Zune

I had a charter family membership Seattle's Experience Music Project or EMP, which opened in 2000. But after a couple years, I gave it up. The exhibits didn't change enough to warrant a lot of repeat visits, our periodic out-of-town guests had all been at least once, and the promise of early alerts about live shows at the museum never seemed to come through. (The one show I really wanted to see, the Television reunion in 2001, was sold out before I was ever informed about it.)

With a teenaged niece in town and my daughter just getting … Read more

The Los Angeles Times reports that Microsoft has signed a three-year lease for a former photographer's studio near Beverly Hills, and has opened a Zune-themed space there.

It sounds like it's more of a gathering place for corporate events than a nightclub, but I could imagine it evolving into something like the House of Blues' Foundation Room--an exclusive venue for members or invited guests, with regularly scheduled entertainment. No, the Zune certainly doesn't have the cachet of House of Blues, but Microsoft has been hosting Zune-sponsored concerts since the product launched in 2006, and its Ignition … Read more

Here's an interesting post on how to save the Zune over at digital lifestyle blog Last 100. The blogger is Michael Pinto, creative director of Very Memorable Design, a design company that specializes in youth marketing.

To summarize: Microsoft needs a super-cheap Zune--maybe $25--to compete against the $50 iPod Shuffle, and should create limited-edition Zunes associated with fashionable brands, artists, comic books, and sports heroes. He also suggests preloaded content, including selling cheap Zunes loaded with concert recordings immediately after the show ends, as some artists are already doing with flash drives.

Memo to Microsoft: offer this guy a job … Read more

GameStop, a leading video game retailer, has decided that it will no longer stock Microsoft's Zune players, citing poor sales. And while I don't quite agree with my fellow-blogger Don Reisinger that this is the beginning of the end for Zune, it's hard to see any silver lining in the news.

Microsoft's entry into the consumer electronics space came with a thorny channel problem. Microsoft sells the vast majority of its products through PC makers, who bundle Windows (and often Office and other software) on new PCs, and through well-established partners who specialize in selling to … Read more

Update, 5/21: I talked to Microsoft's Mark Kroese this afternoon about this program, and he reassured me that Microsoft understands the potential for angering customers by delivering unsolicited ads, especially to a portable device where none have appeared before. He promised that any such advertising would be opt-in--the scenario he demonstrated yesterday would require users to choose to become friends with the musician, then choose again to have that musician's Doritos-sponsored playlist synced to their device. He also pointed out that only the musician's social card would contain the Doritos branding--when you played those songs within … Read more

You know those movies where you think they've killed the last zombie and then the hero turns a corner and here comes a whole new crop of them sprung fresh from the graveyard? That's how it feels with DRM in the last couple of days. First, the New York Times' Bits blog leads with a questionable assertion from an NBC exec that Microsoft is considering building some sort of content-filtering into the Zune which would block transfer of non-approved video. (I know, this isn't quite the same as DRM, but bear with me.) Then RIAA exec David Hughes claims … Read more

I've had a chance to play around with Zune 2.5, the latest software update to Microsoft's iPod-competitor, and I'm happy to report that all of the basic fixes Microsoft promised, such as the ability to edit song information and sort songs by genre, are there and work as promised. They also fixed a number of other niggling problems--for example, you can now update album art by copying a file (say, an album cover you find on the Web) and pasting it immediately into the Zune software in the appropriate spot; previously, you had to save the … Read more

Microsoft is releasing a major update to its Zune software and online service, and it couldn't have come soon enough.

Most of the headlines will probably focus on Microsoft adding downloadable shows, such as "South Park" and "The Office," to the Zune Marketplace for $1.99--sorry, that's 160 Microsoft Points. (No, they're still not adopting conventional currency. Argh.)

And in my discussions with the Zune team, they seem to be most excited about the new social features. For instance, your friends' Zune cards will now appear on your Zune device, where you'll … Read more

I'm seeing a lot of interest in Microsoft's Live Mesh, a file-synchronization service and long-term vision for data-sharing across devices that the company announced at the Web 2.0 conference. It's an interesting vision, although it rehashes some basic ideas that Microsoft's been throwing around for at least seven years. (See this story from 2001: "Microsoft envisions HailStorm as a way for consumers and business customers to access their data--calendars, phone books, address lists--from any location and on any device." Substitute "Live Mesh" for "HailStorm" and it's back to … Read more