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Launching Gutenberg Radio - Public Domain Audiobooks

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cliff's-notes dept.

tgbg writes "We are proud to announce the launch of "Gutenberg Radio". On these broadcast channels, you can hear the Gutenberg Library and anything else the Gutenberg family cares to share with its public."

6 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by BJH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A truly brilliant idea. Now if only we didn't have to wait indefinitely for copyrighted works from after the 1920s or so to be released into the public domain...

    1. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They are using mp3. Surely this is an opening for vorbis, or better still Ogg Speex which is optimised for encoding speech -- there are plugins for Winamp, DirectShow filters, and a plugin for XMMS too.

  2. Maybe it's just me... by Xacid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone find it weird that they're using Gutenburg in a phrase related to sound, not sight? Gutenburg helped end the need for everything to be said...

  3. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Insightful
    zaphod4 says you can, but that really misses the point. If it's just software generated voice, then why in the world download the output for every book, rather than distribute the software and the source file? This would let the user play the audio when they wanted with a far smaller download, and only have to download the source file for the next book, and even let the user use the software on other (non Project G.) files.

    I'm very unimpressed with this, and it seems a real waste of a resource like Project G. If they see that there is a need for public domain audio books (and I certainly expect there is), it would seem extremely straightforward for a group like this to get humans to volunteer to read a public domain audio book and digitize it for an archive. This would yield far better results than a project of such low quality audio and delivered in a bandwidth wasteful way that make it unlikely the current form will be well received.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  4. A great gift for blind people by elpapacito · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Imagine being blind and being able to access (maybe in a not far away future)
    the entire Gutenberg ebook library by internet. No need to read the whole book
    with some kind of Braille device, no need to -own- a text-2-speech program
    and, maybe, no need to own a computer if the stream is broadcasted with some other equipement.

    Blind people will -love- this and I can't but be happy for them.

  5. Talking Books and the Blind by Kynn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The site seems to be dead currently, but that's undoubtedly just the Slashdot Effect.

    I have no idea what they're using, but for the sake of accessibility and future-compatibility, I hope they're following the standards of the DAISY Consortium. DAISY has devised a standard for talking books which deserves support, especially as it's been specifically designed to provide accessibility for people with disabilities.

    Learn more about the DAISY Consortium here, and in the FAQ here.

    --Kynn

    --
    Kynn's page: http://kynn.com/