Saturday, April 09, 2011

Kindle Skills - Listening to Audio Books



Some time ago, while visiting Audible.com and browsing for a new audio book to read, I noticed an offer to consolidate my audible.com information (user id and password) with my Amazon account information. In other words, I could opt to use my Amazon.com user id and password for my audible.com account too. I thought that was a nifty idea, since Amazon owns audible too, but I had no idea how much they were going to be integrating the Kindle books and the Audible audio books.

Your Kindle has been able to double as an mp3 player all along. If you have an audible.com account it will also recognize those nifty audio books. Just plug in a headset and listen away. Talk about double duty!

Lately I noticed something new has been added. While getting my Kindle 3 ready to pass on to a niece-in-law, I was going through the Archives and noticed all my considerable collection (years worth) of Audible books were also showing with a nice little audible label to the left of each one. They were listed right along with all my Amazon Kindle book titles. Well my niece-in-law is in for a huge surprise, because since I am keeping this Kindle on my account, she will have access to every audio book I have purchased from Audible over the last several years.  She will be able to, from the Kindle with a WiFi connection, download any of those Audible audio books and listen to them right on the Kindle. She can either use the built in speakers on the Kindle or plug in a pair of ear buds. Now that's what I call real double duty! This is going to be so nice for the niece!

The Kindle 3 is a wifi enabled device. This particular new feature is not available via the 3G, but I can understand, considering the size of audio books (usually several hundred Mb) compared to an average Kindle book.

If you have a Kindle 2, you can still listen to Audible.com books if you have an account. You just need to download the audio book to your computer, then transfer it to the Documents folder on your Kindle. It will be listed on your Home screen with the label audible to the left of the title.

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