Posts tagged Zune at Switched

Posts with tag zune

Zune Tattoo Guy Covering Up His Tattoos

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 23rd 2008 at 3:42PM

Say it ain't so! America's most loyal advocate for Microsoft's Zune is apparently throwing in the towel. Of course, we should warn you that this could very well be a simple ploy for attention, but if the man keeps his word, he will soon be covering his Zune tattoos with... something else.

Curiously, he didn't say whether or not he would be playing the traitor card and picking up some sort of iPod, but considering that more people have seen this guy's body art in the wild than actual Zunes, the general public should know soon enough. You fought a good fight, Zune Guy, but consider yourself expelled from The Social. [Source: zunescene]

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

New Graphic Novel From Zune Is Free Online

by Christine Whitney, posted Jul 3rd 2008 at 8:54AM

Whoaaa, a new graphic novel from Zune Arts. Microsoft's digital entertainment brand (it's not just a portable media player, ya know) just came out with 'The Lost Ones,' a collaboration between '30 Days of Night' author Steve Niles and a bunch of artists. Our favorite of the gang is painter Kime Buzzelli, whose awesome watercolors adorn a chapter involving aliens and caves and an Andre-3000-esque hero. Gary Panter, of 'Pee-wee's Playhouse' notoriety, is also involved in the project, as are Brooklyn duo Morning Breath and indoor-sunglasses wearer Dr. Revolt.

The story involves four friends who get into trouble while "planet jumping" and transcending space and time, much like Lily Tomlin in 'I Heart Huckabees.' You can buy one of 42,000 paperback versions of the novel for subway/beach reading at select bookstores or download it free from Zune itself and read it on your computer. [Source: Zune Arts and PR Newswire]

Local Students Get Free Lesson-Equipped Zunes

by Ryan Block, posted Jun 30th 2008 at 12:04PM

The latest edu-gimmick to hit small-town America: 100-plus media players -- Zunes, to be specific -- are being handed out to local high school and middle school students in Liberty, Missouri and Fort Sumner, New Mexico for listening to lesson-supporting podcasts in the hopes of saving them "lost class time."

Surely this will raise test scores, right? Or at least improve the Zune's cachet? Who knows -- even the district superintendent said, "Is it the next great thing? I don't know. Maybe. But it is another tool."

Maybe the Kindle might make a better tool, but either way, Microsoft apparently intends to release data on the case study later this year. [Source: Yahoo]

Zune 2.5 Update Brings TV Downloads, Zune Card Sharing

by Paul Miller, posted May 6th 2008 at 11:12AM

Microsoft has quite a bit in store for the Zune faithful with its new Zune version 2.5 software update. The high points are the new Zune Card integration and the addition of TV show downloads on Zune Marketplace, but much-requested features like gapless playback, improved syncing controls, meta data editing, auto playlists and other tweaks have also been included. On the marketing front, Microsoft is really pushing the Zune Pass going forward, and will be launching a new TV commercial to help plug it. Subscribers will particularly benefit from the new Zune Card sharing, which lets you automatically score copies of your pal's favorite songs, artists and recent plays -- non-subscribers can view that Zune Card info, but will have to buy the tracks if they want to have a listen.

Unfortunately, news on the video store front isn't so compelling: Microsoft is only adding TV shows at this point, no movies, and there's no way to pull video you've bought on your 360 over to your Zune. There's no reason Microsoft can't close this loop and turn some scattered media offerings into a compelling ecosystem, but until then we suppose we'll have to thank our lucky stars that we can shell out 160 MS Points ($2.00) for TV shows we can watch for free online. The 2.5 Spring Update is a free download and should be available nowish.

Gallery: Zune 2.5 Hands-On

Limited Edition Joy Division Zune Makes Us Dance, Dance, Dance to the Radio

by Thomas Ricker, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 2:00PM

Listen to the silence, let it ring on. Microsoft is said to be releasing a limited edition, Joy Division Zune featuring an adaptation of Peter Saville's pulsating cover art from the band's 'Unknown Pleasures' debut. The launch is meant to parallel the June 10th release of the Joy Division DVD and could, in one fell swoop, lift the Zune above its L-7 image. Then we could go on as though nothing was wrong and hide from these days we remained all alone.

P.S. That's our mockup of what we hope the Joy Division Zune will look like. [Source: Pitchfork via Wired, Thanks Rob H.]

Man Legally Changing His Name to 'Microsoft Zune'

by Darren Murph, posted Apr 10th 2008 at 9:46AM

We can't say we'd follow in this guy's footsteps for any amount of money, but boy, does it make for fantastic drama. Shortly after the famed Zune Guy (you know, that cat with a trio of Zune-inspired tattoos?) decided to legally change his name to "Microsoft Zune," the plan was put on hiatus after hearing that it cost a whopping $500 to get a name swap.

It turns out that the fellow will only need $150 to have it done, so needless to say the mission is back on in a big way. Unfortunately, there still stands a chance of the aforesaid name being denied, so he's posted up a poll in order to let the general public give him a list of backups. Personally, we're feelin' McZunin.

[Thanks, Brian]

World's First MP3 Player Is 10 Years Old

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 11th 2008 at 11:05AM

It's amazing how quickly pieces of technology can become not only an accepted, but also indispensable parts of everyday life. It's hard to believe, but the MP3 player, now more accurately called the Digital Audio Player (DAP) or Personal Media Player (PMP), is 10 years old. Of course, most people just call it the iPod, but that's a whole other story.

It was back in March of 1998 that the world first got a glimpse of the MPMan F10 at the CeBit tech trade show in Hanover, Germany. The prototype garnered enough attention that, by May of that year, the Korean company Saehan Information Systems was mass producing the devices. By summer of 1998, the 32-megabyte (MB) flash device was on sale in the U.S. for $250.

At 3.6 x 2.75 x 6.5-inches, the MPMan was significantly larger than any media player on the market right now, save some of the largest wide screen video players. The Walkman-sized-device could only hold a small handful of songs, and its display was only slightly fancier than your standard digital alarm clock.

By now, of course, Saehan Information Systems and its MPMan are all but forgotten. In fact, many mistakenly point to the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 as the first commercially available MP3 player, but the MPMan beat that CD-player-sized wonder to market by several months.

The bulkiness and limited capabilities of both devices may make them seem quaint when compared to your 32-gigabyte (1000 times the capacity of the original MPMan) iPod Touch, but these archaic devices helped spark a revolution that has completely changed the way we buy and consume music and media.

Gallery: The First MP3 Player

From Register Hardware (via Engadget)

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Games Coming to Microsoft's Zune Player

by Tim Stevens, posted Feb 21st 2008 at 2:17PM

iPod May Own the Market, but Zune Has Games!

Microsoft's Zune just can't get any respect. With the recent launch of the new models, the players finally took shapes and sizes (and colors) that people liked. It certainly has the iPod beat in terms of functionality, with its song-sharing capabilities and compatibility with music stored in a number of file formats, but still nobody seems to care. Gamers might just start to take notice, though, with the announcement of games for Zune.

Microsoft's music player is now a game player, too, or at least will be later this year when titles start to see release. Right now, there's only one game, a space-shooter called 'Zauri,' and it's more of a demo than anything. The plan is for the Zune to receive games downloaded through Microsoft's online Marketplace. Games themselves will be developed through XNA, the company's game development platform that also supports the PC and the Xbox 360.

Details beyond that are slim, except that wireless multiplayer capability will be included. No mention of anticipated cost for games, or the specific availability for any, but we wouldn't expect to do much Zunepad gaming until the latter-half of this year at the earliest.

From Engadget

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Peeved Bill Gates Says Everyone Copies Microsoft

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Dec 10th 2007 at 1:41PM

There is one sure fire way to make the normally quiet and geeky Bill Gates a little peeved -- question his company's record of "capitalizing on the innovation of others." According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop, that's exactly what a blogger, Jonathan Snook, did at a small meeting between the online-citizen journalists of the tech world and the founder/honcho of Microsoft at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

This line of questioning, which essentially accused Microsoft of copying other people's inventions, sent the bespectacled founder into a tirade about how Microsoft does all the stupid things first, and that other companies, learning from Microsoft's mistakes, are able to build perfect versions of a particular product or service (and subsequently get the credit for being innovators).

Gates declared that what Microsoft does is the baseline for the entire industry, and whatever it doesn't do is the innovation. And by that definition everyone else is innovating. That's a pretty innovative, if not a little sarcastic, save/explanation.

But seriously, Gates cites IPTV and tablet computers as two areas in which Microsoft is leading the pack. "Is anyone else doing tablet computers?" he asks.

We understand Gate's being upset, and he makes some good points in his sarcastic rant about everyone borrowing from each other (with particular attention paid to Apple of course). But we do have to question some of his claims.

Sure, there are plenty of Microsoft Office and Word clones out there, but Word was far from the first word processor on the PC. Microsoft's entry only got copied after it crushed the competition, namely Wordperfect and Lotus. We racked our brains trying to think of where other companies had blatantly copied Microsoft and actually came up empty. If you've got any examples, be sure to leave them in the comments, in the meantime make sure to check out the gallery below of Microsoft's other "me too" products and services (including everything from Zune and Xbox 360 to the original Windows and MSN, which were inspired by the early Mac OS and the product of our parent company AOL, respectively).

How about you? Do you think Microsoft's reputation as a copycat is deserved, or is Bill Gates right when he says that his company does, in fact, innovate?

Gallery: Microsoft's Products Over Time

From SeattlePI

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Zune Originals 8-Gigabyte (GB)

by Evan Shamoon, posted Nov 24th 2007 at 8:46AM

Attempting to differentiate your portable music player from the iPod isn't easy; so Microsoft has taken quite a literal approach, by letting users...well, differentiate their Zunes. Zune Originals are built for those who love to customize: Head to the website and choose your color, text and/or art inscription (there's both an artist series and a tattoo series, with plenty of options for each). The tech isn't bad, either. In fact, the $200 8-gigabyte (GB) Zune player has a great scroll pad, a sharp screen, and best of all, Wi-Fi sync, which means you can transfer music without wires! (You'll still need to plug in to charge, though.) The Originals also come in a 4-gigabyte version if space isn't really an issue (or if price really is).

From Microsoft

Update Your Old Zune or Engrave Your New One

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 13th 2007 at 3:40PM

The Zune 2.0 update is officially upon us. And not just in the form of new players, but in software updates for old Zunes as well. The new Zune 2.0 hardware will be on store shelves tomorrow, but those of you with Zune 1.0's can get a peak at the updates to the software now, by heading to Zune.net and downloading the firmware update.

The update will update your old 30-gigabyte Zune player with all the new Zune 2.0 features, including wireless sync-ing, Media Center compatibility and a redesigned interface.

Microsoft has also unveiled its Zune Originals page, where you can decorate your new Zune with laser-etched graphics and text. There will be 27 designs in the "Artist series" and 20 in the Tattoo series, all of which can be added to the Zune of your choice free of charge.

To be honest, this new Zune stuff makes Apple's laser engraving of the iPod look a little lame.

From Engadget

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Microsoft to Launch Zune 2 Next Month?

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Sep 19th 2007 at 5:01PM

Details are scant, but Gizmodo is speculating that October 16th will see the launch of Microsoft's Zune 2 media player, which is believed to be pictured above. Gizmodo claims to have obtained this image and information from a source who acquired it from Microsoft marketing materials.

Here's what's being predicted: There will be a hard-drive based Zune, just like the original, except in an 80-gigabyte size -- a full 50-gigabytes meatier than its predecessor. You'll browse your media using a "squircle" button instead of the original circular navigation button. Also arriving is a mini Zune, which uses flash memory for storage instead of hard drive, much like the iPod Nano. The smaller Zune is believed to be coming in four- and eight-gigabyte sizes.

On the surface, it doesn't look like much has actually changed on the Zune. Let's hope Microsoft has at least improved the player's Wi-Fi capabilities, or Zune will become even more of a footnote than it already is.

From Gizmodo

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Price Cut for Zune. Phone in the Works?

by Tim Stevens, posted Sep 6th 2007 at 2:34PM

In attempt to spur sales, Microsoft has just dropped the price of its 30 gigabyte Zune portable media player to $199. That keeps the player priced $50 lower than Apple's cheapest hard drive-based player -- the newly launched $249 80 gigabyte iPod Classic -- but still only offers less than half the storage. While announcing the price drop, Microsoft took the opportunity to also tout the Zune's high level of customer satisfaction (around 94 percent) and remind us that the player surpassed sales of one million back in June of this year.

The company also dropped some hints that a Zune phone might be in the future. Earlier this year, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pooh-pooh'd the idea, but now MS officials have indicated that a Zune-branded mobile would "not be unreasonable." Non-committal words if ever there were ...

From BetaNews

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Do You Own a Non-iPod?

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 29th 2007 at 4:23PM

Amazon Creates Non-iPod Category for Music Players

If ever there was a sign of the iPod's ubiquity it's this: Amazon has separated out the iPod from the rest of the media player pack and created its own 'non-iPod' category to house the rest. Zunes, Creative Visions and all of the rest of them have been relegated to this generic category. Really, this is just confirmation of what we already knew: that the iPod has won.

The iPod has become the digital audio player. Some may tell you that there's no point buying anything but an iPod; others use iPod as a universal term to describe any audio player. There may be hundreds of non-iPod music players available, but sometimes it seems as if they just don't matter. We might just start referring to everything as a non-iPod. For example, "My non-iPod celebrated her 80th birthday this weekend."

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MTV Closing URGE Music Subscription Service

by Tim Stevens, posted Aug 21st 2007 at 11:01AM

MTV Killing URGE, Chooses RealNetworks Over Microsoft

Reports are emerging this morning that MTV is on the brink of abandoning URGE, the company's iTunes-challenging service that was launched in partnership with Microsoft just over a year ago. Turns out Microsoft betrayed that partnership a few months later with the release of the Zune Marketplace, an online store optimized to work with Microsoft's iPod-wannabe, the Zune. MTV, playing the part of lover scorned, is running to the arms of RealNetworks and its Rhapsody online music service to turn it into a proper iTunes challenger.

This new partnership between MTV and RealNetworks is said be a bit of a love triangle with Verizon Wireless coming into the fold to provide wireless distribution of content straight to mobile phones. It remains to be seen whether Verizon will include this service in its VCAST network of mobile content or start offering some new, separate music-based service.

What we do know is this: With MTV ditching URGE and Microsoft focusing on the Zune, it's likely that URGE's days are numbered. Sorry subscribers.

From AOL Money & Finance

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Zune Tattoo Guy Covering Up His Tattoos

New Graphic Novel From Zune Is Free Online

Local Students Get Free Lesson-Equipped Zunes

Zune 2.5 Update Brings TV Downloads, Zune Card Sharing

Gallery: Zune 2.5 Hands-On

Limited Edition Joy Division Zune Makes Us Dance, Dance, Dance to the Radio

Man Legally Changing His Name to 'Microsoft Zune'

World's First MP3 Player Is 10 Years Old

Gallery: The First MP3 Player

Games Coming to Microsoft's Zune Player

Peeved Bill Gates Says Everyone Copies Microsoft

Gallery: Microsoft's Products Over Time

Zune Originals 8-Gigabyte (GB)

Update Your Old Zune or Engrave Your New One

Microsoft to Launch Zune 2 Next Month?

Price Cut for Zune. Phone in the Works?

Do You Own a Non-iPod?

MTV Closing URGE Music Subscription Service

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