A Couple of Cool Mac Apps
If you like listening to Audiobooks on your ipod/iphone/macbook and your audiobooks come from sources other than iTunes and Audible, (for example: emusic, which has DRM free MP3's, or audiobooks you have ripped from CD) you should check out Audiobook Builder.
One issue with audio books from emusic and other sources is that instead of having one nice audiobook file in the standard Apple format, you end up with a couple hundred mp3 files that you have to keep organized a playlist. Those files also aren't categorized as an audiobook within iTunes, and trying to keep your place in between listening sessions (especially if you listen to something else in between) can be a real pain.
Audiobook Builder let's you combine all those files into a standard Apple audiobook format file. It's only $10 for a license, and there is a demo available. Unfortunately, the demo is crippled, in that it will only do the first 20 minutes of audio, so you can't really try it out with a full audiobook. The demo does at least let you get a good feel for how the program works, and $10 is pretty cheap.
Another cool app, a little more expensive, is myTuneSync. If you have several computers with iTunes libraries, keeping them in sync can be a real pain. I have iTunes on my Macbook Pro, my wife has iTunes on her Dell Latitude, and I have another instance of iTunes running in a virtual machine to serve up media files to my AppleTV. That virtual machine is more or less my central iTunes repository, but its a pain to keep music that has been added to the two laptops synced with it. This program lets you do things like that in a fairly painless manner. One nice surprise for those of you (like me) with both Windows and Mac is that the client works on both platforms.
Licensing is a bit strange. It's $20 for a license for a single computer, which doesn't make any sense, since the program is useless on a single machine. But a 3 license pack is available for $30. You will need at least two licenses to actually use this program so I'm not sure why you would ever buy the single license. You can try this app out with full functionality for 15 days, so if you're interested in a solution like this, you can give it a try with no risk.
(NOTE: I have no affiliation with either of these sites, other than being a happy customer.)
One issue with audio books from emusic and other sources is that instead of having one nice audiobook file in the standard Apple format, you end up with a couple hundred mp3 files that you have to keep organized a playlist. Those files also aren't categorized as an audiobook within iTunes, and trying to keep your place in between listening sessions (especially if you listen to something else in between) can be a real pain.
Audiobook Builder let's you combine all those files into a standard Apple audiobook format file. It's only $10 for a license, and there is a demo available. Unfortunately, the demo is crippled, in that it will only do the first 20 minutes of audio, so you can't really try it out with a full audiobook. The demo does at least let you get a good feel for how the program works, and $10 is pretty cheap.
Another cool app, a little more expensive, is myTuneSync. If you have several computers with iTunes libraries, keeping them in sync can be a real pain. I have iTunes on my Macbook Pro, my wife has iTunes on her Dell Latitude, and I have another instance of iTunes running in a virtual machine to serve up media files to my AppleTV. That virtual machine is more or less my central iTunes repository, but its a pain to keep music that has been added to the two laptops synced with it. This program lets you do things like that in a fairly painless manner. One nice surprise for those of you (like me) with both Windows and Mac is that the client works on both platforms.
Licensing is a bit strange. It's $20 for a license for a single computer, which doesn't make any sense, since the program is useless on a single machine. But a 3 license pack is available for $30. You will need at least two licenses to actually use this program so I'm not sure why you would ever buy the single license. You can try this app out with full functionality for 15 days, so if you're interested in a solution like this, you can give it a try with no risk.
(NOTE: I have no affiliation with either of these sites, other than being a happy customer.)
posted by eric at
8/07/2008 08:38:00 PM
0 Comments
