here’s an idea for Amazon. i know, they’ve got enough money, what with being the central repository for all the world’s media…
anyhoo. i’m an avid audiobook consumer. i really do prefer the Audible version of many books to the dead tree version. one thing making me lean in the direction of getting a Kindle is that it can store and play audiobooks as well as e-books. Amazon is now the owner of Audible, which is what triggered the following thought.
one problem with a lot of audiobooks (for instance, one of my favorites The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman) is that there is no way to handle illustrations, charts and graphs in the audio-only format.
i’m sure you already see where i’m going with this: embedded with the Kindle version of the Audible download, there should be a bundle of the images, illustrations and other visual material that would normally be lost in the translation to audio-only.
and, if Amazon/Audible is smart about it, they make it an open enough format that other audio players that have high enough resolution screens (iPod, iPhone, internet tablets, etc) can support the mixed format, too.
yeah – I was hoping for audio + full kindle version bundles. i’d like to have the kindle be smart enough to switch back and forth… read text at home, switch to audiobook when i hop in the car.
the kindle audiobook playback is sometimes clunky though – the screen goes to sleep and you have to wake it to pause. ipod seems to work better for audible content in the car.