Does the Palm Pre support Audible.com?

So far I don’t know but think it should work.  I was told that the Pre supported Audible at CES in January. 

When I look on Audible, it doesn’t list Palm as a brand, but if you go to PDA, you will find PalmOS listed.  But the PalmOS is not the same as the Palm WebOS I believe, and I just don’t know yet, but after I get this slow itunes thing figured out, I’ll be testing Audible next.

I did some checking on PreCentral and the long and the short of the story from the long forum thread is that

1. the Palm Pre and Audible do not currently support each other.  
2. There is an emulator that allows you to run the old Palm OS on your Pre, but that does not work with Audible either for many users
   1. I saw a couple users that were able to get this to work, but its the activation required by Audible Manager that causes this to fail for most users, plus the emulator known as ‘Classic’ costs $29.95.  If you have palm apps already, you may want to plunk down $30, if you are just looking for an Audible solution skip to step 4, which will save you $10 and make all of your audible books functional on any device that plays mp3 files.
3. The theory that linking Audible to your itunes might make it work, does NOT work
4. The only workaround that I found in the forums that DOES currently work is converting your Audible files to normal mp3 files using SoundTaxi Platinum cost $19.95 (they do offer a –> download link for exe file -> free trial download but it only converts the first 90 seconds, still it does prove that it works before you buy.  I’ve tried a few programs like this in the past that did not work/convert at all, so I was happy to see that this program DOES work.  )

SoundTaxi Platinum CAN convert an Audible .aa format to mp3 so that it can then be played on any of your devices.

It also converts the following formats

Convert your audio and video at one click with an easy to use software created with you in mind. The SoundTaxi simple and intuitive design will let you concetrate on your music and movies, instead of technical details.
Easily convert DRM protected music and movie files and various audio/video files to unprotected MP3, MPEG4, CD,
iPod and other MP3 player file formats at high speed and CD quality – legally.
SoundTaxi unprotects and converts music and movie files from:

* iTunes
* Napster
* Zune
* Yahoo Music
* MusicMatch
* MSNMusic
* MusicLoad
* MTV / urge
* MusicNow
* BuyMusic
* AOL Music
* Virgin Digital
* Sony Connect
* Beon Music
* Peer Impact
* iMusica
* Rhapsody
* Wal-Mart
* AOL MusicNow
* Audible
* connect-europe
* akuma
* Listen JP
* ongen
* hmv
* Bigpond Music
* Soundbuzz
* digirama
* imusica
* cdigix
* cingular mMode
* puretracks
* metro tunes
* fnac

UPDATE

Forgot to include the final source from Precentral that helped get me in the right direction, it came from user quest1772, who stated

I called audible and they assured me they were working on it and expected the app should come out in about two months. for the short term I bought ‘soundtaxi‘ and converted a few books to mp3’s (it takes as long as the track is to convert). This creates a 6 hour mp3 with no bookmarks but the fast forward goes really fast when you hold it down so I can get to where I was in less than a minute, the only problem is now I have to remember where I was or leave the music app open.
edit: also tried the classic+audible air route and crashed my phone. i wouldn’t say that is a viable option unless i did it wrong

I purchased a new G1 on Friday.  My phone has pretty much been dead to me since.  I was debating on getting a PRE from Sprint (new carrier for me) or getting a G1 from T-Mobile my preferred carrier.  I ultimately decided to opt for the G1.  It had most of the functionality I was looking for, it was on my T-Mobile plan so no need to kill a contract, and the plan pricing seemed right.

BUT

I rapidly learned that the G1 kind of sucks (seriously, not an anti-fan boy statement or anything).

It can only import contacts via GMail and Gmail contact import definitely does suck.  Here’s why, it maps all of your contact fields to a text note field in gmail. 

ergo if you have an email address in an email field, it gets dumped in the notes field.  If you have a phone number in a phone number field, it gets piled in the notes field too.  If you have an address, zip code, cell phone etc in their respective fields, Gmail does not provide mapping to send it to the Gmail fields it just dumps everything into a generic notes field.  In fact, all in the SAME generic notes field. 

That might be OK, if you have say, 20 or 50 contacts.  Pain in the ass, but ok.

But I have 1,600 contacts.  I’ve been around awhile and have done a lot of business with a lot of people over the years, not to mention my social networking contacts.  There is no way in the world that I can go into Gmail and start copy pasting text out of a note field into the actual data field Google should have been able to map to.

So today is Sunday, 48 hours after I bought my new phone.  I can’t call anyone with the dumb phone.  And I do use the word dumb in a literal way.  The G1 is no smart phone, it has been dumbed down due to Gmail.  So today, I’m boxing everything up and returning it to TMobile for a refund.  T-Mobile my favorite carrier is not really to blame here (other than approving a PDA smart phone for their line up that can’t import any phone numbers).

But I’m going to have to take my business elsewhere on this one.  I have lost 2 days with the phone, and missed a couple important calls as well.  Plus, the goofy ear bud that jacks into the usb slot on the bottom of the phone is almost impossible to hear through.

Oh, and T-Mobile sold me a G1 with a version number of 1.0 as opposed to the more currently available 1.1 or 1.5.  The hardware is the same, but the firmware is different.  The big difference is that I CAN NOT update my own firmware.  There’s an update out there, but I can not access it through the phone because 1.0 does not literally have the ‘update’ button deep down in settings.  This means I have no on screen keyboard, no video recorder and who knows what else.

No phone, no address book, static generating ear buds, no ‘update’ button –> Phone Return. 

For what its worth I do like the interface, the keyboard is not as comfortable as my old treo 700, but not bad.  I seem to recall having a keyboard adapter for an old old palm pilot years back that felt exactly the same as the G1.  From a tactile perspective, the G1 keyboard is not bad, its just a little dated (by about 10 years).

Oh and by the way if you need technical support from T-Mobile for the G1, you have to say ‘Blackberry technical support’ in the automated menu to actually get to the PDA department of t-mobile which services the G1 too.  (This is what a t-mobile tech support person told me)  The phone menu system has not yet been configured to respond to ‘G1 Problems’, ‘G1 techsupport’ ‘G1 help’ etc.

Monopoly power wants my contacts

I also wanted to mention that it trouble me a bit that I HAVE to upload my contacts to Google.  They are a monopoly after all and already monitor almost every website I visit.  Now through their G1 phone, they can monitor all the calls I make, not to mention the emails I send.  I’m a former signals intelligence analyst and understand the principals of gleaming information from an analysis of communications node.  Frankly, letting them get their hands on 2 more nodes (contacts and calls) is a little troubling.  People would be up in arms if Microsoft forced you to upload all of your contact information into one of their databases, can’t understand why people let that slide with Google.

Google Can’t Even Export its own Data from Gmail Successfully

One of the suggestions I received from tmobile tech support involved the concept of exporting some contacts from Gmail into a csv format, so that I could then use the csv column headings to manually update the columns of my own csv file.  So I tried exporting a single contact to get the file headers.

I used my wife’s contact info, which included home and work addresses.

Google’s exported file failed to export the city, state and zip code of the addresses for home and work.  So even if I use these headings, to manually construct my own CSV Google will probably strip out this very important information. 

I put together this video showing a quick setup of my Skype recording capability with a Sony IC Recorder (pocket MP3 recorder). 

see original video article – Wiring MP3 Recorder to Capture Skype Interviews

The setup is not intuitive, but it works.  I meant to create a image that identified where the cords were supposed to be plugged in, but somewhere along the line I lost it.  (I think I wrote the article and my machine crashed and I forgot to recover the article and original image).

Someone asked me about it on YouTube today, and reminded me that I couldn’t find the article either.  I know I wrote it, but couldn’t find it. 

So I am publishing this new image of my setup for recording interviews or conversations with skype.

This is a quick test using my new windscreen I crafted for my Logitech headset that plugs into a Sony recorder that I use for dictation purposes with Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred.

I’m walking outside and hoping to catch a nice gentle breeze blowing in my face that would normally make my microphone go off the charts with static and noise that would render the dictation of my words somewhat useless. I have crafted this windscreen using a little foam that I cut from a mattress pad, along with the paw of a cat that I cut from a stuffed animal that was at the bottom of my kids toy bin that we had in storage. Hopefully they won’t miss the cat as they haven’t played with it in over two years, I do seem to recall that it may have been one of my daughters preferred toys when she was two years old, but she hasn’t seen it in a long, long time.

I’m outside walking on our dock. It is a nice beautiful day here in North Carolina although it’s a little bit chilly. I’m turning around in circles slowly trying to capture whatever breeze or wind might be blowing around and I can feel a little bit of breeze on my face right now.

Even though I can feel the breeze blowing in my face I cannot hear the breeze blowing into the microphone of my headset. That is a distinct improvement over results I was receiving just a few minutes ago before I put this windscreen onto my headset.

If you want to build a wind screen yourself (see this past post or keep reading for the basic idea)  for your own microphone(s) even if they are noise cancellation microphones like my microphone is, All you need to do is get a microphone, and a piece of foam, and a stuffed animal such as a beanie baby. The thicker the fur, or the fuzzier the for the better. Think of those shaggy microphone covers that you see on microphones used by reporters during hurricanes. That is ultimately the goal that you’re searching for here for use outdoors. I molded the foam using a pair of scissors to get a general shape that I was looking for. It wasn’t pretty(didn’t come with a bow nor outfitted in promotional bags like you find at trade shows, but it did work!), but it seemed to be functional. I then cut off the leg of a beanie baby kitten, this was a large beanie baby not the typical variety. I then pulled that leg over top of the foam which I had inserted onto the actual microphone. I then proceeded to trim off the excess part of the leg of the kitten, until I just barely had the foam covered with a kitten paw.

For the record, I’ve never hurt a kitten in my life, and this is a stuffed kitten, a stuffed animal that is, and the kitten didn’t seem to complain even though I did feel a little bit like Sweeney Todd as I performed the surgery.

Once I had the paw fitted to the microphone foam, I then used a ponytail holder, to tighten the paw fur around the foam so that it would stay on the microphone and would not fall off.

That’s basically how I built this, and it does seem to be working. The wind is picking up right now, and I can hear it in my ears but I cannot hear it in the actual headphones. The wind is blowing a pretty good clip , leaves are falling off the trees and actually hitting me in the face at the moment but I do not hear any of this background noise coming through my microphone. I’ve been talking for about five minutes and 25 seconds.

For what it’s worth, the above totals up to about 606 words that I wrote in 5 1/2 minutes. That is about 110 words per minute that I was able to type while I was walking around on a fishing dock in North Carolina with a microphone headset and a Sony voice recorder. And I did that on a slightly windy day. That’s what I was able to do and I was just testing things and playing around a little bit. Imagine what you could do if you put these tools to work.

Hi Everyone, This is Brett Bumeter from softduit.com. I am here outside of my office today in North Carolina where it’s a little bit breezy and I’m testing out my new wireless Logitech headset. I’m testing it out with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is running on my computer in my office right now.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 is capturing my words as I save them from a distance of approximately ten feet at the moment.

I’m attempting to do this in one continuous shot so that you’ll know that there’s no film tricks going on here. To do that I’m using an XShot photo stick, basically a single bar tripod, and I am also utilizing a tape measure to mark the distance from which I’m standing and writing.

As you can see right now I’m zoomed out all the way. I am approximately 20 feet away from my laptop which is still continuing to capture the words that I say using my Logitech wireless headset and Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

This headset is supposed to have a range of approximately 33 feet at the extreme.

So I’m walking just a little further out here on my dock to try and get a check of the distance with the system. Now my camera only has a limited zoom capability. So at this point I’m actually about10 feet past the extent of my tape measure

There’s my laptop in the distance.

I’m trying to zoom in and keep this steady. (I tried to edit this from a distance, but could not read the editing box terribly easy. Editing would be best suited for a later time, when you can listen back to the words that you have stated.)

As you can see it’s a little tricky editing from this distance I wouldn’t necessarily recommend using a wireless headset from a distance of 30 feet if you need to edit.

This would be a great way though to do some brainstorming especially if you like to walk while you talk. Personally, that’s exactly how my brain works. I think better when I’m walking around or standing up than I do when I’m sitting down behind a desk.

Now my office coworkers they don’t really seem to mind where I work as long as I feed them enough treats throughout the day. But that’s not necessarily any different from office workers in any environment. So as you can see this actually does work fairly well even from a long distance but it’s a tool and like any tool you have to find the right application for that tool. In this case I think it would be very good for people that are trying to write longform articles, documents or maybe even a novel or something Like in the NaNoWriMo writing contest.

So if you’re looking for a great tool that frees you up from having to work on your computer, behind a desk, locked there with ball and chain, Dragon NaturallySpeaking might be the thing for you, and a wireless headset might even give you additional freedom to get away from your keyboard and away from your computer altogether. I’m Brett Bumeter and I hope you enjoyed this little video.

Original Transcription Text from working with Logitech Wireless Headset Microphone and Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred 

This may have errors in it, but I wanted to provide it so that you could watch the video and get a sense of how well the microphone worked from a distance.  (the wind did blow or gust up once or twice which might have also played a role)

Everyone does the regular from softduit.com I am here outside of my office today in North Carolina where it’s a little bit breezy and I’m testing out my new wireless Logitech headset I’m testing it out with Dragon NaturallySpeaking which is running on my computer in my office right now

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is capturing my words as I save them from a distance of approximate latency at the moment

I’m attempting to do this in one continuous shot so that you’ll know that there’s no film tricks going on here to do that I’m using an action at photo stick basically collect a single bar tripod and also utilizing the tape measure to mark the distance from which I’m standing and writing

As you can see right now I’m zoomed all the way of approximately 20 feet away from my laptop which is still continuing to capture the words that I say using my Logitech wireless headset and Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Others headsets boast to have a range of approximately 33 feet at the extreme.

And so I’m walking just a little but further of your my.to try and get a check of the distance with the system now my camera only has a limited zoom capability to the WiMAX 10 feet past the extent of my tape measure

There’s my laptop in the distance

I’m trying to zoom in and keep this study

As you can see it’s a little tricky editing from this distance I wouldn’t necessarily recommend using a wireless headset from a distance of 30 feet if you need to edit.

This would be a great way though to do some brainstorming especially if you like to walk while you talk personally that’s exactly how my brain works I think better when I’m walking around standing up that I do when I’m sitting down behind a desk even when I work from a desk in such a beautiful setting your North Carolina.

Now my office coworkers they don’t really miss early seem to mind where I work as long as them as long as I feed them enough treats drug today but that’s not necessarily any different from office workers in any environment so as you can see this actually does work fairly well even from a long distance but it’s a tool and like any tool you have to find the right application for the right application for that tool in this case I think it would be very good for people that are trying to write longform articles documents or maybe even a novel for something like the nano remote writing contest.

So if you’re looking for a great tool that frees you up from having to work on your computer behind a desk locked in with ball and chain, Dragon NaturallySpeaking might be the thing for you, and a wireless headset might even give you additional freedom not only away from your keyboard away from your computer altogether I broken her and I hope you enjoyed this little video and I hope to see you around soon by this

So there you have it. If you are working with highly technical topics, this is not likely going to be a good fit for transcriptions of medical charts, or legal case analysis for issues with Leptovox, but if you just want to capture some free flow thought, do some brainstorming, and especially if you keep a separate audio file copy of everything you say, this can be a very useful tool, and a lot of fun!

This weekend I was testing out Logitech’s ClearChat PC Wireless (noise cancellation headset microphone) with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred.

You can read some of my initial impressions written with the headset and DNS 10 below:

Okay so now I’m using Microsoft Word I want to see just how well this works from a bit of a distance. I’m walking over across from my office this is really cool I am standing about 20 feet away from a computer typing on my computer while I look at it from a distance

…

I have a portable heater blowing warm air against my feet and it is making a little bit of noise in the background. That’s it doesn’t seem to be impacting my computer nor my microphone whatsoever. This is just flat-out amazing I can’t believe how well this works.

…

This is exceeding all of my expectations and then some. I can pace and type at the same time. This is pretty damn cool!

I will try and get some video of this in action very soon.  I had to charge it for 2.5 hours out of the packaging.  Then plugged it in, no software, it just worked.  I was amazed.  This works on the 2.4Ghz protocol, its not a bluetooth headset.  That said at $99 it is about $200 cheaper than the bluetooth headsets I’ve been able to find so far.

Being the technophile uber geek that I am, I’m even wondering if I can enjoy watching movies in my home theater seating arrangement (known as a couch) while dictating movie reviews into the headset to my computer placed in a different room.

Here’s a quick little tip for working with Dragon Naturally Speaking and Mobile Recording Devices such as the Sony IC Recorder line of Pocket USB recorders.

Before you run Dragon Naturally Speaking 10’s ‘Transcribe’ function on a file stored on your device, simply copy the file over to your computers hard drive.

Then you can run the transcription!

There are several benefits to taking this simple step:

1. It increases the speed and accuracy of the transcription as the computer can work directly from the hard drive as opposed to running through USB
2. It decreases the potential for communications issues if your computer temporarily loses a USB connection
3. MOST IMPORTANT! – If you want to edit a text file transcribed from an MP3 file using DNS 10, Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 will enable you to continue to playback your original voice file as long as it knows where that file is.  If you accidentally or purposefully remove your device from the computer, you will not be able to ‘Play that Back’ and hear the original voice and confirm the accuracy of words or even train Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 for any new words used.
   1. This is even more important for people new to using recording devices as in my experience Dragon Naturally Speaking needs to learn your voice in a mobile device a bit more, and in the early days it will take a little extra training to get mobile device transcription accuracy levels up to or close to the same level of accuracy as when you talk straight into your computer.

There you have it, another day another tip, with a service that can save you tons of time, energy and money which you can use to pay bills, save for retirement, upgrade your air conditioner for coming global warming events (focus on the ac compressor) or whatever you need.

This summer I have become a major fan of those great little portable hard drives from Western Digital that plug in to your computer or laptop via USB.  I have one for music, and another for videos, and yet another for important documents, bills, files, etc.

I’m addicted.  There’s something fantastic about being able to visually organize your hard drives and benefit from the inexpensive and fast little hard drive that takes up no space hardly in your back pack or desk.

That said, it can be a major mistake to reboot or start up your pc computer or laptop with one of those great little drives attached.  This can be a sure fire way of passing on a virus to your machine or cranking up a nice little systems error as your machine gets confused by the hard drives listed in its BIOS.

Last weekend I ran out of space on my primary computer hard drive.  My computer is a laptop and its about 18 months old.  When I purchased it, it was not quite the latest model, but it had a 120 gigabyte hard drive and a centrino duo processor and was fast enough for what I was doing at the time. 

It came with 1 gig of ram and the hard drive spun at 5400 rpms, which was slower than my previous laptop, which I had upgraded to 7200 rpms.  I always meant to upgrade the hard drive but just never had the time or extra few bucks to get to it.

Well, last weekend, my computer finally hit the 111 gigabytes full level and the computer wasn’t running right in my Dock-Office (Dockffice) because temperatures here are in the 90’s.

I’ve been doing more and more video work and that just fills up hard drive space very fast.  I hit the road and headed to Office Depot when I picked up a flyer offering a clearance deal before they reset for back to school stuff at twice the price.

I made it there and picked up a new router and wireless card.  Its a 1 gigabyte linksys router and card.  Then I headed to Best Buy where I picked up a 7200 rpm 200 gigabyte replacement drive for my laptop along with a 1 terabyte external western digital hard drive.  I intended to get the networkable drive from western digital but opted for the $140 cheaper drive that plugs in via usb. 

Next time the networkable drives drop in price, I’ll buy a 1 or 2 terabyte drive and then connect my existing 1 terabyte drive to that future drive and have 2 or 3 terabytes of space on my network.

I also picked up a high speed laptop cooling base station thing, to keep my laptop cool while it runs in my dockffice desktop (essentially a high top stocked bar).

All said and told I have a great deal more capacity and even more speed than I had before, which is definitely helping me get and keep things organized while I work more efficie ntly and effectively.

It has been a long time since I was impressed with a hardware buy ( I seem to recall with awe buying a 100 megabyte hard drive about 12 years ago thinking that was amazing). 

Now I have more space on my computer arrangement than I my entire company had working in a high rise in Atlanta including 30 some laptops and 3 servers running a $100 million dollar distribution business (owned by crooks in China that I turned into the IRS but that’s another story . . . .    ).

I’m sure this space will seem like a drop in the bucket after my video production moves to hi definition and I start working with multiple video inputs plugged in to a HDMI switch output to god knows what.  Maybe I’ll have to rent an exobyte (no idea how to even spell that ) from Google located in their new server room on the dark side of the moon operating at close to absolute zero temperatures or something.

Great Buy on 1 Terabyte Hard Drive at Buy.com

Last week I mentioned my plan to pick up a 1 terabyte Western Digital MyBook external hard drive.

Well they are on special right now at Buy.com.

I’m still holding out for the device that I can connect to my network through the ethernet and then connect to 1 terabyte of space via my wireless router from anywhere in the house or login from the internet while traveling.

The drive I’m referring to is the World Edition MyBook.

That said, paying $199 for a 1 terabyte Western Digital MyBook is a steal compared to the rates I’ve seen at office stores and even online.  I think that price is good until Friday, the 16th if I understand Buy.com’s weekly specials correctly.

Voice Transcription with MP3 Player Voice Recorders

Next up, I’m also going to be testing out Creative Zen MP3 players and their ability to record voice notes which can be transcribed with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.  I’ve been working with a Creative Zen V this evening, trying to figure out the file conversions first.  It records in 32 bit WAV and it needs to be 16 bit WAV I believe, but there’s something else that I’m not getting quite right.  I think maybe I need to also convert Stereo to Mono and something else.

Then this weekend I will be test driving a regular Creative Zen (the video, picture and MP3 player).  This is a 4gb and newer than the Creative Zen V.  I looked originally at Wally World where they were $120 in the store ($10 cheaper online) but only $90.99 at Buy.com plus they give you a $10 rebate that was not available at Wal-mart, so you can get a 4GB Video MP3 Player Creative Zen at Buy.com (technically better than a 4gb IPod if you follow CEA reviews and awards) for about half the price of an IPod and $40 less than you would pay at Wally world.