Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

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All posts tagged "facebook"


Friday, December 3, 2010

Help Me Win $1250 for Kids Who Need It This Christmas

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Thoughts Media Off Topic" @ 03:00 PM

Hi everyone! I need your help to win an unboxing contest that Best Buy is running on Facebook, and it’s for a good cause. Since I do a lot of those, I thought hey, why not enter? There are two grand prizes of $2500 CAD each, awarded as Best Buy gift cards. Since we’re coming up on Christmas, sharing the grand prize if I win makes sense – so I’ve publicly committed to donating half of the prize ($1250) to kids involved with Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Canada. My mother works for that organization, and I’ve seen first hand the needs that some of these families have. She works with the in-school mentoring program, which pairs younger kids with senior citizen mentors. Apparently the kids are Nintendo Wii-crazy, and it’s an activity the seniors and kids can do together, so I think what I’ll do is buy as many Nintendo Wii bundles as I can with $1250 (it should be at least five of them).

I'd really appreciate the support of the Thoughts Media community, because - and I'll be blunt here - Twitter is such a noisy medium that every though yesterday the message about this contest went out to over 5000 people from three different people, nearly zero votes came as a result of it. I'm currently #3 in votes, but I could easily take a dominating lead if even 20% of you reading this decided to act. Please help!

Here’s how you can help me, and the kids, win – oh, and enter to win a $150 gift card yourself!

  1. Log into Facebook, and visit the Best Buy Unboxing Day Contest Site. Click Allow when the app asks for your permission. I’ve noticed there’s a weird bug with Internet Explorer 8 where it loops the process for almost a minute, so you may want to use Firefox or Chrome if you run into trouble.
  2. Find my Samsung Focus video (see above) and click on it, then click on Vote in the window that pops up. You’ll need to fill out a little form; if you live outside Canada and don't qualify for the gift card, just put in whatever bogus information you want.
  3. Return to that contest site every day to vote – you can vote once every day up until December 31st.

The winners will be announced January 3rd, 2011, and if I win, I’ll announce it here and provide details and photos of the Wii’s I purchase.

(And for the Windows Phone Thoughts readers, I'll be doing a "real" unboxing of the Focus - that was just a simplified, quick version. I've got some serious concerns about the screen...).


Friday, November 12, 2010

So I Guess Social Media Isn't a Fad?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Thoughts Media Status Updates" @ 05:00 PM

A quick note for all readers of all sites: since this whole "Social Media" thing isn't going away any time soon, we've decided to modernize our sites a bit by adding both a Twitter "Re-Tweet" button and a Facebook "Like" button to the bottom of every post. If you find one of our stories useful, interesting, and worth sharing with others, please use the buttons. Thanks so much, and let us know if you see any problems. Right now we're using the basic Facebook integration rather than the deeper one that requires more coding work, but it should do the trick for now. And if you're using Twitter, you'll find our Twitter feeds in the upper right-hand corner of each site.


Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Video Walk-Through of the Zune HD Facebook App

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Articles & Resources" @ 01:00 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ85WwzCRLQ

Haven't had a chance to install the Facebook app on your Zune HD yet? Or don't have a Zune HD and want to see this app in action? My friend Matt Miller shot a video - an especially geeky one since he shot it in his car while the Zune HD was connected over WiFi to his Palm Pre - that walks you through the whole thing.


Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Zune HD Facebook App is Finally Working for Me

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Talk" @ 12:04 PM

As of last night, the Zune HD Facebook app was still busted for me - updates not loading, news feeds not loading, etc. This morning, surprisingly, it all started to work - without a new version of the app. That tells us that it wasn't a problem with the application itself - which I guessed at - but instead a problem with Facebook itself, or something between Facebook and the Zune HD application. The Zune team has made some vague statements about Zune and Facebook engineers addressing the problem, but they've provided no details about what actually went wrong. Regardless of whose fault it was, or why this happened in the first place, it's unfortunate to see the Zune HD getting more bad press related to apps - and this is the second botched app release in a row now, after the Twitter curse-word blow-up (which most people made into a bigger deal than it really was).

Ultimately this highlights again how broken the Zune team's approach to apps is: they can't continue to release apps one by one, relying on internal resources to build up their app selection. The only thing that makes any sense is to open up the Zune HD to third-party developers, give them the ability to make money in a marketplace, and let them have it it. I suspect we'll hear some good news on this front when MIX10 happens in a couple of weeks - the root problem here is that Zune HD app plan was out of sync with the Windows phone 7 series app plan, and the only thing that makes any sense is for them to come together into one big happy "develop for our two device type" family. Guess we'll have to wait and see!


Monday, March 1, 2010

Zune HD Facebook App is Out: Download Now!

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Software" @ 08:39 PM

After a long wait, the Zune HD app is finally available - good thing I opened my Twitter client tonight! You should see it in Marketplace > Apps now, but if you don't, it will likely appear shortly. I downloaded it and decided to take it for a spin. After waiting 10 seconds for it to start - seriously Zune team, you've got to fix the awful app load time - I entered my Facebook log-on information using the shockingly impressive keyboard. I don't use my Zune HD for much Web browsing, so I haven't used the keyboard since it was first added, and they've definitely improved it since launch. After logging in, you'll be presented with your wall and most recent status update. You can pivot left or right and choose from photos, status updates, or news feed. Unfortunately, nothing loads for me. I waited several minutes, but none of those three feeds showed me any information. Not a great first experience.

I pivoted over to the profile tab, and this was more functional. It loaded my status update, and I could see my info and uploaded photos. More photos and impressions after the break. Read more...


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