Jamie's space: Zune

Zunephone? Don’t think so me old china!

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:47:53 GMT

There seems to be a lot of talk going around at the moment about whether a Zunephone is in the offing and I’ll bet a lot of people are assuming that its just a matter of time given the success that Apple have had turning the iPod into a phone. I’m not so sure though, Microsoft already have a very healthy phone business.

Let’s check out the numbers. A rough estimate says 3million Zunes have been bought since their inception in 2006. You can interpret that as good or bad, I don’t care, but what is more significant is that 14.5million Windows Mobile phones have been sold in a third of the time that Zune has been available. OK, the numbers are skewed by the Zune’s unavailability outside of the US but clearly Windows Mobile sales dwarf Zune sales.

Given that reality what do you think Microsoft are going to do? (a) Use the less popular and less available Zune to try and sell the more popular phone or (b) use the more popular phone to sell the less popular and less available Zune? Simple economics tells you that anything but b) would be a stupid thing to do and hence I’m pretty sure that we’re going to see Zune features built into Windows Mobile rather than the other way around. Indeed, leaked documents already point to this happening.

Having said all that, I don’t understand where the Danger purchase sits. If Zune features get built into the next Sidekick incarnation then it might …just might… make a decent iPhone competitor, I await news with anticipation.

-Jamie

iTunes in Zune promotion shocker!

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:15:25 GMT

I heard today of a neat little trick that the Zune, Live Messenger and/or MSN teams have pulled on unsuspecting iTunes users. If you are listening to a song on iTunes and you have got the ‘Show what I’m listening to’ feature:

enabled in Live Messenger then your messenger buddies will see a link to information about that song and artist:

Can you guess where that link takes you? Yep, you got it, whereas it used to take you to MSN Music it takes you to Zune Social:

iTunes promotes Zune, very sneaky indeed eh? I like it!

-Jamie

Yet more Zune ideas

Sun, 18 May 2008 20:38:08 GMT

I had a couple of Zune ideas today which I posted to the Zune Social forums and thought I'd put them up here as well to see what others think of them.

Sync xRank
A while ago I suggested displaying xRank info on an artist's Zune page (e.g. Here is John Lennon's xRank: http://search.live.com/xrank/results.aspx?q=John+Lennon) That hasn't happened yet but I hope it will do soon.
Now here's an extra idea. Wouldn't it be cool if up-to-date xRank info were synced to our Zune device? e.g. I'm listening to a John Lennon song on my Zune and I have the option to see the information from his xRank as it was last time I synced.
[Originally posted here]

Sync reviews
Now that every album can have user reviews wouldn't it be cool if those reviews appeared on our device whenever we started listening to an album.
This would be even more compelling for those people that use a Zune pass. It would be even more compelling still if we're using a Zune pass to sync our friends' playlists (that's a new feature in Zune 2.5). That way, not only can we listen to whatever our friends are listening to but we can see what other people thought of those songs/albums as well. Might help us make a decision whether to buy it or not.
[Originally posted here]

What do you think? If you like the ideas hit the links above and add your comments. And add them as a comment to this blog entry as well.

-Jamie

[Also added to my Feedback lista]

Zunervision cometh soon!

Sun, 18 May 2008 17:41:55 GMT

Remember back in February when I had my idea for Zunervision? Here it is again:

One of the coolest mashups I saw last year was TwitterVision. That's where various Tweets from around the world are displayed on a map and you can actually watch the world is saying.
Would't it be cool if you could do the same thing with "the last song that someone listened to on their Zune" or "the last podcast someone listened to on their Zune" or "the last video that someone watched on their Zune"? Throw that stuff onto a map along with wherever that person happens to be located and watch what people around the world are listening to or watching.

[I posted this idea to the Zune forum as well and it created quite a discussion]

Well anyway, with the recent Zune 2.5 release the Zune team went a long way to enabling Zunervision, they now let us record our location. Observe:

Hence, my location is now exposed on my Zune profile.

So, now that the Zune team know what we're listening to and they know where we are I would expect Zunervision to become a reality very very soon.

-Jamie

Zune ideas still spewing forth

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:53:06 GMT

I'm still throwing ideas for Zune Social up onto the Zune Forums. My latest few are below, let me know what you think.

Build xrank into Zune Social

How about when we browse to an artist on ZMP or the Social you show information from their XRank profile.
XRank is a vertical search offering from Live Search that ranks celebrities based on how often they've been in the news lately. For example, here is John Lennon's XRank: http://search.live.com/xrank/results.aspx?q=John+Lennon and the XRank for my favourite all time band, The Stone Roses http://search.live.com/xrank/results.aspx?q=the+stone+roses
There's a lot of information on there that could be leveraged in Zune Social/ZMP. If nothing else just show their XRank on the artist profile page in Zune Social.

RSS feeds for my plays and other data
I'd like to see RSS feeds provided that pass out all my information. Something like the following might work:

My plays: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/plays.rss
My favourites: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/favourites.rss
Most played songs: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/mostplayedsongs.rss
Most played artists: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/mostplayedartists.rss
My friends' plays: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/friendplays.rss
My recently posted forum entries: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/forumposts.rss
You get the idea....

That way I'd be able to choose which information I want on my Zune profile or I'd be able to show it on other sites such as http://friendfeed.com/jamiet
Obviously I would have the option of whether to make this data available or not.
You could also make site-scoped info available as well:

http://social.zune.net/mostplayedsongs.rss
http://social.zune.net/mostplayedartists.rss
http://social.zune.net/mostplayedalbums.rss
http://social.zune.net/newforumthreads.rss

Or artist-scoped info:

http://social.zune.net/artist/timbaland/mostplayedsongs.rss
http://social.zune.net/artist/timbaland/peoplethathaveplayedthisartistthemost.rss
http://social.zune.net/artist/timbaland/mostplayedartistsbypeoplewhoplayedthisartist.rss (this would be especially interesting)

Let me list gigs I have been to or am going to

I've talked before about how gigs are the "real" social aspect of music. Hence, why not give us a way to meet fellow zuneaholics at gigs.
Give us a way of listing gigs that we are going to or have gone to on our profiles. If I happen to add the same gig as someone else then tell me about those people - give us a chance to meet on Zune Social.
You could also publish my list of concerts as a Live Calendar (http://calendar.live.com). Nay, you should DEFINITELY do this. Maybe you could give us the option to create a Windows Live Group for that particular gig (after WL Groups gets released later this year).

-Jamie

Zune Finder

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:07:40 GMT

Zunes have a cool feature where Zune owners can send songs to other Zune owners. There's a problem that renders that feature virtually useless though - its sodding difficult to find anyone else that has got one of the damn things. However this problem can be, and should be, overcome with technology. All that is needed is a way of locating people that have a Zune. Let me explain.

All that is needed is:

A method of identifying people. Well that one is easy, everyone who uses Zune Social is identified by a Live ID. Done.
A cloud-based service that allows people to broadcast where they are using a GPS-equipped phone. Yes, I'm harping on about that old chestnut again. I still can't believe that Microsoft don't provide a service that allows you to share your location. Additionally, Google have already proved that your location can be triangulated if there are enough phone masts around so a phone doesn't even need GPS.
A method of identifying which people you want to share your location with. No problem. If Windows Live Groups realises my "active directory in the cloud" idea then Microsoft could maintain a group for all Zune owners and I can have the option to share my location with all of them.
A service that collates all of the above information and can send me notifications when fellow Zune owners are nearby.

There's nothing here that cannot be achieved through lack of software or hardware. It just needs someone to build it. What do you reckon the chances are of that happening anytime soon? I reckon somewhere between slim and none unfortunately!

-Jamie

A Zune warning!!!

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 02:37:55 GMT

A word of warning to anyone that is using Zune to sync their plays to Zune Social. Its possible that you have some songs in your library that, well, let's say songs that you wouldn't want your mates knowing about. Speaking from experience this usually happens when you have your girlfriend's/fiance's/wife's music in there as well. If you happen to put your Zune onto random play then you run the risk of the following happening.

You have been forewarned!

Zune Photo Sync

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:25:39 GMT

I had an idea yesterday in regard to getting photos onto Zune devices and I posted about it here on the Zune forums. Basically I thought it would be pretty cool if we could subscribe to RSS feeds of photos and have them automatically sync to our device. Here's what I had to say on the matter:

Currently in order to get photos/videos onto our devices we have to manually put that media into a place where Zune software will see it. Wouldn't it be better if we could subscribe to RSS feeds of photos/videos from sites like Flickr, Live Spaces, YouTube, MSN Video and have them automatically appear in our Zune media collection? After all, this is pretty much the model that you follow with podcasts.
An added bonus: If the photos/videos were on Live Spaces/MSN Video then they wouldn't have to be publicly accessible videos because we log onto those services using the same Live ID that we use to log onto Zune.

I got a reply from holydev from the Zune team:

Interesting. If you had an RSS Feed of ... um, say cuteoverload.com, since it is a site I like to visit, what would it look like in your library? Where would you expect to see the feeds and their content go to? How would it be sorted?

To which I replied:

Let's take photos as an example. Here's an RSS feed of photos related to a band that I like that I might like to have synced to my Zune device: http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=the+charlatans&lang=en-us&format=rss_200
I think you have 2 choices:
1. The RSS feed is defined in my library and the photos in the RSS feed get synced to my library - so the photos physically get downloaded to my computer. So in actual fact the photos still exist in your media store as they do today, the only difference is that you have saved yourself the manual effort of moving them there. And that is no bad thing. In fact its a GREAT thing compared to the functionality today.

Advantages: Photos are downloaded without my Zune device being present.
Disadvantages: Photos are proliferated to three different places (i.e. The cloud, my computer and my Zune device) - probably more than they need to be.

2. The RSS feed is defined in my library but the photos never actually physically appear on my computer. Instead my Zune device is synced directly to the photos in the cloud. As with option 1, the great part of syncing with an RSS feed is that the manual effort of moving photos to a place where Zune can see them has been removed.

Advantages: Photos only exist in two places, in the cloud on and my device. Plus, in theory the Zune software (and my computer) is no longer needed. My Zune device should be able to sync photos directly from the cloud whenever it comes in sight of a publicly accessible wifi connection.
Disadvantages: If the syncing is still going via my computer then my Zune has to be present in order for the photos to be downloaded. This means that the time taken to sync my Zune device is going to take longer than it does today.

Given the choice, I would prefer option 2. My time window for syncing is suitably large (i.e. overnight) that it wouldn't be a problem, and I'm saving disk space on my computer.
Sorting? I don't care really! The interesting thing would be the ability to look at photos on my device by date taken or by tag in such a way that that I didn't know (or even care) whether the photo originally existed on my hard drive or in the cloud.

Interestingly that last paragraph is influenced by my experience of using Windows Live Photo Gallery which does a great job of enabling me to browse my photos by tag or by metadata.

Since I wrote this I've had another thought. Suppose I were hosting a party at my house and I were using the fantastic new eye-fi card (which I plan to get hold of pretty soon) to automatically upload photos to the cloud from my digital camera then, using option 2, I could have them automatically appear on my Zune as well and be able to show them around to my party guests while they are still there. How cool would THAT be?

So, there ya go. Some ideas about syncing photos and videos to my Zune from the cloud. Let me know what you think. Do you agree that option 2 would be better? Honestly, let me know in the comments below, I'd be interested in hearing what you think!

cheers

Jamie

Throwing some more Zune ideas out there

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:02:28 GMT

I posted a few ideas on Zune Social earlier today about how they could better leverage the Windows Live ID which is used to login to their site. I thought I'd publish them here as well....just for the hell of it.

Show all my Zune friends in a dedicated contact group e.g. "My Zune friends" within my Live Contacts (http://contacts.live.com).
Allow me to invite Zune Social members to be Live Messenger contacts.
Allow me to invite my Zune friends to be Live Spaces friends and vice versa.
On Zune Social, display whether I am online or not (http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!550F681DAD532637!3203.entry) and thus build instant messaging into Zune Social
Have some sort of chat room in Zune Social that I can interact with using Live Messenger.
Show my most recently listened to song on my Live Messenger status
Show where in the world my Zune friends live on a Virtual Earth map
Use Live Alerts to tell me when someone has replied to one of my forum postings
Put a Zune tab into Live Messenger which displays mine and my friends' Zune Tags. Or, let me right-click on a contact in Live Messenger and let me see their Zune Tag.
Synchronise photos from Live Spaces onto my Zune
Synchronise videos from MSN Soapbox onto my Zune
Build a Windows Live Toolbar button that takes me to Zune Social
Let us form communities (after Windows Live Groups comes out) around artists that we like. Surface these communities in Zune Social. Perhaps even automatically place me into groups based on what I listen to.
Display pertinent Zune info on my Live Spaces news feed (e.g. A friend has added a new favorite on Zune Social, A particular band has gone to the top of a friend's 'most listened to' list, someone else likes the same music as me, Someone has sent me a message on Zune Social etc...)
Let me view messages in my Zune Social inbox from within Windows Live Mail
Put a "blog this" link in various places in Zune Social that then launches me into a new blog entry in Live Spaces.
I could have a category on my Live Spaces blog called "Zune". And blogs in that category automatically appear in my Zune profile (http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson)

Got any more ideas? Anyone? Anyone?

-Jamie

Another Zune idea - IM from Zune Social

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:23:53 GMT

The idea I posted yesterday regarding subscribing to podcasts via Zune Social got a bite so I'm posting another one to see if I can get some visibility of it. I originally put it on the Zune Social forums but as usual I haven't got much feedback there.

Zune Social is cool in that you can see who likes the same music as you and meet them etc... but any conversation that you have is via messages that you leave in their inbox.
Hence, I'd love the ability to IM people from within Zune Social. The newly released Messenger Presence API and Messenger IM Control (http://dev.live.com/messenger/) could easily provide this ability. So my request is that [Zune Social] gives us the ability to see if people are online and IM them from Zune Social (to all the privacy advocates out there...don't worry...the Presence API puts you in charge of who can IM you.)
Moreover, I'd like the ability to add people to my list of contacts. If they automatically appeared in a contact group called (e.g.) "Zune Social" then so much the better.
Also, this functionality should be available from the Zune software as well.

Now that there's so many Windows Live properties out there, and the APIs are coming thick and fast, THIS is the new battleground. How can other services (both Microsoft and none-Microsoft) leverage these services for the greater good. Expect to see me publish a lot more ideas like these over the coming months.

Thoughts?

cheers

Jamie

Idea! Subscribe to a podcast without Zune software!

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:58:55 GMT

Here's an idea I just had for subscribing to podcasts for my Zune.

I just found a podcast online that I wanted to subscribe to but couldn't because I'm at work and I have Zune installed at home. Not a real problem, I just set a calendar reminder to remind me to do it later...but it occurred to me that this experience could be a lot better.

How about giving me the ability to subscribe to a podcast somewhere at http://social.zune.net. Next time I log in to Zune on my computer at home it automatically checks to see if I've subscribed to anything online and synchronizes that subscription to my Zune software?

Dare I say it .... software + services!!!

-Jamie

P.S. Another idea here too: http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!550F681DAD532637!3203.entry

Zuneshine!

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:39:46 GMT

I forgot to say in my post about my Zune card yesterday, you can view my Zune Social profile at http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson. If you're a Zune social member yourself, add me as a friend and get to laugh at some embarrassing plays that will doubtlessly pop up from time to time (I generally play my whole list on random and there's a few skeletons in my music collection). More the merrier. cheers.

-Jamie

Zune Plays are now uploading

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:44:09 GMT

After weeks of trying...the tracks that I've listened to on my Zune are finally getting uploaded to Zune Social. Here's my Zune Card to prove it! (it might not show up if you're reading this in a blog reader in which case head to http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com or, even better, http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson to see it).

Thanks to Zach Johnson from the Zune team at Microsoft I was able to work out why my Zune plays were not being displayed. First I used Fiddler2 to capture the https requests that were sending the plays up to Zune Social from my Zune software. Here's that request:

POST /usage/upload HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: plain/text
Authorization: WLID1.0 t=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&p=
User-Agent: Zune/2.1
Host: stats.zune.net
Content-Length: 281
Connection: Keep-Alive

CountryCode=GB&Usage=PlayLocal,ZunePCClient,3E160D00-0500-11DB-89CA-0019B92A3933,,2008/01/05:01:49:07,1&Usage=PlayLocal,ZunePCClient,37160D00-0500-11DB-89CA-0019B92A3933,,2008/01/05:01:49:07,1&Usage=PlayLocal,ZunePCClient,3A160D00-0500-11DB-89CA-0019B92A3933,,2008/01/05:01:49:07,1
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:49:15 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
Cache-Control: public, max-age=28800
Expires: Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:49:15 GMT
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 315

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<UsageReturn xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<userGuid>edf458d2-a6e8-4992-84db-286616e24ca7</userGuid>
<minimumCallbackMinutes>15</minimumCallbackMinutes>
<succeeded>true</succeeded>
</UsageReturn>

Zach and his colleagues ran this request through their systems and sure enough it didn't work - same behaviour as I was seeing. On closer inspection it turned out that the problem was the that the CountryCode was set to "GB" (outlined in red above) and they filter out all none-US data . After that the workaround was simple. On Vista, Head into Control Panel-->Regional and Language Options and set Current format = "English (United States)":

Once that was set everything started working fine and as you can see above, I now have a Zune Card with something useful on it!

cheers

Jamie

New Zune software eats disk space

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:33:10 GMT

A few minutes ago I took a glance at my Driveinfo Sidebar Gadget and this is what it was showing:

I got quite alarmed because as you can see my C: drive was running perilously close to being a pretty huge bottleneck and quite frankly I didn't know why it was so full because I recently purged a lot of teh crap that lives on my system. I set about investigating and found that the <C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Zune\Transcoded Files Cache\> folder had 2297 *.tmp files in it taking up nearly 7GB of space. I haven't a clue what they're for and I'm assuming that I can get rid of them seeing as they are .tmp files, but I'm not going to until I can be sure I won't break anything. If I find anything out I'll update this post.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or does anyone know what all these files are for?

-Jamie

Is Zune coming to Europe and Japan?

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 05:45:31 GMT

I'm assuming that it is. On my version 2 updated Zune 30 I go to Settings-->Radio and there is the option to pick "north america", "europe", or "japan".

They wouldn't put that there for no reason, right? I can't remember if that option was there before the update but I'm assuming that it wasn't.

-Jamie

Zune album art wall

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 05:02:17 GMT

Screen shot from the new Zune software!

Awesome! You might see me talking about Zune 2 quite a bit more over the next few days!

Windows Live Tags: clubhouse, story, zune, art wall

Zune review in Stuff!!

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 02:13:45 GMT

Stuff magazine used to be my techno-mag of choice before I decamped to the US and discovered Wired. Still, Wired isn't available everywhere and I'm currently sat in Gatwick North Terminal awaiting a flight to the US so I figured I'd cheat on my new love and cozy on up with Stuff for a bit.

Given that the upcoming Zune MkII isn't available in the UK I was surprised to see that Stuff had a review of it and I was even more surprised to see that they actually like it. Here's what Stuff had to say on the matter (comments liberally sprinkled throughout the whole mag):

Sometimes as Morrisey so memorably moaned, the joke isn't funny anymore. Its become the favourite punchline for Mac fans laughing at Microsoft. but the tittering could finally be at an end with the launch of three new wifi-wonders; the Nano-nudging 4GB and 8GB players and a new 80GB hard drive model....But with no UK launch date announced now all we need to ask is 'how Zune is now'.
A great leap - but come, Microsoft, let us get our hands on them.
Its touch-sensitive interface and wireless syncing ability could out-class the iPod Classic (and the iPod Touch).

There's a familiar theme in there. Why the hell aren't these little beauties being released outside of the USA yet? If there's any of my mates reading...I'm heading back to the UK on 12th December and can bring a suitcase full of them if you're prepared to pony up the cash (and they'll be a damn sight cheaper in the US than they will be if and when they get released in the UK).

Incidentally, one other point I have to make about the Zune. A friend and I recently registered for the gym at our new place of work and upon visiting the gym for the first time discovered that in order to listen to the audio output from the numerous TV screens one needed an FM receiver. Hence I was pretty happy with my Zune MkI and its built-in FM radio but my iPod-toting mate was more than a little disgruntled to discover that the delights of US TV were closed to him. Are there any big fitness centre chains out there that use FM radio as a means of their members listening to the provided audio? If so, the Zune people could do worse than partnering with those chains to offer cut-price Zunes for members.

-Jamie

Zune II

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:55:44 GMT

So, news about the 2nd gen Zune is out. How right was I with my predictions?

Sync via wifi. Check. (Not claiming any credit for that one. It was a given)
A clock. Nope.
Windows Live Calendar. Nope.
Zune software will be overhauled. Yep. Big time it seems.
Soapbox sync. No - I was way off with this one.
Photos sync with Live Spaces. Same again.
More channels for purchasing. No news yet but I feel there may be more in the works here.
Podcast support. Yes.
Web browsing over wifi. No - miles off with this one.
More compact but screen size will remain. Half right, the 80GB model is smaller and lighter than the existing 30GB model but has a bigger screen.
Publishing a list of your most played songs. YES. I'm glad I picked up on this one cos no-one else did - I first suggested this in November 2006.
Some cross over with XBox. Yes. It may not have been announced but this post from Cesar Menendez surreptitiously alludes to it.
Media player extender. Sort of. There will be syncing to Vista Media Center. Very cool indeed.
Zune software will run on an XBox. No - I was off beam with this one.
Developer support allowing people to build apps for it. Nope!

I made the point that there will be some sort of tie-up with XBox and I wasn't wrong. Its small at the moment but this will grow and grow I'm sure. This isn't surprising given that the two products come from the same stable.

All in all I wasn't too far off with my predictions - about half right I'd say.

I think Zune Social is the big news here. Automatically posting your "most played list" and "what I'm listening to now" to the cloud is innovative and ground-breaking. I can't wait to get in to it. Unfortunately I can't at the moment cos it needs a bar code and I don't know what that is. I've tried the code printed on the back of my Zune and its not that.

Time will tell all I'm sure.

The one thing I ask is that this service isn't limited just to Zune Social.I would love to see a Facebook app and/or Live Space gadget that publishes my "most played list" and "what I'm listening to now". That would really sell the Zune to a wider audience.

The Zune team deserve huge credit for making all the new features available on the old Zune. They could have forced v1 fans to go out and but the new one - now they don't have to. Kudos. I'd stick with my existing one except that I'm desperate for the 80GB model and I can just give my existing one to my mum.

Some last thoughts.

A lot of people are moaning about the lack of a clock. Why exactly? Go buy a watch like normal people!
Are they finally going to recognise that there is a world outside of the USA and release it there as well?
Zune Social should be available to people that don't have a Zune. There is no music-vertical-focused social network out there currently and this has the potential to become one.

-Jamie

Zune 2.0 predictions

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 06:38:34 GMT

Technology-future-gazing is a fun thing to do. Let's face it, you can never actually be proved wrong can you? You can just say "Well they haven't built it yet!"

There's been a lot of noise lately about an updated version of Zune and given that I have v1 I thought I'd give some predictions for v2 which I expect to be out before the end of the year. Zune v1 was clearly just an attempt to get SOMETHING into the market -exemplified by the fact that it is only on sale in the USA- v2 will need to be groundbreaking to combat the fantastic new iPods. Given that there has been no new Zune release for a year now expectations for v2 are rightfully very high and its going to have to be something special to not disappoint.

So here goes:

You'll be able to sync via wifi
It'll contain a clock which will enable...
...a calendar that syncs with Windows Live Calendar if it ever gets off the ground
The Zune software on your computer (which has been universally panned) will receive a major overhaul
There will be a mechanism for syncing soapbox videos straight to your Zune
Same with photos from your Live Space.
There will be more channels from which to purchase songs. Zune kiosks (i.e. vending machines) could appear soon.
Loading podcasts onto it will be supported
You'll be able to browse the web over wifi. There may even be an email client.
It will be more compact but the screen size will stay the same
You will be able to publish your playlists to (e.g.) your Live Space or Facebook. Perhaps even publish your "most played songs".
There will be some sort of crossover with XBox. Perhaps there'll be the ability to stream media between the two.
Zune will be a media player extender, just like XBox is.
Zune software will run on an XBox, thus you won't need a PC in order to sync.
Perhaps not in v2 but at some point there will be a GPS receiver in it.
Again not in v2 but you'd hope that at some point the FM radio receiver would be supplemented with a satellite radio receiver.

Remember, Microsoft primarily build platforms so you should expect that before long people will be able to develop applications that run on a Zune. They really could steal a march in this area because so far (correct me if I'm wrong) Apple haven't taken the iPod in this direction.

I think the really really big message about Zune 2.0 will be something to do with XBox. In exactly the same way that Satya Nadella says that the Live Search folks are hoping to win over MSN users first, the Zune folks will be hoping to win over the XBox ones.

Also, no matter what Steve Ballmer says, they're going to have to bring out a Zune Phone at some point. This guy certainly thinks they are going to. And there's an apparent quote here from someone high up in the Zune team that says they will do.

If even 25% of these predictions come true I'd be amazed :)

-Jamie

Zune

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:09:58 GMT

[This blog post was originally published here]

OK, I admit it, I succumbed. I have bought myself a Zune. I'd been thinking about getting one since long before it was released on the 14th November and I have now taken the plunge and splashed out for it.

I was speaking to iPod-fanatic Andy Britcliffe (he has 3 of them) last night as we ate thanksgiving dinner and he questioned why I would choose a Zune over the iPod. I started to bang on about not wanting to have the same player as every man and his dog before my fiancee flashed me one of her well-known "no geek-talk at the dinner table" glares and that soon shut me up. Well, I need to answer Andy's question more fully. There are a few, more tangible, reasons. Firstly I am unashamed Microsoftophile - that won't come as a surprise to anyone that knows me or anyone that reads this blog. Secondly, I happen to think that the Zune offering is far more compelling than any other mp3 player out there and that's not because of the built-in wifi or FM receiver gubbins. Its simply because Microsoft have their fingers in so many pies.

Let me explain. As a gadget-freak I like stuff that does alot for me. I don't want my mp3 player to just play music - I want it to be a whole lot more than that. Microsoft's breadth makes that alot more possible.

Everything needs to be driven from a single sign-on - Microsoft already have that in Windows Live ID.
I want it to be able to connect to my XBox and stream music to it (this is something they managed to achieve from day one).
I want it to sync pictures with my Live Spaces blog so that the pictures I have in my pocket are the same as are on the web (if they give me this it might actually drive me away from using the quite superb Flickr).
I want the videos to be synced with those I have on Soapbox.
I want to be able to publish playlists to my Spaces blog.
I want it to be a mobile window onto all the other Live experiences such as Live Q&A, Live Maps, Live Alerts, (e.g. 'Send to Zune'), Live Search, Live Messenger (e.g. "What am I listening to now?" like in the current Live Messenger) and the very hush-hush Live Drive.
Stream my media to and from Windows Media Center.
Record a podcast or write a blog and publish it direct to my Spaces blog. At the moment Zune is all about consuming media - will they enable us to create media with it as well?

The rather obvious point is that Microsoft already have the platform to push all of this stuff. Building platforms is what has made Microsoft the lumbering beast that it is today and if they are going to beat Google and Apple at their own game then they are going to have to build on that strength to build the Zune community that they so long for.

In case you're wondering what I think of Zune now that I own one - well its not too bad. It hasn't crashed yet anyway.

I found the Zune client (their version of iTunes) a little cumbersome to navigate at first but once I got used to it I kinda liked it. I didn't find it quite as intuitive as I did first time I used iTunes though it has to be said - iTunes is a lot more list-driven than Zune. That's good when you're starting with it but once you get used to the Zune interface you'll find it a lot slicker and a lot more akin to the tagging type of navigation that you now see on many websites (including this one).

I like the way that Zune will populate album and artist information in the background for you - in particular I like that it fetches the album artwork.
Installation and configuration of the Zune client took a lot longer than I had expected and they need to do something about that.
Its a Microsoft tool - why doesn't CTRL-S save my playlist for me?
My biggest gripe about the Zune client is that it will not automatically arrange all your music for you in a single place (if it does then I haven't found a way of doing it) - all you do is point it at various folders all over your system and let it store the locations. I like to have all my stuff in one place y'know.

I haven't much to say about the device itself that has not been said already. Its bigger physically than some of its rivals with similar storage capacities. At 30GB its not cavernous enough for everything I want to put on it. The 3inch screen is very impressive, the interface is dead easy to navigate, and the sound quality is good. I haven't been able to test out the community connectivity side of things because I don't know anyone else that has got one. That could change though because the Radio Shack salesman where I got mine from said that their sales so far have massively surpassed their expectations. All in all I'm very pleased with my Zune so far - though I've only had it less than a day. And I even liked alot of the music that comes pre-loaded onto it.

One more point. On Amazon.com the Zune is $249. On Amazon.co.uk it is £238 (that's $459 at today's exchange rate). It seems rip-off Britain is still alive and well!

-Jamie