Audiobooks 8

This app was a candidate in the Apptivate.MS semi-finals. See how it did among the other candidates in the Knowledge group.

Listen to audiobooks on a fast, easy-to-use Windows 8 application. You'll have access to an expanding multilingual collection that contains over 6000 free audiobooks categorized by genre and language.

Features

Search audiobooks
Download and play audiobooks
Stream audiobooks without download
Share audiobooks with other applications
Pin audiobooks to the start screen
Listen to audiobooks while the application is in the background
Use system media controls to control the audio playback
Get information about the currently played audiobook via Live tile

Development Info

Audiobooks 8 is a C#/XAML based Windows Store application that uses the MVVM design pattern. All CPU intensive functions were implemented as asynchronous tasks to increase user experience. The application features streaming support which allows the user to listen to an audiobook without download. The default MediaElement didn't support this functionality so I used the Media Player Framework by Microsoft Media Platform which is a professional open source media player. My application collects data about the user's favorite books using a Windows Azure Mobil Service.