The Bookmark App: Audiobooks finally done right

Just got ipod touch for audiobooks & I can't see anywhere to bookmark. It has chapters listed but there is no way to bookmark where you are. So if I shut off the ipod & turn it back on to listen later, its start back at the begining.

Not available in Australian iTunes. That's a shame is looks great compared to other available apps. When I'm driving my car and miss a bit of the story or if my ipod bounces out of the FM transmitter cradle fumble and skip or accidently move the timeline.

The thing is, audible book bookmarking on the iPhone is inconsistant. Sure, it remembers the place if I simply stop listening and do something else on the iPhone, but where the wonkiness appears is SYNCING the iPhone, it will sometimes wish to jump to an earlier bookmark, or forget your place entirely.

And I'm not sure what variation is causing the bookmarks not to hold. The way I stop listening to Audiobooks on the iPhone? The particular File Format downloaded from Audible or iTunes? (I have audilble books through both, it seems that the ones direct from Audible might hold their bookmarks better. Is is iTunes pointing towards another Audible File Format?) Or it could just be what iTunes decides to sync during syncing; I most frequently sync for Podcast updates.

I'm about to Sync the iPhone, and this time, I used the notes app to write down exactly where I was in the book (bought on iTunes). We will see if any bookmarking holds where it should. It is often the case that a previous bookmark might come up instead. Maybe it is something like App Upgrades that sometimes pull an iPhone Back Up that is messing up the iPhone audio bookmarking, pulling up some previous spot in the book where I have stopped.

In a 28 hour book, bookmarking is important. It is an issue.

I have yet to see a proper troubleshooting of the problem.

I use an ipod nano and make my bookfiles be tagged as audiobooks. I put my book into a playlist and don't mind having tons of little files around but would love to have the little dot next to the file to indicate I have NOT listened to it (or in progress in half-full dot) like the podcasts do. I frequently go to sleep listening to a single cd playlist from a book, so having just one big file isn't as helpful for me as I have to "back up" but having that instant dot indication would be nice. i wouldn't even mind it on the songs but books would be helpful. does anyone know how to make this happen? the last played date doesn't show up on the ipod.

Correction to the article: "For the very reasonable price of $2.99 any iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 3.0 or better can get a full and multi-featured audiobook subsystem, and although it still needs some features, it's wonderful."

I downloaded it yesterday without reading the sidebar in the ap store because it hadn't occurred to me that there was a substantial enough difference between iPod Touch Gen1 and Gen2 where this application is concerned, but apparently there is. The application won't install on my 1st Generation iPod Touch, and, reading the application store's page, it does say "Compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch (2nd generation). Requires iPhone 3.0 or later." Although when I went back to get the exact text just now, I see that the top of the product description says, "Have a 1st gen iPod Touch? We're looking into compatibility and hope to approve it for your device very soon."

So hopefully they'll get it working, but for now 1st Gen Touch users need not apply. Still perplexing, though, since the iPod Touch came out after the 1st gen iPhone, which does not seem to have compatibility issues.

Here is MY problem:

I use my iPhone for audio books in my car a lot. It uses an iPod integration kit. This means I can no longer access the song selection controls in the iPod, since the iPod player is locked out when docked. Now what track gets played could be the last one that got played, or it could be the first in my song list; the latter is guaranteed if I have synced, and otherwise a bit of a crapshoot (a friend says it happens when the iPod app gets kicked outta memory due to low memory condition).

So, if my Pod is docked in something like a car where the iPod app is locked out (and I can't pause, BTW), and I select this app an play a book, will it stop the iPod app playing? This along would be a great help, since it is an easy way to select an audio book to play (my g/f does it, so no comments on driving while ipodding). The car controls for song selection are insanely difficult to use.

I have frequently lost my place in an audio book. Originally, using a 5G iPod, it seemed to be a bug involving file sizes that had me constantly scrubbing back to where I left off. My iPod Touch handles my bookmark better, but not perfectly. I still have found the iPod losing my place, which, I think, often has to do with syncing between and listening on multiple devices. Sometimes I think iTunes regresses the file to an earlier version when I plug in a device that wasn't the one I was using most recently.

The file display in the iPod Touch vs. a click-wheel iPod is certainly different, but I find both have their advantages. It's easier to hop around the book or go to specific section using the chapters on the Touch. It's also easier to scrub around looking for a particular spot. Scrubbing on my 5G is very tricky if I'm trying to find the right point in a 5 hour file. But the click-wheel style display does show exactly how far into a file I am, which I like. You can get that information on the Touch, but it takes a little more effort. If I had to choose, I'd choose the Touch style of display, but what I'd really love to see is if the Touch could incorporate that piece of information that shows your place within the whole file.

Also, I recently considered using the audio version of a book for my book club. I abandoned this idea because there was no good way to mark passages and get back to specific parts. This application seems like it would be the key to that.

Not being able to run in the background is a shame, but I realize that's Apple's decision. It might be a deal breaker on this application, though, but its other features sound so promising that I will probably have to try it out.

i've been using audible.com for over a year, downloaded about 25 books to itunes library then to itouch and have never had one instance of losing where i was on the last listen, on both itouch and laptop. i can leave the site, go to games and play while book still is being read, or shut down a game still hearing book, or shut down laptop or itouch and start up returns to same place.
the idea of being able to keep notes could be useful, but 2.99 for this feature isn't worth it.

Does this let you adjust playback speed with more granularity than .5x/1/2x? It looks like it might, but maybe that's just for scrubbing. There are a couple audio books I'd really like to of been able to playback at 1.25 or 1.50x, but find 2x too fast.

Great, but the UI is kinda ugly.