, not a normal feature. Nevertheless, they have nothing more than a small page of samples for their newer releases. This is great if you want to hear a brand new hot off the press best seller, but now if you want to hear one of their more obscure titles. Audible just plain beats them to the punch. Here’s a look at their page for audio samples.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you a brief look at what’s out there. There are only a few more pages that offer samples. There are a few retailers and publishers that offer samples for select titles. The most notable and comprehensive providers are: Blackstone Audio, Harper Collins, and Time Warner Audio. If you look through their catalogues, you’ll see many if not most offer samples. I do think this is a unique and cool feature every retailer/publisher should offer. It not only gives a better example of what you’re about to buy, but it also utilizes the medium in a special way unique to its strengths. Yeah. Hope this was of some help.

April 5, 2005

Self Development Publishers

In preparations for tomorrows Focus on Self Development podcast I entered in 4 more Self Development Publishers and they are:

New Harbinger Publications
New Dimensions World Broadcasting Network
Effective Learning Systems
Himalayan Institute Press

The one that interested me most was New Dimensions World Broadcasting Network which has produced over 2,000 radio programs of dialogues with leaders in every walk of life. In depth talks with everyone major in self development are here:

Ram Dass
Joseph Campbell
Shakti Gawain
Andrew Weil
Wayne Dyer
Leo Buscaglia
Bernie Siegel
The Dalai Lama
Deepak Chopra
Thomas Moore
Marianne Williamson
Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Dan Millman
Thich Nhat Hanh
Neale Donald Walsch
Caroline Myss
Eckhart Tolle
Jack Kornfield
Louise Hay

And the list goes on and on with artists, religious leaders, and tons of people I haven’t heard of. Literally thousands of titles that you can get from them on audio download. And many of them have lengthy samples that you can listen to online. An enormous resource from some of the greatest minds of our time.

April 4, 2005

Author Pages Are Up!

Been alot going on over here at the Learn Out Loud HQ. On my end, the week’s work was putting up some author pages which when all is said and done are probably the best resource I could possibly invent for finding every audio resource by a given author. You even get a nice biographical sketch researched by yours truly and a snazzy picture. I want to give you all a set of links for the current pages that are up. So without further blabbering here you are:

Dan Millman
Joseph Campbell
Wayne Dyer
Tom Peters
Andrew Weil
Zig Ziglar
The Dalai Lama
Deepak Chopra

Below the biographies you will see 2 or three featured items and then a list of every title I compiled by each other. This list was culled from every online audio book retailer I have at my disposal (the list is growing geometrically), and many of them are titles offered only by the author. So hopefully you’ll find some things there that you didn’t know existed before. Enjoy!

April 4, 2005

The Gargantuan Power of Anthony Robbins

We’ve put up I believe every single audio and video title that Anthony Robbins offers now. Today I finished putting up the individual PowerTalk! series that Audio Renaissance has released. These consist of one tape of Tony Robbins talking about a subject and on the second tape conducting an interview with one of the leaders in the field on that topic. And the people he gets are major in the self development and business fields: Dr. Wayne Dyer, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Leo Buscaglia, Dr. John Gray, Dr. Stephen R. Covey, Dr. Barbara De Angelis, former UCLA coach John Wooden, and a few others. You can get all these titles individually, you can get them in the Professional Series which focuses on financial goals, or you can get the Personal Series which focuses on relationships and emotional development, or you can get them as a complete set with PowerTalk I & II. So check them all out on our Anthony Robbins page:

Tony Robbins Audio & Video

April 3, 2005

Rental Sites

Just about every week or so I come across a new audiobook rental site most of which are designed like a Netflix scenario where you get a certain number at a time with no late fees and you pay a certain amount a month. Here I thought I’d list them off so anyone can check them out. Of course we’ll be writing up detailed pages on all these sites very soon and probably an article comparing and contrasting them to see what might be best. Here’s what I’ve found so far and you can click on them to check them out:

Simply Audiobooks
Audio Adventures
Audio to Go
Booksfree.com
Jiggerbug
Audio Queue
Audio Book Club

And the one I found today:

Kitabe

Booksfree.com and Kitabe are MP3-CD based which I’m sure cuts down on their shipping costs since you can fit a whole audiobook on one MP3-CD. But you’d need a MP3-CD player or maybe you can transfer them to your iPod and how many good audio books are available on MP3-CD? We’ll find out for you.