Just Press Play

Playaway @ ALA - Booth #5220Join Us For Playaway With Your Peers!

Chicago, here we come!

If you'll be attending the American Library Association Annual Conference in "The Windy City of Big Shoulders," be sure to visit the Playaway booth to say hello, hear the latest Playaway news, and enter a drawing for the chance to win a collection of 15 Playaways for your library!

Many of our publisher and distributer partners will also be at ALA offering additional opportunities to win - in all, 40 total chances during the conference! Come see us at booth #5220 to find out more.

And we hope you'll join us Sunday July 12th from 10:30am to 12 noon for Playaway With Your Peers @ ALAPlayaway with your Peers. This will be our first ever ALA user group meeting, and we're planning a lively group discussion with special guests, Ed Booker (Orange County Florida Library System), Yvonne Oliger (Brown County Library of Nashville, Indiana), and Kitty Pope (Alliance Library System of East Peoria, Illinois). Location information:

Northwest 5 room
Hilton Chicago
720 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60605

Gotta go pack -- I hope to see you there!

Playaway Sights and Sounds

Playaway co-fouder and chief strategy officer, Blake Squires, was recently interviewed by Sarah Long, Director of the North Suburban Library System, a consortial group made up of 650 academic, public, school, and special libraries in the north and northwest suburbs of Chicago.  Sarah's lengthy credentials include past service as president of both ALA and PLA, and she now maintains a lively multimedia website for North Surburban called Library Beat.  Their full conversation is available as a downloadable podcast at:
        http://www.librarybeat.org/longshots/play/149

And here's Blake leading a recent tour of Playaway headquarters in Solon, OH:
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgbLsj_sbTM

Donna Pittman of TV station KMBC in Kansas City, MO recently filed a story on the popularity of Playaway at the Kansas City (Kansas) Public Library.  We were particularly pleased to see her mention that, if you're lucky enough to have a car stereo with an auxiliary input jack, you can plug in a Playaway and listen over your car's speakers.  You can watch the segment at:
        http://www.kmbc.com/video/18896127/index.html

Welcome to Just Press Play - About Playaway

Happy New Year, and welcome to Just Press Play, the Playaway content blog! 

For those of you who aren't familiar with our product, Playaway is the world's first pre-loaded digital audio player.  Introduced to the marketplace in late 2005, it's simple all-in-one format has made it a big hit with libraries, schools, and even the U.S. military. 

As of the beginning of 2009, there are over 4,000 audiobook titles from more than 80 publishers available on Playaway, and over the course of the coming year, we'll be adding many thousands more.  Playaway is currently available in over 20,000 schools and libraries. 

The content is pre-loaded on flash memory, the player weighs just 2 ounces, and the whole thing is powered by a single AAA battery.  Each unit can hold up to 80 hours of continuous audio.  Just plug in a pair of standard earbuds, and you're good to go -- no moving parts, no disks or tapes to go missing, nothing to download or install, and no need for any additional technology. 

We think of it as content that plays itself -- just like you can pick up a book and start reading, you can pick up a Playaway and start listening.  That's why we say, "Just press play." 

For more information, visit our website at: www.playaway.com.