Update on the Amazon $90 Zune deal, bidding is over and as expected the Microsoft Zune has won and will be offered for $90. If you voted, you will have to go back to the page on Tuesday (12:00 a.m. - 11:59 p.m. Pacific time) to find out whether you are among the customers randomly [...]

Apple's iPod shuffle sales have been brisk, and it's the sleeper hit of the holiday season. There are good reasons why this is happening, all of them having to do with features of the shuffle that can each be found elsewhere, but none all on one player.
Why all the commotion over the lowly, simple shuffle? Here are the top five reasons why you might choose it over the nano, or any other digital audio player, for that matter, especially if you're interested in active outdoor activities this winter:

1. It has a clip on it. This is better than a lanyard, because you can clip it wherever you want: on your shirt sleeve, on your lapel, on a pocket, on your earlobe, and even on the zipper flap of a jacket.

2. Its controls are not touch-sensitive like the nano. If you've been out on a walk in the cold weather, you'll know that the nano can't be controlled with a gloved hand. Not so with the shuffle, which can be easily manipulated with even the thickest gl...

Welcome to the social. That's Microsoft's slogan to describe the kind of social interaction you can expect when fooling around with your Zune. Too bad CNET found all of one person to squirt at in its travels in San Francisco. Yes, one person.
It's a similar story here in New York as a friend of mine went to Times Square and could not find one person to get all social with. Granted, Times Square isn't exactly a HOPE conference with a high concentration of technologically savvy people, but for heaven's sake, if you can't get social in San Francisco or New York, where can you? – Nicholas Deleon
Looking for Zune love [CNET]

A few people have been asking how to get their favorite TV shows from their TiVo to their Microsoft Zune. For those people that have not been able to work it out, here are the few easy steps that will help you out. First thing to do is download and install the TiVo Desktop software (install [...]

We've had a lot of accusations that we are Zune fanboys, cast with far more venom than the former iPod fanboy finger pointing. Why do I believe in our Zune coverage? Because the Zune is approaching the market with a unique perspective, and Microsoft will spend whatever it takes to make the Zune a force in the marketplace, even if version 1.0 isn't quite there yet. Just look at what they've done in the gaming industry.
Still, there are some of you who won't be placated by that explanation. Fret not loyal readers: a philanthropist has heard your cries for help. Blogger NickStarr is taking donations toward the purchase of a Zune so that he may review it in a fair and balanced fashion. Because getting a Zune half-free instead of whole-free means he won't be half as biased as us. – Mark Wilson

Waste Your Money Here [via zuneinsider]

We may have given high marks to the Zune, but in the end we still chose the iPod as the player of choice for the holidays. But what we'd really like is the Zune to be done right.
Here's what we're thinking...
•Full iTunes importing. Right now the Zune does play nicely with iTunes and imports all unencrypted AAC and even song ratings. But it doesn't have iTunes-purchased song support and it doesn't import play counts. If this is done, people can truly migrate from the iPod without losing everything.
•Larger storage. For a player to be this much bigger than even the larger, 80GB hard drive, it should definitely have more storage space. Give us as much space as in a laptop hard drive and we're golden.
•Better format support. Yes, we want to watch DivX on this thing without transcoding it.
•FM transmitter. Let us listen to the thing in our cars without having to buy another device.
•Touch sensitive buttons. We liked it o...

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If you don’t already know, the Zune’s 30 gig hardrive is produced by Toshiba, and a few days ago Toshiba had a press release about their new 1.8″ 100gig harddrive. There is no confirmation on this from Microsoft if they are planing on using this new harddrive in any future models of the Zune, but [...]

On Wednesday, Microsoft released information that they are setting their sights at selling 1 million Zune unites come end of this financial year (mid 2007). So far this seems to be an achievable goal for Microsoft, judging by the past few weeks of sales since the Zune launched on November the 14th. Its well known [...]

I love my Media Center.  I literally was one of the first to buy on in 2002 and have been using it ever since.  As such, I've got tons of content in the DVR-MS file format and it is somewhat difficult to move around from device to device.  In addition, I wanted the ability to remove unwanted content from my shows (like commercials).  I had been looking for a tool that would let me do both for a long time.  I finally found DCut awhile ago and it is incredibly useful, so I thought I'd share.
What makes DCut different is that is runs as a service in the background.  That means you can do some cool things that you can't do with some of the other products.  In my case, I use it to grovel the folder where I store my DVR-MS files and I also use it to batch encode the SAME file into TWO DIFFERENT sizes - one for my PMC/Zune and one to stream to my Xbox over extender.  It takes a little configuration, but once up and running, you can pretty much...