News for the ladies here, remember a while ago all those people bidding and searching high and low for those elusive Pink Zunes that Microsoft so sneakily put into 100 unmarked Zune boxes? Well its not been confirmed that they no longer will be in hiding, Pink Zunes will be on sale come May 1st [...]

Hey ladies! This is the moment you have all been waiting for—the folks at cliczune received confirmation that a pink version of the Zune is coming on May 1! If you remember, Microsoft surprised purchasers by leaking 100 limited-edition pink Zunes last year, but now they are being released mainstream. I guess the fact that the pink Zunes fetched a pretty penny on eBay inspired Microsoft to release the pink Zune not as a super-sneaky surprise.
After the jump, I get on my soapbox about pink gadgets like this.
I'm all about pink and different colored gadgets, but I am sick of companies releasing pink gear to only appeal to the ladies. If you are going to release a pink, overpriced gadget, at least do what the folks at Seagate, Kensington, Pioneer and others have done by linking the pinkness to breast cancer, or other female-disease awareness and donate for every gadget sold.
Nice they're spray painting their Zunes instead of working on that patch. –Travis...

Remember that 1.3 Zune Update we told you would come mid-March? The one that's going to fix the skipping problems with DRMed tracks and improved general performance? Yeah, it's late.
Here's a list of what we think they were working on:
•Improved Vista Compatibility.
– Jason Chen
Update on the Update - From the Release Manager [Zune Insider]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Last week marked the fourth month the Zune has been on the market, and its sixth month since being officially announced. We know the Zune was in development all the way back into 2005 -- so why the hell is Microsoft having such a hard time ironing out even the basic kinks, let alone adding features? Wasn't the whole reason Microsoft went into the portable media hardware business because only vertically integrated solutions seem to be able to guarantee a vaguely acceptable DRM user experience?

In month four it's not cool for the Zune to still have bugs causing skipping in (DRMed) content, nor any of the other severe issues, bugs, and limitations that keep the product from approaching likability by a larger audience than the handful of thousands of Zune users out there today. (Let's not kid ourselves here, Zunes haven't been selling, and most people don't take the Zune seriously at this point.) We're not trying to hate, but we ...

If Microsoft is contemplating bringing out a nano (the Nune? The Zazo?) follow-up to their repackaged Toshiba Gigabeat, this may be it. But then again, it may be not.
This is what the Toshiba Gigabeat U, with it's 1 bit DAC audio processor can do: charge its battery in ten minutes if you use the MEPUAA 10 USB adaptor (you have to buy that separately, though, boo, hiss); record FM broadcasts to MP3; share its library with another DAP equipped with an FM receiver; display JPEG images.
Here's what it can't do: play music continually for more than 3 hours; hold more than 2GB (the U101 only has a 1GB capacity); make breakfast; fire the chauffeur. Specs and release date are after the jump.


1.1-inch organic EL display
96x96 resolution
36 grams
TC94A82XBG DAC audio processor
USB AC adaptor MEPUAA 10
Available from April 7 and the 1GB capacity U101 will set you back $118, the 2GB U201 $142. – Ad Dugdale
...

Filed under: Portable Audio, Wireless
Props to Zunerama for an anti-hack so painfully obvious we're kind of kicking ourselves for not having thought of it before. Want to live stream your music to your pals with Zunes (what do you mean your pals don't have Zunes?) or even FM radios? Just use the FM transmitter. It's relatively low-powered, of course (unless you performed that other hack), but at least anyone who happens to know you're broadcasting on that particular frequency can listen in. Of course, it would be nice if they actually added this feature via WiFi so you could get nearby Zune discovery, track information, and all the fun stuff that makes us pissed about having to resort to such a silly hack as this. 
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This idea could either be a "duh, why didn't I think of that?" or a "duh, I thought of that months ago", but it's neat enough to bring up. Apparently sharing tracks with the Zune isn't limited to its Wi-Fi feature. If you take advantage of the Zune's built-in FM receiver, you can attach an FM transmitter and broadcast your music to nearby units for easy listening.
It's cool in a theoretical sense, but probably won't be very useful in a practical sense. Then again, instead of sharing a track, you could broadcast it to the gal sitting next to you and you can synchronize your air guitar with her air drums. You'd be the next White Stripes, but without, you know, the incestuous overtones. – Jason Chen
Stream any music to nearby Zunes [Zunerama via Crunchgear]

The Zune WiFi sharing capability has coped is fair share of criticism over the months since its launch but here is a happy story involving Zune’s WiFi sharing. There once was a boy in school, when one day he was shocked to find out that his Zune had been snatched and stolen by an evil person [...]

If you would like to get this deal and save $70 on a new Zune, then simply print and bring ad to stores for deal. But be quick as this is for Friday and Saturday only. Link to coupon: here

In this morning's paper, I saw Office Depot was offering Zunes for $199 after rebate, down from the original $250 price.
Then I checked my e-mail and found a press release from Slacker, a San Diego company launching a new music subscription service it calls Personal Radio and a device that looks like trouble for Zune 1.0.
For $7.50 a month Slacker users will be able access millions of songs. (It works with Windows Media content, so perhaps the company is using Microsoft's DRM for this service.) Slacker organizes the music in several ways, including a huge variety of "stations" dedicated to a particular artist.
The players match or exceed the Zune's key features -- screens bigger than an iPod, Wi-Fi connectivity and a groovy, alternative vibe (Slacker launched at SXSW).
But instead of using the Wi-Fi to share music directly with other devices, the Slacker players will use the radios to access the service's Internet-based music library. They'll also be able to cac...