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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."

12 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, Funny

      Or instead of retroactively extending copyright by 10 years every 10 years, Congress could be direct and say "before 1928 it's public domain, after 1928 it's copyrighted". Why 1928? [Congress answering with a straight face]: "Because that's when Mickey Mouse was born".

    2. 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. Computer Generated Audio Book by zubernerd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to what I read on the linked site, they are using "Test-to-Speech" software. This seems no different than using a text-to-speech agent on your own computer. What is the advantage for recording the text-to-speech? (When I think of audio books, I usually think of a human reader... not a computer - a human tends to be more accurate, esp. with languages like english)

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  4. Review by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    These are NOT HUMANS reading the Project Gutenberg books to you. This is a COMPUTER generated reading of the books. If you enjoy the soothing voice of Stephen Hawking then you will enjoy listening to Project Gutenberg radio. I could only take about 2 minutes of Tolstoys' "The Cossacks" before I had to shut it off.

  5. What about the Chinese? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Chinese used the print for thousands of years, long before Gutenberg.

    Actually, Gutenberg did not invent the printing, but the mobile printing.The Chinese language has thousands and thousands of ideograms and under these circumstances mobile printing is not a practical solution anyway; plate printing is easier to use. If it was useful for them The Chinese would have invented it.

  6. You're just not thinking about it the right way. by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The printing press was a the first effective tool for broadcasting information to a large population. Gutenberg did not invent writing, he invented a way of mass copying written language. Considering it that way, audio broadcasting fits right in.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  7. 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.

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  8. 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.

  9. Re:Unfortunately by tgbg · · Score: 5, Informative

    absloutely incorrect. we are using the eloquence engine, and a set of custom software to markup the text for inflection, etc ...

  10. 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/