Okay. I've never tried to use OverDrive myself for a few simple reasons:
- I still have only dialup at home
- My 'Net connection has been on the fritz for months. I can login, but my browser can't find any sites. :-(
- I don't listening to books. I read books.
Guess which one is my main reason.
But, I think it's excellent that JPL makes this resource available for customers.
In order to try it out, I've downloaded the OverDrive console onto my workstation in the Call Center workroom at Main. It took a while to get through all the downloads and updates and googaas, and whatchmacallems....
But then I searched for a scifi/fantasy book I hadn't seen yet.
This collection doesn't have much at all by my favorite authors: Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Bear, William Gibson, Orson Scott Card, Robin Hobbs. It's looks like it's more classicals and maybe a few best sellers. Oh, well....
I chose Christopher Priest's The Prestige, since I missed the movie and wanted to get a sense of how this technology works.
Catch is: I'm at work. When am I going to listen to 12+ hours of someone reading a book?
I'll try it out, at least. Then I'll know better what customers are dealing with.
Neat idea...at least in theory.
Mike
Not at all sure about this one. Not meaning I'm not sure it's well-designed or valuable, generally. Just meaning I probably will not use it much.
That's only because I'm no longer someone who listens to audio media much...except for All Things Considered on the way home from work, and Car Talk during Saturday morning chores.
I decided to try Podcast Alley, partly because I didn't want to wait 20+ minutes for the iTunes download.
I liked the search feature...except that it wasn't very good with exact phrase searching...and I also liked the clean look of the website.
My search was "science fiction reviews," since that's my favorite fiction genre. Got lots of false hits, and lots that weren't very well annotated.
After looking annotations and show lists for several, I picked Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, since it gives reviews of specific titles.
Subscribing in Bloglines was a bit awkward, because the URL Podcast Alley gave me, http://www.sfbrp.com/?feed=podcast, wouldn't work. Knowing how Bloglines usually works, I shortened it to http://www.sfbrp.com/, and that did it.
Here's the link to a podcast review of Greg Bear's Moving Mars, a book I really enjoyed.
We shall see.
Part of my disinterest in personal use of podcasts is the same as my disinterest in downloadable music, video, etc., generally. I just don't use audio/visual media much any more.
In my 20s and 30s I bought LPs every week. When CDs came along, I was losing interest in popular music and not listening to radio as much.
Since the late 1980s, my partner Jim and I haven't had a TV!!!
So....
Nothing against this stuff. It's just not where my interests are.
Mike
Catch is: I'm at work. When am I going to listen to 12+ hours of someone reading a book?