Share your Zune Pass, not your Social

Wednesday, May 21 2008 - , , - 2 comments

I love the Microsoft Zune Pass, since to me it's the most economical way to discover and enjoy music.  Currently with a single Zune pass for $15 a month, you can connect 3 computers, and 3 Zune devices, with unlimited downloads of music.  It allows you to have separate music libraries on multiple profiles on a single PC, or multiple PCs. 

This is a much improved model over the Apple iTunes "Buy" model which seems to lock you in to pay more, and get less ability to consume media how you may want too.  However, with the addition of the Zune Social community some issues are apparent with sharing a Zune Pass that I think MS should rectify to promote the Zune pass.

XNA 3.0 CTP and Zune on x64

Saturday, May 10 2008 - , , , - 0 comments

This morning I was excited to see a tweet that the XNA games studio 3.0 CTP is out. With the tweet, came the reminder to make sure you read the accompanying README information. So after folloing the link to the download site, I find this in the readme: 1.1.1. Zune Development Is Not Supported on 64-Bit Operating Systems The XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Preview) does not support development of games for Zune if XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Preview) is installed on a 64-bit operating system such as Windows XP Pro x64 Edition or the x64 versions of Windows Vista®. Doh! All of my home machines are running on Windows...

Transcode media for Zune

Friday, May 09 2008 - , - 4 comments

One of the features that made the original Zune stand out from the iPod product line, was the ability to transcode your media in your collection to a lower bit rate when syncing to your portable Zune device. This made it simple to have Lossless copies in your media collection kept on your PC, which are often encoded at a higher bitrate yielding larger file sizes. With the Zune80, which supports Lossless, the large files would be copied to your Zune, with no options to control how the media was encoded. When you chose these files you wish to sync to your portable device, the software would transcode...

Zune Update 2.5 on the way...

Thursday, May 08 2008 - 2 comments

It looks like Zune will be getting some spring update love this Tuesday...

Xbox 360 audio sounds for ringtones

Friday, April 11 2008 - , - 1 comments

Here is a list of audio sounds from the Xbox 360 system and games for the Xbox 360 that you might find useful for ring tones for your phone or IM client.

The Girl From Mars

Monday, March 03 2008 - , - 0 comments

An awesome montage of Microsoft's Digital Life enabling products set to a cover of "Girl From Mars" by Magneta Lane...

The Xbox 360 is the gaming system for TV shows

Sunday, February 24 2008 - - 0 comments

Lately, it seems that most TV shows tend to show people playing video games, show them using the Xbox 360. Is that because they think the audience relates most to the Xbox 360 when it comes to video games? I was just watching JPod where they were playing Xbox 360's, but I know I've seen it in many other shows. Technorati Tags: Xbox 360 , TV...

Xbox Live games now on Zune

Thursday, February 21 2008 - , - 4 comments

It appears that with the demonstration that Xbox Live XNA games are coming to the Zune! These are the community developed games using the XNA studio 3.0 tools, but I would venture to expect 1st party published games as well. Cesar on the Zune Insider blog was smart to point out that XNA is available to develop for the Zune device, but that no time frame is currently announced when games will be available. So far some points known are: Touchpad based games - This could mean this feature is limited to generation 2 Zunes. Wireless Mobile Games - Does this mean Head 2 Head multiplayer, or possibly...

Music from Zune Commercials

Thursday, January 31 2008 - , - 0 comments

This seems to be a popular page on the site for people looking for the Music from the Zune Commercials, so I am going to update it with the latest information I could find on the commercials since the original 2006 post. Since I originally had posted this, the Zune Marketplace has been upgraded so I added all the links to the albums and songs as well. I tried to include a link to the video of the Ad as well. If I missed any, or you have missing information please leave a comment on the post and I will update it for others to find. Many of the Zune Arts ones can be found on www.zune-arts.net as...

Failed RROD to repaired Xbox 360 Timeline

Friday, February 15 2008 - , - 1 comments

So it finally happened. My launch timeframe Microsoft Xbox 360 finally gave up the ghost and gave me the old Red Ring of Death failure stink eye. I had to say I was kind of relieved since I expected it to happen at some point, due to the expected failure rate of the launch timeframe units. I would rather it happen under the extended warranty period, than days after it had expired. I have to say it was a pretty painless experience, and much better than some of the forums had made it out to be. The ease of submitting the service request on the Xbox Service site , to the UPS box arriving a short while...