For Treo owners, either Palm or Windows Mobile based, there�s a extraordinary new twist to download your Audible purchases and it�s called AudibleAir. It is what its name implies. Wirelessly download your Audible.com purchases directly to your Treo over your cell phone network.
Anywhere you go, as long as you have a cell signal, you can suck down the Audible titles you�ve bought right to your Treo, without having to sync them over from your desktop or laptop! This radically innovative software gives you a new kind of freedom that will change the way you interact with Audible. Using AudibleAir, you can not only wirelessly grab your purchased books and subscriptions, but even set up a schedule for automatic delivery, instantly get new sections of the audio programs you are listening to, on demand, or schedule downloads in advance for whatever time is most convenient.
Audio books run anywhere from about half an hour to 20 hours or more, depending on the title. Many books are sold in full length or abridged (shortened) versions. You�ll want an SD card with plenty of storage space if you�re a voracious listener, due to the Treo�s limited internal storage. Full length books at higher quality levels can eat dozens of megabytes of storage, but you can always delete a book off your card to make room for new ones, and re-download it again later.
If a book is hours long, with AudibleAir you can opt to download an hour or two, then fire up the Palm Audible Player and listen. Pause and resume, RW/FF, skip around, and it�ll start again where you left off if you can�t or don�t want to listen to the whole thing in one shot.
Each .aa file has a built-in picture of the book's cover, accompanied by information about its author and subject. This info is the digital equivalent of the end flaps or back cover of a physical book and is always just one tap away while you're playing an .aa file in the player. The screegrab here show the info screen of an Alan Watts book as it's playing. Notice too how the Palm Audible Player runs in two different interface modes, one with a scrolling list of the books you have loaded on board, and the other showing just the book you're listening to with huge, easily-fingerable buttons. You can switch between these two interfaces with a single tap. The player always shows you what you're listening to, how far into it you are, and you have complete control over jumping around in the audio, backwards or forwards, in small leaps or giant steps. An absolutely brilliant piece of programming.
If you download just part of a book, and as soon as you need some more audio, AudibleAir will go online, grab it, delete the first chunk and load the next one onto your Treo. Very slick.
You can even set up your Treo pick up The New York Times, The New Yorker, �Fresh Air�, �Car Talk� or many other subscription-type programs every morning, or as soon as they're available, to take with you on your daily commute. You'll never have that "oops, I forgot to sync" feeling again. With AudibleAir, you can get the Audible audio you�ve already bought, anytime you want it, virtually anywhere.
Slick interface � a joy to use
AudibleAir�s interface, like the player, is optimized for Treo�s little 2� screen. With its well thought out features (refresh and view your stored �my library� purchases, and sort them by author, date of purchase, or length), I told it to download just the first hour of a really long audio book I�d bought earlier, and got pretty decent speed over my SprintPCS connection. After listening to it, AudibleAir connected again and fetched the next hour of the book automagically.
Using AudibleAir over a cell network is peppy enough to get the job done, maybe a half the speed of a 56k modem. A progress gauge and speed meter always lets you see how fast it�s going and how much longer it�ll take.
Once you�re hooked on AudibleAir, you might ask how to listen to your downloaded books through your car stereo instead of Treo�s tiny speaker or a headset. Easy. Plug in a cassette adapter and plop it in your car�s deck. Don�t have a car stereo with cassette? Then get a little FM transmitter like this one and broadcast it to your ride�s FM radio.
Although the AudibleAir software, is free, it won�t do diddley if you haven�t bought anything on Audible.com. It connects to your Audible account and displays and downloads your library of purchases.
As I write this, AudibleAir won�t let you buy new content from within its interface; you have to do that on their Web site with your �real� computer. (You could try it with Blazer, but the way their site is structured, I wouldn�t recommend it, it�s just too hard to navigate on a tiny screen). AudibleAir�s purpose is to display and wirelessly download what you�ve already bought, but Audible says they�re working on adding direct purchasing to AudibleAir, although they won�t say when that�ll happen.
The beauty of AudibleAir is that you have the freedom to download and enjoy your purchases virtually anywhere.
You probably know that the cell phone carriers charge extra for data delivery. (They love to ding you extra for everything). If you get hooked on Audible (and if you love audio books, I can almost guarantee you will - it�s VERY addictive), you�re probably going to need to switch to an unlimited data plan for your Treo if you don�t already have one. You really don�t want to pay megabucks for megabytes, so check with your carrier for pricing.
SprintPCS calls their unlimited data plan �PCS Vision� and it�s a $15.00 option on top of monthly voice minutes. Other carriers (Verizon, T-Mobile, Cingular, and Suncom) have different data plans and prices, so before you start using AudibleAir, double and triple check what kind of data plan you�re on, so you don�t faint when you see your next monthly bill.
Nothing�s perfect
There are a couple little gotchas. You CAN install both AudibleAir and the Palm Audible player on an SD card, but they can�t �see� or launch each other unless they�re both installed internally. Together, they eat about a meg and a half of storage. Put them both on a card, if you wish, but you�ll have to start each one separately from the apps launcher. Not a big deal, really, and I talked to one of Audible�s lead engineers who told me they�ll fix this in the future so both programs can live happily on an SD card and launch each other from there. There�s also a glitch that keeps you from downloading a single purchased episode of a subscription type program. This is a known server-side bug and they�re working to fix that too. Other than those two little problems, the service works like a dream.
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Read Merciful by Casey Adolfsson
For Treo owners, either Palm or Windows Mobile based, there�s a extraordinary new twist to download your Audible purchases and it�s called AudibleAir. It is what its name implies. Wirelessly download your Audible.com purchases directly to your Treo over your cell phone network.
