After a few months of private beta testing, the folks at Audible.com have officially launched a mobile app for Google Android.
Audible is a service that lets you download audiobooks to a computer, MP3 player, or other mobile device. The company also offers iPhone and BlackBerry software. Audible has thousands of audiobooks to choose from, and users can either subscribe to monthly or annual plans to receive books at discount prices or pay full price for titles.
The Android app is designed to work with Android 1.x and up, which should cover pretty much every Android device ever made. Users can access their Audible libraries using the Android app, and download titles to their devices. . The mobile app also supports chapter navigation, bookmarking, and playback controls. There’s also a sleep timer and the ability to share your book list with your friends and social networks.
The app remembers the playback position of audio files you’ve been listening to. There’s also a widget that you can add to the home screen so you can play and pause books without re-opening the app — although you could just as easily pull down the notification bar to open the app and hit the pause or rewind button.
You can find more details and screenshots in the user manual, which is available for download from the Audible web site. The Audible.com app is available as a free download from the Android Market, and comes with some book excerpts allowing you to try the app before signing up for an account. But you’ll have to pay if you actually want to listen to any full books.
The link doesn’t work….and when they send the email….there’s no link in there either! come on!
For those of you with a local library that uses the OverDrive® service there are Android, Blackberry, iPhone, and Windows Mobile apps for audiobooks. (http://www.overdrive.com/software/omc/) And, Mobipocket apps for nearly any OS for eBooks (http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/ProductDetailsReader.asp) the Blackberry app has been updated with a eBookstore. None of these apps by OverDrive are very flashy, but they provide access to FREE best seller content if you local library uses the service.