Quick reminder, contest for the Gomadic 2-in-1 Charger ends this Friday. You can check out the details and the thread here. DO NOT reply to this posting as your entry won't count unless it is to the original contest thread. Thanks!

"[W]ith the impending release of the Windows Phone 7 Series, which will include full Zune HD functionality in its "Music + Video" hub, I've begun to wonder if Microsoft will phase out the Zune as a standalone music player. Here's one clue: Microsoft developer Michael Klucher on Tuesday put up a blog post about the upcoming XNA Game Studio 4.0. Thus far, XNA Game Studio has been primarily used to develop casual games for the Xbox 360 and, more recently, to create games for the Zune HD. ... Long story short, Klucher confirmed that XNA Game Studio 4.0 will support game development on Windows Phone 7 Series phones, but not on the Zune HD."

Well that's a kicker. Microsoft really isn't going to roll out the Zune HD app plan like they said they would? It's hard to see a silver lining in what is essentially Microsoft cutting off any hopes of a Zune HD app store, at least for this generation. Microsoft's Klucher confirmed that current XNA 3.1 code will continue to work with the device, but the features in XNA 4.0, like 3D APIs, Xbox Live integration, and the cool cross-platform Windows/Xbox/WinPhone7 game porting won't be coming. There's talk of a Zune HD2 in the works, which would follow Apple's lead in providing an experience similar to WinPhone7 without a cellular radio (i.e. iPhone to iPod Touch), but Microsoft has made no announcements yet. Personally, I prefer having a dedicated device for music and video, rather than feeling like they're tacked on as an application which needs to be loaded each time I search for a song, but it appears that device convergence is the direction the market is heading.

"The current version of the XNA Game Studio suite (3.1) allows developers to build games that can run on Windows PCs, Xbox 360 and Zune media player devices. Version 4.0 is going to support Windows PCs, Xbox 360 consoles and Windows Phone 7 Series phones (but not the Zune HD), according to a blog post by Michael Klucher, Lead Program Manger for the XNA Development Platform."

OK, this is a bit of a head-scratcher for me. What I thought was going to happen was that when the Windows phone 7 ecosystem kicked off at the end of this year, we'd see a Windows Marketplace for Mobile that would address both the Windows phone 7 users and the Zune HD users. In fact, the millions of Zune HDs out there would serve as a good base for developers to code for. Instead, it's looking like XNA Game Studio Suite 4.0 isn't going to allow the Zune HD as a target platform...so now I'm completely confused. Microsoft doesn't want apps for the Zune HD? Or their plan is to continue the painfully slow process of building their app catalog one app at a time, all developed internally?

Or is it that second-generation Zune HD (presumably coming out in the fall of this year) will have a bigger screen running at WVGA resolution (800 x 480) and essentially be a Windows phone 7 without the phone components? And that's what Microsoft wants developers to code for - but not the Zune HD. If so, that sort of sucks - that leaves all the current Zune HD owners out in the cold in terms of apps. Is that really Microsoft's plan? What do you think?

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.

A quick note to let you know that I've updated the International Zune User's Guide. I spent a couple of hours on Saturday going through every part of the article, seeing what was new, and what was the same, updating it for the Zune HD era we now live in. About a month ago I had my buddy Grahm Skee from ABI send me a couple of Zune Pass cards in the mail - the one-month pre-paid cards that sell for $14.99 - and guess what? They worked! So if you live outside the USA and want a Zune Pass, this is the only way I'm aware of for you to get it. Sadly, there's still no way to get any video content other than music videos - hell, I can't even watch the movie trailers. Really Zune team? Even the movie trailers have to be IP-blocked? Sheesh. :-(

“When Stian, a friend of mine, came to me a few days ago and told me I could now find his music on various online music services I just had to find out how. It's no secret that record companies are becoming more and more uselss with most of them being sadistic about both stealing the artist's money and chase pirates, but I was unaware of just how easy it had become to publish music on your own.”

I don’t necessarily entirely agree with this statement over at AnythingButIpod but I think that most of us can agree that the music industry is a dinosaur that does as much to hold back artists today as it does to promote them. For a few years now I’ve wondered why many artists would really want to go the route of a big record company. For every successful artist that shows up on the radio there are hundreds of failures.

Enter the service Zimbalam. For €30, which is approximately $40, you can self promote your own album to a variety of digital music providers. Zune isn’t, unfortunately, one of the listed providers because I would happily support artists through this to encourage the practice.

Zimbalam holds no rights to the artist’s music and pays 90% royalties to the artist. Digital music stores have no real physical space constraints so there is little reason for Amazon, iTunes, Zune or any others to want to limit the amount of music available. Zimbalam has little to no cost associated with each individual album, so they win by generating revenue from every sale. It doesn’t matter where the sale comes from for them.

The artists definitely win because they can get exposure that they might not normally get and still retain the rights to their own music. Local artists often get played on the radio so it isn’t as if bypassing a big record company is going to prevent artists from getting radio time. I’m sure that this type of scenario is exactly the reason that the RIAA has always feared the digital age. It makes them look a little obsolete.

The Gomadic chargers are very slick, and we recently did a Quick Look on the 2-in-1 Charger pictured above. If you aren't familiar, the system uses what they call "Tip Exchange" so all you need is one cable and a tip for each device, instead of having to carry around separate charging cables. They pretty much cover every device know to man, or at least it seems that way (the brand list is here).

Now the folks at Gomadic are being generous enough to give away four (4) of their 2-in-1 Charging cables as well as two tips to be chosen by each winner. Since Gomadic has such wide coverage on devices, this is a network-wide contest. To win, all you have to do is go to the Tip Exchange page and pick two of the charging tips you want to go with your 2-in-1 Charger. Post the two numbers along with a reply to this post and you are entered. You MUST post the two tip numbers in your reply or your entry won't be counted.

One post per person, and the contest closes on Friday the 19th of March at 12pm Pacific time, GMT -7. This contest is world-wide with Gomadic providing the shipping. Remember that all first posts in our system are held in moderation, so if this contest entry is your first post, please wait up to 48 hours before getting concerned if your post hasn't shown up yet - it will. Winners will be contacted via private forum message, so have email notifications turned on. Winners will have 72 hours to claim their prize.

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!

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.

Figure 2: The notifications work - you tab the icon at the bottom of the screen, and they pop up.

Figure 3: Do I have an empty Inbox? No. The Zune HD Facebook client just doesn't load anything on Inbox, Sent Items, or Updates. The entire email tab was broken for me.

Figure 4: Thankfully, photos work! I can see all my photo albums.

Figure 5: Photos load nice and full-screen.

The basics of a solid Facebook client are all here - the user interface is really nice, and the application is fast and fluid. But until they fix the bugs and things like the status updates and news feed work, it's only good for looking at your own profile and photos. Apparently the Zune MVPs who attended the MVP Summit were given it to test; unfortunately I wasn't among them because I spent both days with the Windows phone MVPs. I'm surprised that Microsoft would release software with so many obvious bugs, but perhaps Facebook is having a bad night and the brokenness isn't Microsoft's fault. What's your experience like using the app?

MaximumPC has done an interesting side by side comparison of the big three options out there for music organization on your home PC. To be honest, most people will have a hard time really making much of a selection based on the software and are far more likely to be choosing based on what their device of choice is. In the case of the iPod and Zune, we’re mostly tied to using the software designed for it.

But if you don’t like your options with your current software solution, it’s certainly not impossible to use a different program to manage your media and a different one to load your player. The three that MaximumPC looks at are iTunes (of course), Zune, and Songbird.

If you want to know what they have to say about each one, I’d suggest reading the article. With iTunes, they definitely nail the biggest advantage as being the large library of, well, everything. If content is king (it is) then iTunes rules the roost. Of course, without a subscription option, iTunes may as well effectively have no content for me, so that’s why I lean towards Zune. MaximumPC definitely likes the current software. And its ability to stream to many different devices is a killer feature. Songbird remains an interesting option but there is nothing about it that really makes me want to use it.

The software all has their downsides, of course. The most serious one to me is that with iTunes, if you delete a song, you’re out of luck. With the lack of a subscription option, this could potentially be devastating. I don’t necessarily agree with all of the shortcomings mentioned for Zune but I do agree that its limited ripping abilities are a pain and have required me to open other software to rip my CDs at times. And Songbird, with little to interest me to begin with, doesn’t even work well on 64 bit Windows 7 which is what I, and many others now, are using.

So what software is the best? There is no right answer. I do think that iTunes and Zune stand above the other options out there. For absolute breadth of options, you can’t go wrong with iTunes. As someone who wants to experience as much music as possible, however, the Zune with the Zune Pass is still unbeatable.

"Zune Pass is just such a subscription service, and it's a pretty good one… but lately, Zune Pass subscribers have been seeing their music collections just disappear into thin air. This can be a single song, an entire album or even whole artists' collections. Disappearing acts included, but weren't limited to, popular artists like Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend and Spoon. Now, when stuff like this happens, the usual culprit is that the record industry has re-negotiated its licensing deals with the service… which seems to be exactly what occurred. Microsoft has responded to customers' complaints by saying that their music has disappeared because record labels have pulled them."

This story's been making the rounds on the internet as of late. It appears that music from a number of artists is no longer available for Zune Pass download in the marketpace, and has been subsequently stopped working in Zune Pass holders' collections. Though Microsoft has stated that this decision is left up to the labels, there seems to be no larger reasoning behind what content has been pulled. For their part Microsoft has acknowledged the issue and promised to investigate. They are asking affected users to report missing music in the Zune.net forum thread.

Looking at the price in our affiliate Amazon.com, the price on the Zune HD 32 GB has dropped to $249 USD, and the 16 GB Zune HD is $189.99 USD. Not bad!

"Windows Home Server was a large part of CES this year. I was pleasantly embraced by all you fellow Windows Home Server users and I joyfully shared the new features sets that Power Pack 3 empowered your home server with. The beautiful thing about our booth is the ability to walk everyone step by step, on how to take advantage of these new features. For those of you who were not at CES, I'd like to take the time to share with you those steps that I shared with CES attendees. One of the key scenarios that got a lot of interest at the show was how a Zune music player can benefit from having a Windows Home Server around as well. This post goes into more detail about why and how it all works together."

When Microsoft released Power Pack 3 for Windows Home Server, there were a number of new features added that perhaps not everyone realised was included. This article from The Windows Home Server blog, explains how to make full use of one of those features if you have a Media Center PC, a Windows Home Server and a media player such as the Zune. The ability to access your music, videos and pictures on both your Media Center PC and your Zune is nice, but to be able to record your TV shows and automatically create a copy compressed especially for the Zune so you can watch them on the go is brilliant. No more having to encode the TV shows specifically for the Zune, just record your show on the Media Center as normal and one extra copy encoded correctly for the Zune or other media player of your choice will be made. If you didn't know about this, then take a read and see how easy it is.

That's the kind of thing I've been seeing for about a month now from the Zune desktop software when I try to sync the College Humor video podcast. A couple of months back, it would only happen every few videos, but in December it turned into a problem with every single entry. When I click on the yellow exclamation mark, here's the error I get:

The Web Help link doesn't provide much in the way of useful information. The problem is that the files are MP4 in format, and I kind of doubt that the College Humor people decided to change their format recently (though I suppose anything is possible). So what's going on? I have no idea. I'm not the only one complaining about this issue, but so far there seems to be no fix. I tried un-subscribing to the podcast, and re-subscribing, but that didn't help. A podcast directory is only as good as the content in it, and if Microsoft doesn't have some way of tracking podcasts that are tossing errors into user's faces, it's going to be hard for them to grow the service as a reliable method of subscribing to podcasts. Any ideas?

"In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing the web, playing a game, but not all at once. Applications are sandboxed, then moats dug around the sandboxes, and then barbed wire placed around the moats. As a direct result, New World computers do not need virus scanners, their batteries last longer, and they rarely crash, but their users have lost a degree of freedom. New World computers have unprecedented ease of use, and benefit from decades of research into human-computer interaction. They are immediately understandable, fast, stable, and laser-focused on the 80% of the famous 80/20 rule. Is the New World better than the Old World? Nothing's ever simply black or white."

This is a really great "think piece" that's well worth reading if you're the kind of person that likes to think about where computers - and that includes mobile devices - are going to be moving in the next decade. As such, I'm posting it across all our sites to get the widest possible take on the topic. I want to hear from you!

Steven Frank, the author, posits that new world computers are task-centric and secure, and that's the future of computing. For many types of scenarios, I think that works really well - but Frank doesn't seem to acknowledge that in order to do anything involving real content creation, an "old world" PC is still required. I'm happy to have a limited-in-functionality Web-pad style device next to my couch for Web surfing, tweeting, etc., but when I need to process raw files on a colour calibrated monitor, or edit HD video? Old world computing rules those scenarios.

I also have to wonder how sophisticated the software can get on these New World computers - ever noticed how so many iPod Touch games are the same? Screen size and touch-only inputs are significantly factors on what developers are able to do.

In some ways this boils down to the "appliances" vs. "computers" argument that has been going on for years. Appliances are more reliable, but they only do very specific things. Computers do infinitely more, but are generally less reliable than appliances. Which would you rather have, and why?

"Coinciding with the scheduled Zune.net maintenance today, a new Zune software update was also released (version 4.2.202.0 for those playing along at home). What might appear as just a regular software update is actually hiding a very big secret. The elusive 'Zune Phone' is pretty much confirmed... there are three unique class IDs and specifically Product IDs (PID) that identify three potential “Zune Phone” models (not storage capacities) off the bat. My bet is that they’re not just capacity variants (since various Zune capacities are all grouped under the same PID), but three actual hardware SKUs."

Long Zhen never fails to disappoint. The amateur coder and proprietor of istartedsomething.com cracked open the new Zune 4.2 software to reveal driver support for three upcoming phone models. Though the hardware ID listed shows Microsoft as the manufacturer there's no indication that they're the rumored Zune phone (which Microsoft has gone on record several times to deny.) So they could just be generic Windows Mobile 7 phones, right? Well not exactly. As we learned from the Palm Pre-masquerading as an iPod so it could sync with iTunes debacle a few months back, the USB-IF doesn't allow hardware vendors to mask their associations with the drivers, meaning that it looks like Microsoft is planning to release a hardware device afterall.

ZuneBoards seems to think these unnamed devices have something to do with Project Pink, specifically the Premium Mobile eXperiences division (PMX) and two Danger-designed devices, Pure and Turtle--a story first broke by Microsoft Watch's Mary Jo Foley. Refrences in a Zune library function pointing to a type of device called PmxPure and PmxTurtle seem to support this theory as well. Right now Microsoft is remaining fairly tight-lipped about their phone plans. Hopefully we'll see the strategy begin to coalesce around next month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The Zune HD is one of the gadgets up for Engadget's "Gadget of the Year" award - jump over to the voting page and cast your vote. We can't let the iPhone 3GS win! ;-)

"Xbox Live deserves praise as a service, but being the standard for which other online gaming services are judged means its flaws come under repeated scrutiny -- for good reason. It's why I always find myself asking Microsoft executives a couple of the same questions whenever I'm given the opportunity to sit down with them: why is there a friends cap on Xbox Live and when will the entire service allow me to pay for content in real-world dollar amounts, rather than confusing Microsoft Points?"

Where do you guys stand on the issue of points? I'm not as negative on them as some people - I'm fine paying 800 points for an Xbox Arcade game, largely because I have no frame of reference for the cost. Interestingly, I found points to be very frustrating when deciding to rent SD and HD video downloads - I know how much a DVD or Blu-ray rental costs at my local video store, so having to fire up a Web browser to calculate how much a video downloads costs ticked me off. I like the idea of micro-transactions for game content, but think that it could co-exist alongside all the other content (songs, videos, games) being in dollar amounts. Any changes made to Xbox Live would rippled down to the Zune Marketplace. What's your take?

"Zune Nation is excited about the Zune 4.2 Software update. What was labeled as a maintenance update has turned out to provide more than expected as many websites are reporting on new features and future possibilities that arise from this update. While it is not my goal to cite every article on the subject, I did try to get the originator. Overall, I wanted to give you a rundown of what has changed in this update as seen through the websites of Zune Nation."

My man Neville at Inside the Circle has rounded up and broken down some of the major changes we got as a result of the recently-launched 4.2 update. New in this version are support for Windows 7 podcasts Libraries, in-software playback of AVI video, black-tinted playlist tiles (saywha?), and some tantilizing hints of an upcoming phone device. Some users are reporting the ability to use the Zune interface in several other languages, including German. Unfortuantely, it looks like some of the international hacks have taken a step back to requiring the user to switch their Windows locale to US/English to access the Marketplace and Social. Hopefully this will be remedied soon with a launch in a a few international countries (as My Microsoft Life seems to think.)