Book summaries for you on your Treo
Like many Treonauts, I am a bit of an information junkie. I buy a book or Audible book a week, subscribe to some 20 business magazines, visit dozens of websites, news sites and blogs on a daily basis, routinely scan a couple of hundred RSS feeds as well as the hundreds of relevant emails that flow in my Inbox... You get the idea.
Within this context, any tools or services that allow me to better manage this mountain of information are particularly welcome. One such service that has been on my radar for some years now and to which I've recently subscribed is provided by a company called Soundview Executive Book Summaries.
As the company's name suggests, Soundview provides concise summaries (typically 8 to 12 pages long) of the best business books of the year (that's 30 summaries in all). This is great for me because I always want to keep up to date with the latest ideas but don't necessarily have the time to read the entire book. With Soundview I can still learn about the most important points of the book quickly and if I find that I absolutely need to read more about the subject I'll buy the book.
I have to admit that I was surprised to learn that Soundview has successfully been providing summaries for over 25 years now and the interesting thing is how the company has been particularly good at moving with the times and exploring and exploiting the unique business and consumer benefits of 'going digital'. Aside from its traditional print offering, Soundview now also provides electronic (HTML, PDF and PalmDoc/eReader) and audio versions (MP3) of its summaries - and all of this without any aggravating digital rights management nonsense. The combination of choice and flexibility probably makes it one of the most 'digital' publishers that I have come across.
Depending on which subscription you take (ranging in price from $109 to $159 per year) you'll be able to choose between reading the summaries online in HTML or PDF, download and print them from a PDF file, download the MP3 and listen to them with RealPlayer on your PC or PocketTunes on your Treo or finally download the ebook and read them on your Treo with any one of a variety of eReaders. I also liked the fact that they have a 100% money back guarantee just in case things don't work out but having been in business this many years I reckon that they have a pretty solid offering.
In my 'time-starved' case I found Soundview to be an extremely compelling proposition and I encourage you to have a look at it if nothing else than to see how I feel that other media like movies and music should be offered in the future. For example, wouldn't you love going to Amazon or elsewhere online and buy a DVD but then for a small additional fee also have the opportunity to download the movie in a variety of digital formats to view on your Treo, portable media player or any other device that you might happen to have in the future instead of having to go through the painful and time consuming process of doing this yourself. Soundview does this today, albeit only for book summaries.
Check out Soundview Executive Book Summaries and you also get a free sample summary in all the digital formats that I mentioned of Lou Gerstner's "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance" to take for a spin (which I happen to be listening to on Audible at the moment).
Treonauts hate wasting time...