Over on BFF, user Jaxim has posted a really terrific piece for our Blind Review contest on what the Zune could use to make it even better. Not that it’s a dis on the Zune; Jaxim starts by saying that he’d still take one over an iPod Classic, but he makes several good points that the guys at Bear Creek might want to think about. It’s a great read, and not just a good entry in the contest, it’s also exactly the type of stuff we love to see on the sister blog.

Thanks, Jaxim, it’s good to have you as a BFF.

I don’t own one of the new Zunes that just came out this past month, but my friend allowed me to test his out pretty thoroughly and I was able to ask him what he didn’t like about it.

I must say I really enjoyed it. However there are a “few” things that I thought were lacking with the device. Despite these deficiencies I would still purchase it over an iPod classic. Read on…

HARDWARE:

* -Needs a replaceable battery. Let’s face it, Apple was one of the first companies to remove this feature in order to reduce a few millimeters from the device’s footprint. I think if the Microsoft added this feature to the Zune, there would be many iPod to Zune converts.
* -Bigger screen on the flash version - the screen border on the flash version is too big. The screen needs to be bigger. The screen size is one of the main things that make the hard drive Zune better than the iPod. In order for the flash Zune to be better than the iPod Nano, the flash Zune needs to start off by adding a bigger screen.
* -It would be nice if the flash Zune had an iPod shuffle-like clip.
* -Ability to register the tilt of the Zune. If the user is holding the Zune horizontally, then the photos should be displayed in landscape mode. If the zune is held vertically, then the Zune should automatically change to portrait mode
* -An iPhone/iPod Touch killer version of the Zune. This version needs to either have at minimum 32 GB of flash memory or 80GB of harddrive memory. Currently Microsoft doesn’t make a device that is a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone or iPod Touch.

FIRMWARE:

* -The Zune needs a few extras. For example, a stopwatch, clock, calendar, games (multiplayer via wifi) = a stopwatch and timer would be a great addition so we can use it to workout.
* -The Zune should have the ability to be used as a hard drive w/o any hacks
* -You should be able to delete directly from the Zune. If you watched a video, you should be able to delete it and not have to wait to connect your device to the computer in order to delete the video file.
* -Ability to modify the main menu. I like how you can do this on the iPod. For example, if you don’t use the new Zune podcasting feature, then you should be able to get rid of it.
* -Ability to preview artwork when menu item is selected. I like how the iPod does this. Select (w/out pressing) “photos” on the iPod, and you’ll see a mini slide show of the photos.
* -Ability to view PDF files. You’ll be able to read books and view maps.
* -Ability to zoom more than once into a photo
* -Ability to bookmark mp3 files - ebooks
* -audible support
* -nike+ support
* -View photos by tag!!!

* -When viewing photos by folder, the entire folder structure should not be displayed. In the original firmware this was not a problem. Take for example the following image path where the software is told to find images under the “Photos/” folder:
o –”C:/ABC/XYZ/Zune/Photos/image.jpg”
o –The old firmware would display the image under: “Photos/images.jpg
o –The new firmware finds the image under:
o –”ABC/XYZ/Zune/Photos/image.jpg”
o –Of course, if you were able to find photos by tags (and subtags), then this would not be a problem.

* -Cross Fade music
* -gapless support
* -More codecs: i.e. native support for such popular formats like the avi video file format.
* -Ability to create playlists on the Zune which can later be uploaded to your computer.
* -Would love to see an option to view thumbnails of video/photos like it is done in Media Center. Horizontally and bigger thumbnails.
* -An ability to view the current song playing. If you play a song, then start viewing photos, the only way to return to the “now playing” song is to wait 10 seconds for it to return. If you’re playing a slideshow, then it’s practically impossible. A simple solution is to add a Now Playing option under the Music menu.
* -Use Zune as a sideshow device. This would allow you to use your Zune as a Media Center remote control. For example, you’d be able to view thumbnails of TV shows that are available to watch on the Media Center thru your Zune. On your Zune, you could choose to have Media Center play a certain TV show or choose to have the video download/sync to your device. Maybe you could have a preview of the video downloaded to your Zune to see if you want to watch it. The same could be true for music files. This would be a great feature that would help promote both Zune and Vista. It would be one feature that Apple couldn’t easily replicate.

SOFTWARE:

* -Ability to modify meta data easily for music and videos. The new Zune software makes it impossible to modify the meta tags of multiple audio files and impossible to modify the meta data of a single video file.
* -dynamic playlists on Zune. The new Zune software remove this feature.
* -automatically schedule conversion of Media Center TV show (dvr-ms) files in the background (i.e. as soon as the dvr-ms file is created) so when you sync a video to your Zune, it doesn’t take forever to sync.
* -ability to subscribe to RSS feeds to blogs which can synced to your Zune so you can download the articles on your Zune.
* -ability to view the details of your sync. The old software did this. While a file is converting, it should show you how much of the file has converted. Instead now it just shows you the percentage of the sync.
* -ability to place file to sync in a well to see how much room you have left on your Zune. Again this is a lost feature from the original software.
* -ability to tell the software not to automatically sync my Zune until I tell it to. I hate it now if I move/delete a video file from my computer, this video will be deleted from my Zune even though my video sync setting is set to “let me choose my video”
* -basically, I’d like to see an advanced set of features and not a dumb down software.

SOCIAL:

* -audible alerts when a fellow Zuner tries to send you something. Right now, if someone tries to send something to you without you know it, and you’re busy listening to music and not looking at the screen, you won’t know som,eone is trying to be social with you. If there was an audible alert that sounds when someone tries to send something to you, then maybe the Social will actually thrive.
* -option to accept anything anyone tries to send you. It would be great if the zune was able to automatically accept anything from anyone. So while you walk somewhere a couple of fellow Zuners may send you something. When you finally look at your Zune’s inbox, you’ll notice that a few people have sent you some things. Because you can limit the size of the inbox, there isn’t the danger of someone trying to send you files that are too big.
* -Microsoft should buy a social site like last.fm.

With any device like this, a hard core gear fan like me is going to have a long list of things of how the device can be better. Most of these items could easily be corrected by a software/firmware upgrade.

In the past I have used the iPod classic and iPod Touch, and I must say that I preferred the Zune 80 for 2 reasons: 1) the bigger screen (over the classic) made it better for watching video and 2) the larger memory capacity (over the puny 16GB of the Touch) was better for all my files in my collection with plenty of room with many, many videos and recorded TV shows.

With a work ethic they describe as “maniacal and around-the-clock,” the husband-and-wife team of Brian Flynn and Dora Drimalas tackle a staggering variety of projects—from corporate communications to textile design to, yes, manufacturing toy monsters—for their own store and such super-star clients as Nike. They do it all, running three complementary design businesses—Hybrid Design, Hybrid-Home, and Super7—on an assortment of Mac computers. “If you’re a designer,” says Flynn, “you use a Mac. I know people who use Illustrator or Photoshop on the PC, but it’s just not the same. If you want to be creative on the computer, you’re going to get a Mac.”

Filed under: Gaming

Details are unsurprisingly light on this one, but DigiTimes has it that NVIDIA is gearing up to launch its next-generation GPU just after the Lunar New Year in February 2008. Reportedly, "sources at graphics card makers" have revealed that the GeForce 9 series will include the D9E -- a "high-end product that adopts 65-nanometer manufacturing," supports DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 -- and the mid-range D9P, which will supposedly adopt 55-nanometer processing. Apparently, the former will be the first product in the new family, while the latter won't see light until June, but of course, we'd take every ounce of this with a healthy serving of salt for the time being.

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

iPhone not holding a charge? Ninjas running down your battery at night? The kids at Gearlive did a great video of a full iPhone disassembly and battery replacement. Good stuff.

via GearLive

It's really not all that surprising that when people first discover The Pirate Bay they think that it's responsible for the unauthorized content that people can find through it. However, at some point you would think they would take the time to understand what's really going on and how it's more of a search engine than anything else. Unfortunately, too many people seem to jump right to the "sue them!" stage. That's apparently what's happened with Fred Goldman, the father of Ronald Goldman, the guy who was killed along with O.J. Simpson's ex-wife years ago. Goldman won a civil lawsuit against Simpson, for which Simpson owes him millions of dollars. Since Simpson isn't paying, the court has been turning over various assets to Goldman, including the royalties from the bizarre "If I Did It," book that Simpson wrote. It's that book that's the problem. Apparently (and not surprisingly, for a best seller), someone scanned in the book and put up a torrent of it which can be found via The Pirate Bay. Goldman, of course, is blaming the site rather than whoever actually made it available and suing the Pirate Bay, claiming he's "lost" at least $150,000. That, of course, incorrectly assumes that the people who downloaded the book would have bought it in the first place (most of them wouldn't have) and that none of the people who downloaded it later bought the book to read it in the more convenient book form. No matter. It's more fun to just sue. Goldman tries to bolster his argument by pointing out that The Pirate Bay has big name advertisers on the site, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not the one who offered up the infringing content. Besides, if that's Goldman's criteria, why doesn't Goldman sue Google as well? After all, a simple search on Google shows that you can find the book there as well -- and there are advertisements right next to it as well.

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Filed under: Transportation

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Website-creation tool Doodlekit is over a year old but has somehow managed to fly under the radar, even after releasing its free version this past October.

Several similar services are out there: Weebly, Synthasite, Jimdo, Google Pages, SiteKreator, and Sampa to name a few. They all intend to make it possible for non-techies to make modestly attractive and functional websites without touching a line of code.

Doodlekit succeeds in this respect, but it goes even further by providing a suite of advanced features, all of which can be set up with a few clicks of the button: forums, customizable forms, shopping carts, advertising, user accounts and profiles, restricted areas for approved members, file uploading, full site search, RSS feeds, photo albums, blogs, basic site statistics, and domain mapping. Some of these features are available for free, but many will require that you pay $15 or more per month. See this pricing sheet for how the service packages break down.

All in all, it’s nice to see a website creation tool that appreciates the fact that many low-level users won’t be satisfied with flat pages anymore. They want to collect data from their users, support small online communities, publish rich media, etc. Doodlekit is moving in the right direction while others (with the possible exception of SiteKreator) continue to provide a fairly limited range of dynamic content possibilities.

As the WYSIWYG market develops, I’d like to see companies like Doodlekit leverage easy database creation/management tools like upcoming Blist. Then, a wider range of people will be able to collect, manage, and publish their organizational data online without needing to rely on web developers. As for more short-term improvements to Doodlekit, it would be nice to see an even better WYSIWYG HTML editor (I have yet to find any online that doesn’t end up frustrating the hell out of me). They could also take some tips from Weebly and implement drag-n-drop editing functionality, which I find more intuitive and satisfying than clicking through several pages to make changes.

Suggestions and long-term visions aside, Doodlekit strikes me as a solid offering in its current incarnation. The company says it has reached 1,700 hosted sites since starting to offer a free version six weeks ago. I expect that number to increase substantially as the word gets out.

cb_widget_report_widget("cb_widget_1196453932"); cb_widget_report_element("cb_widget_0_1196453932","doodlekit"); cb_widget_report_element("cb_widget_1_1196453932","sampa"); cb_widget_report_element("cb_widget_2_1196453932","synthasite"); cb_widget_report_element("cb_widget_3_1196453932","weebly"); cb_widget_report_element("cb_widget_4_1196453932","jimdo");

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Billboard magazine has done some fine sleuthing and turned up a number of developments in the works that may push the digital download world over the edge towards DRM-free MP3s. Walmart is reportedly pressuring the major record labels to allow it to sell their music online in MP3 format and now sources are telling Billboard that Amazon and Pepsi will team up to give away 1 billion MP3s for free in 2008, starting with a Superbowl kick off in February.

Amazon launched its DRM free MP3 music download service in September. We said it rocked then and I at least stand by that opinion today. Estimates at the time were that AmazonMP3 had about 2 million songs available - that number could increase substantially as labels feel the pressure of news like today's.

Unfortunately, of course there's a gimmick in the 1 billion song promotion - you'll have to buy 5 Pepsi products to get 5 codes for each MP3. According to a great summary of the news at PaidContent, a similar Pepsi promotion for iTunes that aimed to give away 100 million songs in 2004 only saw 5 million people participate. These are different days, though, and DRM + excessive soda consumption = free music is far less compelling than a straight path from soda to tunes, I suppose. If they were serious about it they could just as easily offer one song for one soda - but the economics wouldn't work out. Rumor has it that Amazon wants to pay the labels only 40 cents for each song they give away, as opposed to the current industry standard of 70 cents.

Whatever. The point is, by Superbowl time, thanks to online outlets like Amazon and Walmart, consumer expectation of a DRM-free experience in music may be a whole lot more mainstream than it is today.

It seems Jeff Gerstmann, formerly of Gamespot, had a falling out with management over a review of Kane & Lynch and either was fired or left of his own accord. The game’s maker, Eidos, was upset by his unfair assessment of this holiday blockbuster featuring Dean Kane and Willie Lynch, two gun-toting country western singers who are out to fight the mob in downtown Toronto. The game is full of fiery crashes, huge cut-scenes, and a soundtrack by Shooter Jennings and Jack Johnson collaborating for the first time as a red-hot folk rock combo.

Will Kane and Lynch play the Grand Ole Opry? Will Kane learn to love again? Will Lynch get rid of that cold sore? Find out in Eidos’ Kane & Lynch, available now at Best Buy!

Anyway, big blow to impartiality in game reviews, good to see someone standing for objectivity in journalism, all that. Seriously. Buy the game. We get a commission.

Gamespot Editor Fired Over Kane & Lynch Review? [Kotaku]

I was just watching a CNBC segment where a pundit who happens to own Google stock was voicing his concern that the company is losing focus on its core search business. His argument was that if Google’s management team wants to invest in things like wireless spectrum and renewable energy (even though that was done through Google’s non-profit arm), they should do it with their own personal fortunes instead of risking shareholder’s earnings. Does he have a valid point? Today’s poll question:

Is Google losing its focus?
• Yes
• No
View Results

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