World Wide Words

Streaming video, it's the darling baby of the internet, or maybe it's HD movie downloads, or flash animation. Whatever it is it seems to be pictures, moving pictures. However there's something else that I've been enjoying on the web and it is infact words.

There are many ways to get words from the web, some cost money but most are surprisingly free. Starting with the most expensive, we have audio books, principally from Audible.com who have an enormous selection of titles to choose from, covering tech titles, sci-fi, biography, in fact anything you can find in dead tree format you can probably find on Audible. It's not however what you would call cheap. Good value, but not cheap.

Luckily for the more "cost concious" amongst us there are many other ways to get an audio fix for free, without resorting to Limewire or other dodgy file sharing shennanigins. Apples iTunes offers easy access to the world of podcasting, spoken word episodes on pretty much any subject under the sun. Rapidly graduating from the obvious (Apple casts, Dr Who casts etc) it's easy to find plenty of meaty subject matter to keep the ears and brain happy on car journies to and from DHM customers. I can heartily recommend the Astronomy Cast, you will never learn more about our universe so easily.

But podcasts are not iTunes only spoken word trick. This one has been a feature of iTunes since the beginning and is almost univerally ignored. See the little "Radio" tab in the left hand side bar? Click it. You will find radio from around the world. I myself am partical to radio stations from Americas deep south, mostly for the between song ad breaks. Slip into a world of second hand car salesmen, corner cafés and other Americana.

Finally don't forget the feeds from actual radio stations. The good old BBC offers its Radio 7 service, where you can access a weeks spoken word content in one go.

Don't be seduced by the lure of the movies. Let spoken word into you online life.

Mind you, on the movies front, big props to the BBC, who have, with little fanfare made their iPlayer service available on the iphone by encoding content into quicktime rather than the desktop versions flash based content.