[Hidden-tech] Hidden-discuss Digest, Vol 74, Issue 25

[Anne Campbell]

Robin Macrostie wrote:

>
> I'm considering moving into the iPod technology finally.    THere  is
> an offer of a free iPod Shuffle for taking a survey.    I'm leery of
> those to begin with, but I would risk that if I knew that I could
> download and listen to talking books.
>

For what it's worth, although there are a lot of "survey" companies out
there that are scammers and spammers, there are a few honest ones. I used to
belong to one called American Consumer Opinion and another called Hotspex
(note, there's a letter P in the name - it's G-rated!). Every couple of
days, they'd send me a survey invitation, and I'd fill out a few qualifying
questions. If I qualified, they would give me the longer survey. I got to be
pretty quick at filling them out: age bracket, income bracket, ethnicity,
etc., plus my opinions on such scintillating topics as a toilet seat I
bought at Target or how often I'd bought ant traps from Home Depot.

American Consumer Opinion pays cash (I got checks for 15 bucks or so every
couple of months). Hotspex pays in points that you can either redeem for
oddball prizes, or use to take a chance on a sort of raffle for better
prizes. Every month, Hotspex also enters everyone automatically in a drawing
for $250 cash. A little over a year ago, my name was drawn and I got the
$250! And as a matter of fact, I used it to buy an iPod Touch.

I don't mean to sound like an ad for these companies - I'm no longer
affiliated with them because I just got bored of it after winning the prize.
But I didn't notice any spam whatsoever as a result of taking the surveys,
and I was never scammed in any way, nor did I have to shell out money for
Applebees dinners or subscriptions to Netflix. On the other hand, the
reputable survey companies don't promise that you'll definitely snag a
fabulous prize or get rich quick....it's more like "get a very few bucks,
gradually."

I also wanted to chime in on the subject of audiobooks. I'm a big fan of
Librivox.org, which has thousands of free audiobooks in the public domain,
read by volunteers. I've listened to SO many classic books that I never
picked up in high school - it's fabulous. The quality of the readers varies,
but you can always listen to a minute or two to see if you like the person's
voice. Some books and plays are even read as dramatizations by multiple
readers.

Another possibility that some people may consider a gray area is to check
out audiobooks from the library. What I do is request a book on CD, rip it
to my computer, transfer it to my iPod, and then delete the whole thing from
both iPod and computer after I'm done listening. I figure this is the
functional equivalent of borrowing any other library material.

Don't forget the world of podcasts, too - there are thousands of free ones
on any topic you can imagine, many of them quite professionally done. If you
have kids, a great podcast is Storynory.com, which has a professional reader
telling classic and original children's stories.

Enjoy your MP3 player, of whatever variety, and however you acquire it!
Audiobooks (and podcasts) have really changed my world - I can be cooking or
knitting or taking a long drive, and reading a book at the same time.

-Anne

-- 
Anne Campbell, acampbell at gmail.com
http://www.annecampbelldesign.com/
http://www.riverbenddoula.com/
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