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Despite how great CDs are, many people still prefer audiocassettes to them, especially when it comes to listening to audio books.

Below are some of the reasons why:

One, Audio books in CDs can't contain more than 75 minutes of content but audiocassettes can hold as much as 90 whole minutes (and, in many cases much more) of narration.

I have the same opinion, you can own an audio book on many different CDs however who likes to carry around a handful of CDs.

So, while you might need just one or a few audiocassettes for a particular audio book, you will need many CDs for that same audio book.

2. The extra cost in buying CD format audio books, the same product can be much less expensive as tape.

For example, while purchasing the unabridged version of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" on twelve tapes has been found for only $31.96 on Barnes & Noble website, the CD format from  the same Barnes & Noble costs almost double that amount – exactly $55.96 for 17 sets of  CDs!

Of course, its not that they want to rip you off because it costs much more to produce CDs  than it does to produce audiocassettes.

Three, when you put off your CD player while listening to an audio book, you won't be able to resume from the particular spot you left off.
But when you have a tape, you can simply press play and you'll be where you left off.

Listening to CDs can be frustrating when you are in a car because everytime you stop the engine you need to start the audio book from the beginning and then try to find where you where last up to.

There is, of course, more 'futuristic' cars now that will remember to the second where you were last listenning.

this doesn't happen if you stop the car and remove the CD.But this will be fine when using a tape!

Four, because audio books are mainly just narration, many users don’t see why they should spend the extra money to buy CDs because of issues of recording quality when they can get the exact quality with audiocassettes.

Their argument is that if it was sound "quality" they wanted, they would go for audio books in CD formats, but sound quality is the same with audiocassettes and CDs when it comes to audio books.

In more concise terms, a persons voice doesn't have much to gain from a greater sound quality (as there is no drumming or music to compete with) on CD format!

A really great place to find audio books is Spoken Network. You can find them at:

www.spokennetwork.com?cam=ama0014

When it comes to burning (or copying/writing) a downloadable audio book into CD, you must be sure that it isn’t for commercial purpose, but strictly for personal use. Violating this law is a really bad idea as it can get you into really serious copyright infringement problems.

Yes, the actual audio book content is still owned by the publisher an therefor it is still under copyright.

The only example of audio books that are not under copyright anymore is when the author or translator dies over seventy years ago. There are certain publications by government that is not under copyright.

But the rule of "only for personal use" is still ultimate when it comes to burning any downloadable audio book into CD or any such formats.

You won't believe it, but there are even certain audio book publishers that don't allow their audio books to be copied into CD. Such audio book publishers then go ahead to disable the ability to burn into CD.

To be sure if your audio book publishers allow this, check it out before going ahead to buy it.

It would be a waste of time and money if you were to purchase an audio book to burn onto a CD but then found out that you were not allowed to do this.

Also, when you are transferring audio books onto a compact disk you may need to use multiple CDs. For example, an audio book of about 10 hours can take you as many as 7 CDs to copy into, especially if you want to playback the CD with an MP3 player.

Saying that, These following instructions show you how to burn an audio book onto a compact disk

NOTE that the below instructions are based on Windows Media Player Version 10. If you are using an older version, you can download the latest version from Microsoft's website. Here's the exact link - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download

First, the computer you want to use to burn the audio book into CD must be equipped with a recordable CD drive and CD-burning software.

In other words, it is this CD-burning software that can burn the audio book into the CD. And it is your CD drive that can be used for this purpose.

2nd, open up the audio book and play in in Windows Media Player. You will need to make sure that you select 'Full Mode' when you are doing this, do not choose "Skin Mode".

Third, you will notice the "now playing" information displayed on the right-had side of your Windows Media Player. If it isn't displayed, you should click the "Restore the Video and Visualization Pane" button to display it.

Fourth, you can now click the "Library" tab. You will notice the “Start Burn” button displayed.

5th. Now you can place a blank CD into your CD drive.

Sixth, click the "Start Burn" button. Now the CD you had just inserted will begin the 'Burning' procedure.

Lastly, if the audio book is larger than the CD (most always are), Windows Media Player will prompt you that it requires a new CD. You can take out the CD and replace it with a new one.

Once the full 'burn' procedure is completed you will see the message "Complete".

An excellent source that I have found for audio book downloads is Spoken Network.

You can find them at:

www.spokennetwork.com?cam=ama0018

There’s no denying what a perfect combination audio book technology and the introduction of MP3 portable players have become.

You can now not only listen to your audio book on tape, compact disk or PC, but also on your very own MP3 player.

So, if you are like me and would greatly prefer the freedom of listening to your audio book on your MP3 player, rather than sitting at your Personal Computer, you can.

Now you will find the exact steps you can go through to make this possible.

NOTE that the below instructions are based on Windows Media Player Version 10. If you are using an older version, you can download the latest version from Microsoft's website.

Here is the actual link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download

First, the audio book needs to be on you PC, the PC you wish to use to make the transfer. If it is originally in a CD, you need to copy it from the CD into your computer.

Second, you need to find the USB cable that came with the MP3 player as all MP3 players use different cables. Once you have this cable you need to connect the MP3 player to your PC.

When you connect your MP3 player to your PC, your PC will show a message to say that it has found new hardware. If it doesn't indicate this, then something is wrong. Simply unplug it and try again.

Third, open your Windows Media Player and open the audio book you want to copy. Your audio book should now appear in the main panel of Windows Media Player.

Forth, with the sync list open on your Windows Media Player, add your audio book file.

Fifth, now you should click on the Sync tab on the Windows Media Player. You will now see a pull-down arrow on the box to the left hand side of the Sync tab. You need to make sure you choose the named "Removable Disk (E)" when you are choosing the location where your audio book is transferred to.

Sixth, you will see a display with an option to "start sync". Select the option by left clicking it. When this is completed, Windows Media Player will show a message, a message telling you that it is transferring the audio book files to your MP3 player as "Removable Disk (E)".

Seventh, as soon as the sync (or copying) is complete, you can verify if it is in your MP3 player.

One last note, make sure you select the hardware icon (found in the system tray - near the clock) to ""safely remove hardware"". Don't remove the USB cable until you get the clear signal saying "safe to remove the hardware". NOTE--not doing this before removing the USB cable can damage your computer and/or your MP3 player.

When all of this is done, you can then try to playback the audio book from your MP3 player. After you have gone through the above steps your audio books should appear on you MP3 player.

If however you are using an older version of Windows Media Player, you can still follow the exact steps above. The main difference will be that where it said 'Sync' it will will say 'copy'. You can select this and go through the same steps as above transfer your audio book onto your MP3 player.

A really good place that I came across to get all your favorite audiobooks is

Spoken Network. You can locate them at:

www.spokennetwork.com?cam=ama0017

This was the question I was asked by a group of friends I met while shopping for an audio book collection in an audio book forum.

They were all raving about the greatest audio book of all times, talking about how wonderful it felt being entertained by the creativity of the entire series, when I joined them.

I was under the impression that everyone though Harry Potter was the greatest audio book so I answered with a definate 'yes'.

I instantly knew that I thought wrong when they asked about Arthur Dent, they obviously were not talking about Harry Potter.

To this group and almost everyone in that particular forum, the greatest audio book of all time was none other than "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

Person after person, members of the forum said so many good things about the brand new third series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which now comes to audio on CD and cassette with 25 minutes of unbroadcast footage.

I had been a great fan of the original BBC Radio 4 series so knew they had to be right.

I was so impressed about hearing that Douglas Adams, the actual author played the role of one of the characters.

I immediately went to Amazon and ordered for the complete six part dramatization - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary Phase.

I remember the end of season 2, the 3rd season continued that story perfectly. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect had escaped from prehistoric Earth using a time-traveling sofa. At the time some homicidal robots had blown up Lords Cricket Ground.

Arthur, with only a rabbit bone as his weapon and an Italian bistro like spaceship, embarks on an intergalactic journey to save the universe.

I would be lying if I said that I was completely amazed by this, that would be an understatement.

I was really pleased when I found out that the original cast had got back together to make this amazing sequel.

There's around twenty minutes of bonus material, not included when it was first released. The entire running time was about 3 hours and 10 minutes.

I couldn't believe that I was entertained for such a long time! It was enjoying every minute.

I have to say, if you are among the people who have not yet listened to this new six-part dramatization of Douglas Adam's book "Life, the Universe and Everything" you are missing a lot.

The cast in this classic audio book include Arthur Dent, played by Simon Jones. Also Ford Perfect, played by Geoffrey McGivern; Trillian, played by Susan Sheridan; Zaphod Beeblebrox, played by Mark Wing-Davey; Marvin the Paranoid Android, played by Stephen Moore.

Other popular names in this classic audio book include Chris Langham, Richard Griffiths, and Joanna Lumley. Famous cricket commentators, Fred Trueman and Henry Blofed were also part of those that made this audio book possible.

Apart from the powerful creativity involved in the voices used, the entire sound quality and production values were very high indeed.

Winner of both the Gold Award for Drama, TV and Film and the Silver Award for Production; Spoken Word Awards 2005, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy audio book has continued to be a bestseller on audio CD and cassettes as it has been on radio.

If you haven’t listened to this audio book, do yourself a favor and order your copy right away. You can get it from one of the major outlets like Spoken Network.

An excellent source that I have found for audio book downloads is Spoken Network. You can find them at:

www.spokennetwork.com?cam=ama0025

We have a lot to be grateful for when talking about technology.

It's amazing to think that we haven't just reduced the global impact when making books but people are also now able to completely avoid using paper as they will 'listen' rather than 'read'.

Ironic? Not with the introduction of audio books.

With audio books, we now have the unique advantage of doing other things that take up our hands, but not our minds. We now have the freedom of doing what we want, while having the book read to us.

Audio book sales are increasing as more and more people are taking advantage of how wonderful they are to listen to.

If you have thought about buying audio books you will want to read the below suggestions

1. In bed - There are certain days when we just don't want to do anything but lie down in bed thinking of certain issues. Or we could just want to lie down in the dark until we fall asleep.

This is a great time to listen to an audio book. You wouldn't need to turn the lighting on, have the book in your hands, turning pages, wearing glasses or actually read the book itself.

When you listen to an audio book you do not have to worry about these things, you can simply relax and have your favorite book read to you.

2. In the kitchen while doing household chores such as washing the dishes or cooking. The kitchen is such a dull place to be, imagine all the time spent there when you have to wash the pots and pans.

This is a brilliant time to listen to and love an audio book because you need to be using your hands whereas your mind is completely free.

Another, much better thing would be to listen to an audio book, this would crush all the negative thoughts.

3. While gardening, Of course, you can listen to an audiobook while gardening. The audio book can make the gardening fun because you would be concentrating on the beauty of the audio book and not on the difficulty of gardening.

4. When you are exercising. When you are busy exercising, your whole body is busy, you wouldn't be able to read a book but wouldn't it be great, as your mind is free. This is a brilliant time to listen to and love an audio book.

People can spend countless hours every week exercising while their mind wonder. This time is not wasted when you listen to your favorite audio book.

Talk about killing 2 birds with one stone - exercising your body and mind at the same time!

5. On the road commuting, his could either be in your personal car or a commercial bus or train ride to work. You see, many people loose a great deal of time doing nothing while commuting to and fro their jobs.

Why not use that time to listen to an audio book, especially one that develops your mind and/or improve your professional and business skills?

For example, listening to an audio book that improves your skills daily can do a lot of good to your career, instead of listening to a musical song which wouldn't help you much in the area of skill acquisition.

6. In the air while traveling - You wouldn't believe it, but there are many people who spend more time in the air than on road. There are professional assignments that involve traveling from one state to the other, or even from one country to the other.

If you are in such a situation, consider the enormous benefits you would get listening to audio books, especially those that improve your professional skills.

Yes, there are many audio book courses made specifically for professionals to improve their skills in many areas of their professions.

An excellent source that I have found for audio book downloads is Spoken Network. You can find them at:

www.spokennetwork.com?cam=ama0024

Spiritual Growth Meditation

To have spiritual growth is to take a closer look within yourself toward your inner soul.

For us as human beings and to grow spiritually in a world defined by power, money, and outer influence is surely a Herculean task. Modern conveniences such as electronic equipments, cell phones, and tools as well as entertainment through television, video games, and the web have predisposed us to direct our attention mostly to our physical needs and wants. As a result, our concepts of self-worth and self-meaning are muddled. How can we strike a balance between the spiritual and material aspects of our day to day living?

Challenges

Many challenging cross roads will come into our lives as we take this journey through this life. There are some pathways that lead to a life of single blessedness, marriage, and spiritual vocation. Some of these roads could ultimately bring us happiness,fame and fortune on one hand, or hopelessness, isolation and distress on the other. Some of these roads lead to shining happiness as there are roads to deep despair, roads towards triumphant victory and jubilation, and roads leading to defeat and dissatisfaction.

Examine

When we look deep within ourselves we should go beyond the recalling of recent events thattook place in a day, week, or month. You will need to look closely and reflect upon your inner thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. Periodically try to examining your experiences, the decisions you can make, the relationships you are working on, and the things you engage in provide useful insights on your life goals, try to focus on the quality traits you must sustain and the negative traits you have to discard.

A good mental and spiritual cleansing is absolutely necessary for your spirit.Moreover, it gives you clues on how to act, react, and conduct yourself in the midst of any situation. Like any ability, introspection can be learned; all it takes is the willingness and courage to seek the truths that reside within you. Here are some pointers when you introspect: be objective, learn to forgive yourself, and focus on the areas of needed improvement.

To grow spiritually in within,is to develop your capabilities.
Each and every time that you do your best to improve the quality of your life and your being, be it to cleaning up your house, extending your hand and helping a stranger, to fail on school exams and brushing yourself off and trying again, maybe you have offered in the taking care of your neighbors sick cat,life has a way of giving you equivalent points for those merits.
Religion and science have alternate takes on these unknown matters of the human spirit. Religion views humans as spiritual beings temporarily living on Earth, while science views the spirit as just one aspect of an individual. Mastery of the self is a recurring way if thinking in both Christian (Western) and Islamic (Eastern) teachings.

The needs of the human body are recognized but placed under the needs of the spirit. Beliefs, values, morality, rules, experiences, and hard work provide the blueprint to ensure the enrichment of the spiritual being. In Psychology, self-actualization is the realizing of one’s full potential. The psychologist Maslow identified several human needs: physiological, security, belonging, esteem, cognitive, aesthetic, self-actualization, and self-transcendence.

James earlier categorized these needs into three: material, emotional, and spiritual. It seems that it is human nature that when you have satisfied the basic physiological and emotional needs, spiritual or existential needs will follow. Achieving each need leads to the total development of the individual. Perhaps the biggestdifference between the two religions and psychology is the end of self-development: Islam and Christianity will believe that self-development is a means toward serving God, while modern psychology views that self-development is an end to the means unto itself.

To grow spiritually is to search for a deeper meaning

Religions that believe in the existence of God such as Christianism, Judaism, and Islam suppose that the purpose of theirour existence is to serve the Creator of all life. Several theories in psychology propose that we ultimately give meaning to our lives. Whether or not we believe that life’s meaning is self-directed or pre-determined, to grow within your spirit is to realize that we do not merely exist. We do not know the meaning of our lives at birth; but we gain knowledge and wisdom from our interactions with people and from our actions and reactions to the situations we are in. As we uncover this sense of purpose, there are certain beliefs and values that we turn down and accept.  Our life has meaning. Thissense of belonging puts all our physical, emotional, and intellectual potentials into use; sustains us during tough times; and gives us something to look forward to—a goal to achieve, a destination to reach. A person without purpose or meaning is like a floundering ship at sea.

Religions stress the concept of our relatedness to all of life, live and inanimate. Thus do we call upon others as our “brothers and sisters” even if there are no direct blood relations. Moreover, deity-centered religions such as Christianity and Islam speak of the relationship between humans and a higher being. On the other hand, science expounds on our connection to other living things through the evolution theory.

This connection is clearly seen in the concept of ecology, the interaction between living and non-living things. In psychology, connectedness is a characteristic of self-transcendence, the upper most human need according to Maslow. Recognizing your connection to all things makes you more humble and respectful of people, animals, plants, and things in nature. It makes you appreciate everything around you. It moves you to reach out to other people and go beyond your comfort zone, and become stewards of all the things around you.

Growth

Growth is a process, thus to grow in your soul is a day-to-day activity. The important thing is that we learn, and from this knowledge, further spiritual growth is made possible.

If your growth stops then you are dead.Never stop the learning of your soul. Learning is life.It is the bread and butter of our life and our earthly existence.

It’s pretty fair to say, I think, that these are troubled times for lots of people: maybe even for most people. In life, of course, there will always be something to cope with, whether it be money problems, problems with health, or problems with relationships. In today’s environment, however, you can add what seems to be a worldwide financial collapse to these life typical difficulties. Put it all together, and circumstances today can rapidly take on the appearance of being almost too overwhelming to deal with.

What one typically wonders during diffult times, naturally, is whether or not something can be done to improve the situation. There are instances when it’s fairly obvious what steps can be taken to make a situation better. At other points in time, a situation appears entirely a person’s control to impact in any sort of positive way: it’s out of one’s hands, so to speak. Today’s world may seem to be one of those situations when there’s not much an individual can really do, except perhaps to hope that factors will eventually get better.

There’s one outlook however that claims any difficulty can not only be improved, but can be solved entirely. This particular perspective insists that all problems, of any sort, are actually internal experiences, not external experiences. To put it another way, a world beyond one’s individual experience doesn’t actually exist. This sort of an idea would strike some people, if not the majority of people, as unrealistic and even bizarre. Be that as it may, the outlook I’m speaking of is gaining increasing notoriety and more and more people are coming to practice it. It’s a method known as ho’oponopono, and it’s been practiced on the Hawaiian Islands for generations. Ho’oponopono does advocate a higher plane presence, but does not advocate any specific reiligous outlook.

Ho oponopono is simple to do, and can be done anywhere, at any time, by a person of any background. Though the method may sound fantastical, it’s easy enough to determine whether ho’oponopono is in fact legitimate: try it. More about the ho’oponopono method can be found at God Help Me.

Happiness

Something that all of us want but does not come easily is happiness. Happiness is definitely that we may need to work on. We have to find ways to be able to learn happiness regardless of the things that happen in our lives. It really is something that we are able to do and able to do well. It is not necessary for us to worry about what other people may think because we only get a single chance to make the most of our lives and after all it is our life and not anyone else’s.

How To Accomplish This

There are some methods that you can try so that you have all the happiness in life that you deserve. It is going to take some work and a lot of effort, but you can do it and once you see the way that you feel, you will know that it is worth it and that you have made the right choices in life.  Taking these methods into consideration is very important.  You need to make things work for you so that you are able to do well in life and to get all your goals achieved.

1. As human beings, a life without happiness is really meaningless. For happiness to be truly felt, we have to set goals. Once we have established the goals we want in life, then we will know what we want and will then have to figure ways in which to achieve those goals. We will need ways to make the things we want happen for us so that we will have what we deserve. We should make our lives special to us so that we will be able to feel happiness of completing an achievement. When goals are set in our lives and we move towards accomplishing them, we will have the feeling of happiness as we will have a meaning and a goal to reach for.

2. A second thing to be considered is that we need to live life for today. We need to ensure that we use our best intentions and that we make the days that we have worthwhile. We definitely have to also think of the future and that the choices we make are the right ones for our health and security, however we also need to have fun and enjoyment in our lives and need to ensure that we succeed in our goals.

3. Another thing to do is to think about what things will make us lose our happiness. What are the factors or events in our life that would make us feel discontented with who we are and would cause us not to feel happy. These are items that we have to really stay away from. We should ensure that we are able to keep away the negative factors from our life, and that we are able to make the correct choices without putting risks on our happiness. It is essential that we continue to make things work out for us and that we are able to stay happy.

4. The fourth thing we have to ensure is that we are healthy in order for us to be happy. We should remain in good health and that we should make the right health choices to that we can stay happy and healthy regardless of what we do. We need to eat the right way and consider the food choices we make for our body. We should refrain from making choices that will cause us to be unhealthy and sick. We have to remove the negative things that affect us so that we stay in good mental health so that we are both physically and mentally happy at the same time.

5. The last thing we need you ensure is to keep the good feelings in our hearts and mind. We need to keep these feelings with us so that we are able to give it back to others when they need it. We should be pleasant and as much as possible try to be happy. The more pleasant we are will show to us that we will be able to stay happy and that we will be able to make others happy too. We should strive to make others happy and bring joy to them as this will give us a way to feel good about how we affect others. Do not let events take you down emotionally as we may unintentionally bring down others too.