Every year around Halloween I try to finish reading [tag]Dracula[/tag]. I’m always thwarted. This has been going on for years. This year I thought I’d be smart about this and listen to the audiobook at the gym. I remembered that the public library had a new, large catalog of commercial audiobooks available. I checked the website, Dracula was one of the featured downloads. For a brief moment, I thought, “It’s meant to be!” I soon discovered that it really wasn’t.

At this time, OverDrive Media files cannot be used on iPods or Mac computers.

Our media titles, provided by OverDrive, Inc., use DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection technology from Microsoft Corporation. Unfortunately the iPod (and Mac) currently support neither DRM-protected Windows Media Audio (.wma) files nor Window Media Video (.wmv) files.

OverDrive, along with hundreds of online media providers, is hopeful that Apple and Microsoft can reach an agreement that would enable support for Microsoft-based DRM-protected materials on the iPod/Mac.

Instead of just picking up the actual book (of which we have 6 editions now), I’ve been reading [tag]Steve Almond’s[/tag] [tag]Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America[/tag]. Almond worships Halloween as “the freak national holiday” so it seems topical to me. It’s also hysterically funny, and his descriptions of the tours he finagles through various candymaker’s factories are fascinating. He doesn’t get inside any of the Big 3 candymakers, Nestle, Hershey, or Mars (see: [tag]Joel Glenn Brenner[/tag]’s Emperor’s of Chocolate for the story of how insanely cutthroat the competition between Mars and Hershey has been, historically). Husband can’t wait for me to finish the book, if only so I’ll stop reading long sections of it outloud to him. He doesn’t appreciate having a private audiobook service. DRM free, even.