With only 100 randomly dispersed pink Zunes in the world (have 100 even sold yet?), there are groups who will do almost anything (ok, just bidding on Ebay) to get their hands on one. Cue music:
Oompa Loompa Dupidee Zune,
If you pull pink,
You'll lose masculinity soon.
You should sell your
Pink Zune on Ebay,
Because the Oompa Loompas
Might think you are gay.

Hey Oompas! You of all creatures should have an open mind. But since you are on the point, how does your species reproduce? The first pink Zune went for $920 on Ebay, but the subsequent sale dropped to $760. Sell 'em while they're hot. – Mark Wilson

Filed under: Displays, Wearables
Although we Americans tend to scoff at anything labeled 3D, stereoscopic, or wearable display, apparently the Aussies (or somebody) think these things are pretty inspiring. Expanding its (astoundingly) growing list of head mounted displays, 22Moo is offering two more (likely rebadged) units to literally gander at, and is going all out with its marketing ploys to connect these gaudy headpieces to some of the trendiest products out. The lightweight i-Vision 230 comes in white (surprised?), red, and silver color schemes, features a "virtual display" of 35-inches from 2-meters away, rocks a 320 x 240 resolution LCD, and plays nice with your "video iPod, Zune, Wii, and Xbox 360" (not to mention basically any other vanilla video source). The beefed-up Argo+PC adds "PlayStation 3 and set-top box" compatibility, features twin 640 x 480 resolution LCDs, a detachable light shield, stereo headphones, and generates a virtual image of 43-inches. Additionally, th...

DVR-MS is a big topic among the enthusiast community (and in the comments on this blog), but I want to point out a number of painful misunderstandings about it.

I should say upfront; for anyone who has an MCE box with a tuner (a small but vocal group), what I'm going to say can't make them feel much better. Sorry. But it should clarify what's going on technically.

First, what *is* DVR-MS? It's basically an MPEG-2 video stream wrapped up in a Microsoft ASF container needed to enable DRM. MPEG-2 has a single overriding advantage:
Lots of mainstream tuner cards can encode into it (using built-in mpeg-2 encoders) in their hardware, which means you will still get good video quality even if you're playing Half-Life 2 when a show comes on. This advantage has been pretty definitive for MCE, and is the main reason for using MPEG-2 (oh, if only h.264 or wmv were in there!).
This said, there are disadvantages that become pai...

Many folks will know Paul Thurrott's work. Recently I had the opportunity to spend some time chatting about Zune with him, and they turned into a couple of articles (http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/zunestory.asp) and a podcast discussion (http://www.twit.tv/ww).

Paul's a great guy who's been skeptical of our first market entry, but we'll turn him around eventually....

A number of sites (e.g., http://www.getusb.info/?p=374) are posting a hack to get your Zune to work as a storage device as well as a music device. That's fine, but folks should know the downside of this hack.
First, it will mean that you can't listen to your Zune while it's connected to your PC. Out of the box you can charge your Zune while listening to music by not running the Zune client. If you use this hack, then Windows explorer grabs the device while it's connected and it stays in "sync" mode the entire time. Second, it will make your Zune act like any old device, and you'll have to deal with the lovely autoplay dialog box every time you plug it in. Just fyi...

On the Kim post, it's James, not Paul of course. I have a good friend named Paul Kim and made a typo. apologies.

the tmpgenc encoding profile is now live on the site; there's a mystery hosting problem with that extension. It's now at http://www.zunester.com/zune.zip

I offered it
You wanted it!
You asked for it!
You asked for it again !
I apologized...and finally got around to it...

Now it's done (in about 15 minutes, so comments appreciated), the Zune Video Conversion tutorial - how I do it at home!

www.zunester.com/zunevideo.htm

Ooh, this is sweet. Zune's first week of sales; we were 9% of the units and 13% of the dollars. Obviously would be higher if you looked just at the HDD device market. Looks like most of the volume came out of Apple, which isn't surprising given that they were previously the only real player in the $200+ price bands.

http://www.thestreet.com/pf/newsanalysis/techgames/10324945.html

A good start.

22Moo has updated their VR glasses product line with the i-Vision 230 and i-Vision 922. Simulating a 35" or 48"screen from 2M away, the i-Vision supports direct input from your video iPod or Zune, as well as SD A/V inputs from all of the latest gen videogame systems (well, really anything with an RCA output).
Models range from 320x240 to 640x480 resolution, running $250 and $350, respectively. The glasses feature a USB-rechargeable lithium ion with an undisclosed runtime. I fully believe in the technology VR glasses, especially with the popularity of PMPs with tiny screens. If only they didn't make you look like a complete tool, blinding you to the peanut-throwing bullies on planes everywhere. – Mark Wilson
Product Page

Apparently Gates and the U2 frontman had dinner Wednesday and talked about ways to get presidential candidates talking about global health issues in the next campaign.
Perhaps he was inspired by all the talk of Bill running for president.
I heard about this third hand, through one of the bloggers that Microsoft flew to Seattle to schmooze with Bill on Thursday. They left with some gossipy blog fodder and the gift of a Zune, but apparently no breaking news.
Below are some excerpts from a recap by Steve Rubel, one of the 14 bloggers who participated. Rubel also happens to work for Edelman, one of Microsoft's PR firms, but he's still one of the voices Microsoft was trying to influence.
Anyway, it sounds like Bill deflected questions about SCO and Linux, agreed that digital rights management needs more work, recounted how he once planned to become a lawyer, and reiterated his interested in biology and energy ventures.
Other tidbits selected from Rubel's blog:...