Nokia Beta Labs releases Audiobooks app
by Chris Ziegler 
posted Nov 14th 2007 at 6:16PM
Entrenching its Nseries devices just a little deeper in the wide world of multimedia, Nokia's Beta Labs group has released its Audiobooks application which -- you guessed it -- plays audio books. The phone app itself works on pretty much any S60 3rd Edition device and reads books encoded using AMR-WB (read: optimized for the spoken word and very well compressed). A matching Windows-based app comes with the setup, too, enabling users to convert files to the AMR-WB format and compile 'em all into individual chapters. It's available now from the Beta Labs site; of course, you'll want to be careful on account of the whole "beta" thing, but it looks pretty solid so far.
Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Nokia
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MarkyMark @ Nov 14th 2007 8:45PM
I just managed to get this installed and running on my Nokia N75. I'm on a Mac, and manually transferred a sample audiobook's components (which are AWB files in AMR-WB format, downloaded from Nokia's Beta page) via the Mac's "Bluetooth File Exchange" app with no problems. HOWEVER now I am unable to locate any Mac apps which can convert other standard MP3 audiobook files into the AMR-WB format (file extension .awb). There appear to be zillions for Windows of course.
Janne Vainio @ Nov 15th 2007 7:50AM
Hi,
It is possible to dowload AMR-WB command line encoder ansi-c source from 3GPP web site and compile it and use that for AMR-WB file generation. It is pretty good ansi-c, so the encoder should be easy to compile for Mac. Book Index file can be generated with any unicode text editor, but certainly this is a bit difficult path for most of the users. I can give more detailed instructions, if there are real interest for that path. We are sorry for missing Mac support but hopefully we can do something for that area in future, can not yet promise anything because we do not have Mac user in our audiobook dev team.
- Janne
Serhei @ Nov 14th 2007 10:16PM
Holy cow that is a thick edition of Treasure Island.