MOVE OVER BOOKS-ON-TAPE
by Gail Whiteside
January 1999
Interesting news on emerging technologies can be found on so
many websites it makes your head spin. There is plenty such news
on Computer Graphics World Magazine's website. One recent article speculates that "pretty soon, books on tape will be a
thing of the past". For example, "The Audible Player" is touted as a
first-of-its-kind device that downloads radio programs, books, lectures,
language instruction or any other audio segment from a WWW site for
replay. The creator of this technology is Audible Inc.of New Jersey.
Audible Inc. took its idea, developed it, then went in search of a
studio that could handle the electronic and mechanical engineering
elements. The company chose Ideo product Development. It's an
industrial-design firm that operates eight studios in the U.S., Europe and
Japan.
Ideo's design for the Audible Player hooks up to a personal computer
through a base that in effect recharges the battery for up to two hours of
play. It's design imitates a regular CD player, with the usual
play/rewind/fast forward/stop functions. An interesting feature is a
serrated dial. It lets the user adjust the volume easily by thumb, like
the good old days of transitor radios. Remember those? Grooving to the top
40 hits on Dick Clark's American Bandstand...out in the summer
air....burgers on the barbie...getting hit on the head with a frisbie.
But I digress. To get back to the Audible Player, the Ideo studio
development team says this player is the most complex surface it's ever
done. In engineering-speak, the lead designer "requires the torus to
be perfectly concentric as it stretched out to comply with a concentric
intersection between the two surfaces". What that means requires
intricate discussions and elaborations by a mechanical engineer, but a
loose translation is that it's going to be a user-friendly producer for
the lay PC user.
AZTEC COMPUTERS - SUMMONED BY THE GODS
(c)
Copyright 1999 by Gail Whiteside.
Not to be reproduced without permission. |
