Point. Shoot. Capture text. Listen or read enlarged text on screen. Intel Reader assistive technology is amazing.  Watch the unit in action in this video and learn more:

There has never been a mobile device quite like the Intel® Reader. Such convenient access to the printed word can be life changing for people with vision or reading-related disabilities, blindness, or low vision. The level of success and freedom they stand to gain with the Intel Reader is unprecedented.

Portable and unobtrusive, the Intel Reader takes pictures of printed material. It then converts it to digital form and allows magnification and/or audio playback. The reliable Intel® technology combines a high-resolution camera with an Intel® Atom™ processor. Which means conversion is fast, and the Intel Reader can hold large amounts of text.

With the Intel Reader, you have convenient and flexible access to a variety of printed content. Being able to read for yourself can increase your freedom, enjoyment, and confidence, and it can help you accomplish more at school or work.

Capturing and playing back text with the Intel Reader is as easy as point, shoot, listen. You just hold it over the printed text, push the Capture button to take a picture of the page, and the Reader will play it back to you on the spot. (You can listen to it through the earphones if you want more privacy.)

You can also store content on your Intel Reader and listen to it when it’s most convenient for you. If you want to capture a chapter, an article, or a book, the Intel® Portable Capture Station makes it easier to shoot large amounts of text. The Intel Reader also plays most audio content including MP3, DAISY* digital talking books, and even text that you transfer from a computer.

Add your tweets to complete a communal tale kicked off by the Hugo, Newbery, Nebula, and Bram Stoker Award-winner Neil Gaiman. The resulting story, a combination of 140-character contributions from around the globe, will be recorded as an audiobook by an as-yet-unnamed narrator by BBC Audiobooks America and distributed as a free download. When Michele Cobb of BBCAA called me to share the news of this very cool event, my fan-girl reaction was that I hoped Gaiman would do the audio. Michele said it’s too early to think about the narrator, as the final story will determine the voice needed. Gaiman, no stranger to the audiobook world, is a Twitter fanatic. Earlier this year, I sat on one side of the room at the 2009 Audies Award ceremony tweeting the winners while Gaiman, tapping away on his phone across the room, reported his own take on the celebration via Twitter. The audiobook of Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book was named the 2009 Audies Audiobook of the Year by the Audio Publishers Association that night, a fitting honor for a haunting novel with Gaiman’s own fantastic narration. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with in those first 140 Twitter characters. Now I must arrange for my lunch to coincide with the launch at noon on Tuesday, October 13. Thank heavens I have a brand-new phone, ready to speed-tweet!

Here’s the press release:

BBC Audiobooks America Launches the World’s FIRST
TWITTER-CREATED AUDIOBOOK With Neil Gaiman

Write an Original Audio Story via Twitter with the Bestselling Author
of Coraline and The Graveyard Book This Halloween

North Kingstown, RI—This Halloween, BBC Audiobooks America (@BBCAA) is offering a treat for Twitter audiophiles: the chance to write a story with fantasy master Neil Gaiman. The New York Times bestselling author of The Graveyard Book and Twitter enthusiast (known as @neilhimself) will launch an original story-writing project on the popular social networking site October 13 at Noon EST. Gaiman will tweet the first line of the story and fans can jump in and continue it with their own 140-character contributions. To participate, fans must log into Twitter (registration is free) and post in this format: @BBCAA Your Tweet Here #bbcawdio. Searching for #bbcawdio will allow you to follow the tale minute-by-minute.

BBC Audiobooks America will compile the contributions of approximately one thousand tweets into a finished short story to be recorded by a professional narrator. The audiobook will be downloadable free at www.BBCAudiobooksAmerica.com/trade and also available as a digital download at iTunes and other audiobook retailers in time for the holidays.

“We thought this was a fantastic way to get more people excited and actively engaging with audiobooks,” said Marketing Director Michele Lee Cobb, citing that the company took their cues from Britain’s Royal Opera House, who successfully created a fan-twittered opera last month. “There’s a misconception still that audiobooks are only for a small, elite niche of book lovers and we want to explode that myth and tap into the possibilities of digital storytelling in a whole new way.”

To join the fun and add to the tale, sign in at www.Twitter.com to follow @BBCAA and tweet with the hashtag #bbcawdio. The story in progress—along with official participation rules and legal waiver—will be chronicled at the BBCAA blog on www.BBCAudiobooksAmerica.com/trade.

About BBC Audiobooks America

BBC Audiobooks America is a leading publisher of bestselling single-voice and full-cast dramatized audiobooks. BBC Audiobooks America has a library of more than 3,000 audio titles available under its Sound Library, BBC Radio Collection, and Chivers Audio Books institutional imprints and has won multiple Audie Awards, including Audiobook of the Year in 2006, for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase. BBC Audiobooks America distributes product to libraries across North America and to consumers via Perseus Distribution. For more information about BBC Audiobooks America, visit our website: BBCAudiobooksAmerica.com.

For more information:

Tara Gelsomino, Editorial Marketing Manager, BBC Audiobooks America

(401) 295-3831, Tara.Gelsomino@BBCAudiobooksAmerica.com

Thanks to Free Technology for Teachers for the link

This just released by OverDrive, the leading global distributor of digital audiobooks:

With OverDrive Media Console for Windows Mobile, audiobook readers can now instantly download over the air from thousands of libraries and retailers in OverDrive’s global network. Customers purchasing digital audiobooks from Barnes & Noble or Borders.com can enjoy audiobooks on their Windows Mobile phones. Patrons can find libraries that offer digital audiobooks, music, and video for over-the-air downloading at http://search.overdrive.com

Perfect timing! I am shopping for a new cell phone, and this could be the tipping point. Find out more information and download the free software at the OverDrive Media Console web site.

Booklist’s Quick Tips for Schools and Libraries – a new & improved monthly e-newsletter – debuts today with great ideas for teachers, librarians, parents, and caregivers. Sign up for your FREE connection to reviews of the newest & best in children’s and YA literature, as well as exclusive content such this month’s columns on mystery read-alouds and children’s books about unemployment and job loss.

Audiobooks: That All May Learn is the title of my article in this month’s Quick Tips about audio formats for special-needs students, with links to resources that provide FREE audiobooks and NO COST audio versions of ANY textbook or novel assigned to students with disabilities that limit print use. Feel free to print out the column, forward to your special education staff, email to colleagues, or post in your parent newsletter. Add the resources from these organizations to your educational toolkit and increase your students’ access to audiobooks at no charge!

The home of 2,557 audiobooks in 26 languages – all FREE. Hugh McGuire launched the volunteer-effort audiobook publishing model LibriVox on August 10^th, 2005. Hugh is this week’s Inside the Audiobook Studio guest, ready to share the background on this amazing project. Want more information on LibriVox? Subscribe to the Community Podcast here. Have you always wanted to be an audiobook narrator – or perhaps want to challenge students to develop their oral performance skills? Are you an aspiring audio editor and need some practice? Try your talents by becoming a LibriVox volunteer! Want to learn how to slow down the LibriVox audiobooks? Searching for a list of recommended best FREE LibriVox titles? You’ll find answers to all things LibriVox on the LibriVox Wiki.

Ok, Hugh, let’s get started…

1. What’s on your MP3 player?

I’ve been listening to Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. So far, excellent. I’ve also got the Iliad, and Don Quioxte, plus a bunch of music, and gobs of podcasts – NYTimes Books Podcast, Australia Radio National’s All in the Mind, NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and TimesOnline’s The Bugle, among many many others.

2. Tell us about your role in the audiobook community.

Well, I am the founder of LibriVox – my wife calls me the mayor of LibriVox. I have a new venture, BookOven.com, which is taking lots of energy (trying to transform the publishing industry is hard work!), so I have less time these days for LibriVox than I used to. But I still check into the forums daily. I mostly just try to make sure there are no major problems; and if there are I try to help find solutions for them. It seems like LibriVox is pretty solid now, and we seem to have fewer problems than we used to. The problems I try to solve are often helping manage disagreements about how things ought to be done in LibriVox – it’s a big, open project, so there is lots of input, and sometimes channeling all that discussion is a challenge. But there’s also answering the odd email from copyright lawyers, and thinking about paying for servers etc. As for my own responsibilities in creating audiobooks – I have none. I don’t get much recording done these days, and I’m not too involved in the nitty gritty of making audiobooks. I’m happiest doing what I can to make sure that all the people involved in LibriVox are happy contributing in ways they like to contribute.

LibriVox is a project that gets volunteers around the world to make audio versions of public domain books, and make them available for free on the internet. Our objective is:

“To make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet.”

Anyone can volunteer for us – you just have to have a computer, an internet connection, some free software, a cheap microphone, and the desire to record audiobooks. Or, you might help us out in other ways. We are, we think, the most prolific audiobook publisher in the world – we put out 60-100 books a month. We have a catalog of 2,547 works in 26 languages, including: Austen, Einstein, Twain, Sun Tzu, Nietzsche, Sayers, Poe, Bronte, Cervantes, Descartes, Plato, Dante, Goethe, Homer … etc etc etc. All available for free. Some of our books are recorded by a group of volunteers; half of them are solo recordings. In order to listen, you can download mp3s from our site, or from the Internet Archive, and listen on your computer, iPod, or MP3 player.

3.   What was your most interesting/embarrassing/hilarious moment in the audiobook studio?

My first recording for LibriVox! I had no idea what I was doing. I used a ca. 2001 Mac iBook laptop, and its pinhole mic. I did not rehearse, and I stumbled like crazy. You can listen to the recording here, if you like, Chapter 1 of The Secret Agent: http://librivox.org/the-secret-agent-by-joseph-conrad/

4. What future trends or changing technologies do you think will have the greatest/worst/revolutionary impact on the audiobook production field?

Well, I think we’ll see more people making audiobooks. Digital means that you can get excellent quality without spending an arm and a leg on equipment or studios, so that means that the range of books that are commercially viable will get bigger.

And the big thing will be when car stereos are better integrated with iPods & digital media players: once that happens, the ease of downloading MP3s will really have a huge advantage over CDs, and I think we’ll see an explosion in audiobook listening & demand.

5.   What’s new and exciting in your part of the audiobook community?

Well, we have not done a full survey of all existing public domain texts in all languages, but with 2,547 completed books, I think it’s fair to say we have a way to go to reach our objective of recording all of them. So I don’t think there is much all that new … we’re just plugging away!

Thanks for being our guest on this week’s Inside the Audiobook Studio, Hugh! Keep in touch with Hugh on the BookOven blog at http://blog.bookoven.com/ or on Twitter @bookoven

If you’d like to find out more about Hugh’s vision for a new model of publishing, watch his presentation at the BookNetCanada Tech Forum or watch this video from http://geekcast.fm/

Change audiobook narrator to your mom’s voice? Have Oprah read you her latest Book Club title? Want Paul McCartney to read you a bedtime story? Listen to Madonna rather than your history professor? That’s what tech detective hounds claim will be in the iPhone future through these patented inventions. Here’s more from the post on Unwired View:

Despite the restrictions involved in playing back audio files, users of media devices may wish to change the audio output of audio files. A mother, for example, might wish to change the narrator’s voice in a pre-recorded, commercially available audiobook to her own voice, so that her child can listen to the audiobook as narrated in the mother’s voice in her absence. In another scenario, a student listening to a lecture as a podcast file might want to change the audio of certain sections of the lecture to sound like someone else’s voice, so as to emphasize important parts of the lecture.

And you though the Kindle’s Text-to-Speech was a bit too Brave New World…