Amazon.com, which has been rapidly adding digital downloads to its vast Web store, said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy Audible, the largest online seller of audiobooks.

Amazon will pay $300 million in cash for the company, or $11.50 a share, a 23 percent premium to the stock’s closing price on Wednesday.

Audible, based in Newark, offers 80,000 audiobooks and spoken-word products from magazines, radio shows and newspapers, including The New York Times. It sells its digital files through its own Web site and, since 2003, through Apple’s popular iTunes service.

The move could also allow owners of the Kindle, Amazon’s cream-colored electronic book reader, to download audiobooks directly to the device. Amazon introduced the Kindle to great fanfare late last year.

Amazon to Buy Audiobook Seller for $300 Million - New York Times

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CES 2008 runs all this week from Las Vegas. If you can’t be at CES this year, then follow the action online.

CES 2008 Coverage at Engadget
Veronica Belmont’s Daily Coverage
Official Audio and Video Podcasts
Official Blog of CES 2008
CES on the (You)Tube

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More than half of Americans visited a library in the past year with many of them drawn in by the computers rather than the books, according to a survey released on Sunday.

Of the 53 percent of U.S. adults who said they visited a library in 2007, the biggest users were young adults aged 18 to 30 in the tech-loving group known as Generation Y, the survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project said.”

These findings turn our thinking about libraries upside down,” said Leigh Estabrook, a professor emerita at the University of Illinois and co-author of a report on the survey results.

Generation Y biggest user of libraries: survey | U.S. | Reuters

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The honeymoon between Microsoft and the partners and customers who’ve been gleefully awaiting the arrival of Windows Home Server may be over, thanks to a serious data corruption glitch in the software.

Using certain applications to save digital files to Windows Home Server could cause files to become corrupted, according to Microsoft, which last week said the issue had affected “a few people” on its community forums, and posted a Knowledge Base article outlining the issue.

Microsoft didn’t offer a timetable for a fix, but recommended that users not use the following applications to save data to Windows Home Server: Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Money 2007, and SyncToy 2.0 Beta.

File Corruption Bug Bites Windows Home Server - Software - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

I thought people knew better than to use the first version of a Microsoft Product?

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 Boston officials freaked out over marketing stunt to promote late-night programming on Cartoon Network.  The devices caused officals to shut down bridges and major roads.

“It had a very sinister appearance,” Coakley told reporters. “It had a battery behind it, and wires.” 

 The light-bright looking device featured the mooninite with a  raised middle finger.

 Err was quoted as saying, “It was all a mistake, I was trying to cash my Uncle’s welfare check.”

Vongo’s movie downloads to compete with Netflix? For either a subscription fee (9.99/month) or pay-for-view (price depends on title) you can download movies to your Windows PC or portable device. The service currently only has 1,800 titles, which could seriously hamper their ability to compete with Netflix. Netflix has over 60,000 movies, with 35,000 - 40,000 different titles are rented on any given day. Hopefully this number of movies will grow rapidly.

Once you download a movie from Vongo, you are limited on how long you can keep it.

Before you download, check the date next to “Available Until” under the preview box. That date will tell you when the title will expire from Vongo. Some titles are in the service for many months, and others last a few weeks or days. Once a title expires from the service whether it is a Vongo Membership or Pay Per View title it will automatically delete from your hard drive. Pay Per View titles will also automatically delete 24 hours after you have first started playback.

And Vongo can also be used with portable devices, but currently on two exist.

Apple is rumored to be announcing a video rental service for iTunes in the near future.

Daniel Edwards is preparing to unleash his latest sculpture in a Brooklyn art museum in April. The sculpture in question is a life-size statue of Britney Spears

“…naked and pregnant, crouching face-down on a bare-toothed bear rug as the baby’s head appears on the opposite end.”

There has been considerable criticism of Edwards’ odd pro-life sculpture. And his work is now the subject of a podcast, Send2Press.

NBC, currently in last place for viewers within the major networks, will be trying their hand at marketing their shows via iTunes. A collection of current and older TV programs will be made available for download through iTunes.

NBC Universal has inked an agreement for 11 shows–current series as well as library programs. This includes NBC’s mainstay “Law & Order,” as well as “The Office,” “Surface,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” USA Network’s “Monk,” and Sci-Fi Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica,” as well as classic library shows “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Dragnet,” “Adam-12,” and “Knight Rider.”

The shows are currently available on the iTunes store for $1.99 each, commercial-free.

After distributing podcasting tools and guidelines to their 320,000 employees, IBM is reaping the rewards of this new medium. Podcasts have led to lower phone bills and more internal communication.

One of Edwards’ favorite creations is a weekly status update from IBM’s supply chain organization. The group previously scheduled a weekly conference call with all the employees it needed to coordinate with–a conference that involved as many as 7000 people. Now, supply-chain executives upload a weekly podcast, which staffers can listen to when they want.

“It’s dramatically cheaper,” Edwards said. “Plus you don’t have thousands of people organizing their schedules around this weekly call.”

IBM released the podcasting guidelines as to go along with the blogging guidelines created last year.

IBM has also released public podcasts, such as The Future of… series that has been downloaded over 40,000 times.

Amazon.com is coming out with a new program that will sell portions of a book online. Individual pages, even just one page, will be available to purchase in electronic format. A second Amazon service will allow users that have purchased a book to also purchase the electronic text of the book.

Both of these are in response to Google’s plan to scan the entire contents of libraries.

“The Amazon programs are the way copyright is supposed to work,” the Authors Guild’s executive director, Paul Aiken, said Thursday. “You provide access to readers and some compensation flows back to rights holders. It seems like a positive development.”

Certain publishers still want to keep books out of the electronic medium.

Random House, the country’s largest general trade publisher, listed a number of “key components” for any deal, including that “Books will be available for full indexing, search and display” and “No downloading, printing or copying will be permitted.”