Digging up the books...

My local library are upgrading their computer system over the next three weeks. What they failed to realise was that taking down the library system kills apps like BorrowBox - my library audiobook player. I have called and mailed to make them aware, and they are doing what they can to restore normal service. In the meantime, though, my audiobooks are not playable. No authenticaion? No playback.

So, I had a dig around my iPhone's file system tonight on the hunch that I might find something that resembles an audiobook MP3 file collection, and what do you know, so I did:

I copied these numbered files to my desktop, and added a .MP3 suffix. I then simply added these file to iTunes in the normal manner, and can now listen to my heart's content:

 

If you are struggling to access BorrowBox, or if you want to listen to your audiobook on a more reliable platform, then a little bit of digging might help you too.

New, by me today: ElectricSlide

OverDrive Media Console - DRM free already?

If you have OverDrive Media Console and are frustrated by the digital rights restrictions, worry not. Whilst trying for hours (in vain) to get a recent title onto my (unsupported) MP3 player, I found that during the transfer process, OverDrive kindly provides a temporary copy of a full-quality DRM-free version of each chapter as it is processing the transfer.

The resulting .WAV files are large, but you can always import these into iTunes and create an AAC version. If you've got iTunes match, you may even find that they are matched in the store, and you are offered 256kbps versions of them.

I've written a little toolette that hangs around and slurps up these files for you into a new folder, see below for the link soon. Simply run this before starting a transfer, and select a destination, and let OverDrive do the rest.

Or you can copy the files yourself - On a Windows client, they appear in your TEMP folder in a random four-digit folder that appears during the transfer.

At least this way you may actually get a chance to listen to the title on your chosen device.

Here you go: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1508352/DriveOver.exe