Comments on: Audio versions of articles from The New Yorker, The Atlantic and more

Audio versions of articles from The New Yorker, The Atlantic and more

huskerdont — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:44:22 -0800

Assistive Media is a non-profit organization dedicated to offering audio access to literary works for the blind. They have placed an extensive archive of downloadable magazine articles in mp3 format online, including selections from The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and American Heritage.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:54:38 -0800

wonderful : > and i'll add that Project Gutenberg has audio books online too

By: Soliloquy

Soliloquy — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 18:28:09 -0800

Also see BookShare for over 27,445 books available in DAISY, BRF or HTML format for people with documented print disabilities.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 18:56:44 -0800

They could make a boatload of money off of this if they just reframed their content from "assistive media" to the more memeish "podcast."

By: bleary

bleary — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 19:01:31 -0800

also see Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic

"Anne T. Macdonald was a member of the New York Public Library's Women's Auxiliary in 1948 when the letters started to arrive — letters from soldiers who had lost their sight in combat during World War II."

I've been to their offices in Chicago, and would love to be able to improve the software and process they use. I was surprised that their recording format requires special hardware for playback. The current state of technology should allow them to distribute recordings without any special requirements for hardware.

By: JPowers

JPowers — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 21:33:57 -0800

Very nice. Thanks for the link.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 22:28:39 -0800

Huskerdont, Excellent post. Thank you so much. Amberglow and Soliloquy, what marvelous resources. I love to hear things read. What a treat.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 23:09:49 -0800

Thank you for this.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 23:20:33 -0800

Just thought of sending this the Assistive Media link to a dear friend who is visually impaired, she's gonna love it!

By: eclectica

eclectica — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 06:42:53 -0800

Thanks for the great link, huskerdont! I recently discovered brief description of the site: "LibriVox: free audiobooks LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net (podcast and catalog). Our objective is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project. " I have already listened to "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen from the site, and am happy to report that the sound quality, and the reading of the volunteers was excellent.

By: eclectica

eclectica — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 06:44:26 -0800

sorry, the link didn't post above

By: eclectica

eclectica — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 06:45:32 -0800

the link feature isn't working for me, so here is the URL for Librivox: http://librivox.org/

By: the cuban

the cuban — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 06:57:34 -0800

great stuff. thanks for this.

By: edwardvielmetti

edwardvielmetti — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:29:25 -0800

There are indeed podcast feeds for all the pages on the Assistive Media site, but we haven't quite finished connecting everything yet. You can pick up the main feed right now at http://feeds.feedburner.com/AssistiveMedia and put that into your favorite podcast client.