Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Yeah, you may be proud if something you conjured up sold one million pieces, but we're talking Microsoft here. The boys and girls at Redmond (thankfully) aren't satisfied with leaving things as they are, and just over two months after loosing v1.3 on the world, the Zune is officially getting another firmware update bringing it to v1.4. Notably, the actual software is still sitting at v1.3, and for the majority of you who voted this here device as the worst of the year, there ain't much here to change your attitude. According to ZuneInsider, the curiously minor update simply provides "an improved shuffle experience," and in particular, "makes successive shuffle actions produce more random lists." We know, you're patiently waiting for us to finish detailing what else v1.4 brings, but unfortunately that looks like the end of it. Feel free to get your download on if this somehow gets you jazzed up.

[Thanks, Segadc] 
Read |...

The folks at Microsoft have a quick update for your Zune today in about 30 minutes (10:00 AM PT) that will improve your "shuffle experience" when playing back tracks.
If you remember, the iPod had some complaints about its shuffle algorithm and they had to release an updated version that customized shuffle even further (like not having the same artist/album anywhere near each other). No idea if this is like that, since we haven't noticed any weirdness with shuffle on our Zunes. – Jason Chen
Zune Insider [Firmware Update 1.4 Today]

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- Walt Mossberg asked Steve Ballmer a question that a lot of Microsoft watchers have been thinking about lately: Why is the company manufacturing hardware like the Zune and the new Surface computing table, after insisting for years that it made software and left hardware to partners?
Ballmer said "modern consumer electronics" is one of the new "muscles" the company is trying to build, along with digital advertising. He also said people shouldn't write off Microsoft after seeing only its initial forays:
"We're trying to build these two new muscles, one in advertising and one in modern consumer electronics and we're going to keep coming and coming and coming just as we did in enterprise and just as we did in phase one." Ballmer said the company will pick and choose where it builds hardware in businesses such as media players that are becoming largely software and services businesses. "How much hardware we have to offer is always variable," he said, adding:...

Filed under: Features, Portable Audio

It's been a long time coming. So how could we resist giving the new higher quality, DRM free iTunes Plus music service a whirl? After all, we're geeks, and loaded with all kinds of audio devices (not just iPods or Macs and PCs running iTunes) which we'd like to make use of with our purchased media. Certainly you've heard of the Zune, Xbox 360, PS3, Vista Media Center, Walkman W880, Slingbox, or even the VLC media player right? Ok, then you understand our angst. So off we go, into the land of Fair Use lollipops and DRM-free candy canes. Click-on to see how it all goes down as we upgrade our iTunes music library.Continue reading iTunes Plus and EMI's DRM-free music hands-on
 
Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

I'll be filtering for interesting gadget news.
8:14 Mossberg and Swisher take the stage, after some WSJ intro by the former and current managing editor
and their (not) opponents later tonight...

8:17: Showing a video of the "dark side of D"

8:26 Jill Sobule on stage playing a few songs...D is like Mossberg's US Festival (google Woz).

8:31 Back to work. Ballmer shows up. I see the Surface table on the right.

10:33 4 out of 30 of the original MSFT people are great. Mossberg takes a shot at Paul Allen, saying he isn't good. Crowd laughs.
10:35 Let's talk about Vista, for some reason, it's taken 5 years to get it out. You've said you'll never take that long again. How?
SB: We have to learn from our mistakes, we've got the will, the determination, we tried to do too much incubation into a new tech, and make it dependent on itself, and exponentially increased the complexity of the project.
...

According to an assortment of unrelated sources, the best guess is that Microsoft is finally launching its PlayTable concept as a full-blown entertainment product. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley says PlayTable, aka Project Milan is a "multi-touch, gestural- and object-recognition interface technology" that Microsoft has demoed to a lot of people lately, but mainly as technology rather than a product in development. Matt Hickey over at CrunchGear suggests that, based on a demo he saw, it might be a touch-friendly game console that competes with the Wii on intuitive user interface front.
We have another source that confirms the table-ness of the announcement, but says that it will be a kiosk-type of device, meant to provide gaming entertainment and a retail interface for Zune, but that, at a cost of $10,000 a pop, it won't be something that people actually buy for their homes.
Our source doesn't name the product, but says that rather than being a touchscreen LCD, it's a rear-...

Oh, hello, my sexless pubertannies. It's me, Harold Jenkins. Thought I was gone, did you? Thought your moist-palmed bitching and moaning convinced the editors here to fire me? Well, you thought wrong. I'm here to stay, so deal with it. If you can't find a better outlet for your frustration at your station in life than whining like shunned fat girls at the junior prom, that's your problem, not mine. Let's get to business here, shall we?
A big company is going to be unveiling some overpriced crap for you to get half-mast while looking at. Boy, that seems worth staying up late for.
What do they put in the water in Japan to make everyone so insane? The only van I drive is nondescript, has a clean mattress in the back and a Ross Perot '92 bumper sticker on it, and that's the way it's gonna stay.
TV might be getting more detailed in a couple decades, so you can finally feel like you're interacting with fellow human beings when in fact you're sitting along in your pathet...

Filed under: Peripherals

If ZDnet staple Mary Jo Foley (or more specifically, her source) is right, we may be seeing Microsoft take the next big step in device interaction at tomorrow's D: All Things Digital Conference, with the perennial Redmond watcher predicting an official unveiling of the company's PlayTable / Project Milan multi-touch, gesture-based input technology. PlayTable, which combines elements we've seen in the iPhone, from NYU's Jeff Han, in various prototype devices, and from Microsoft's own, recently-demo'ed DigiDesk, is envisioned as a multi-purpose interface that can be employed in anything from a DAP (Zune) to a cellphone (WinMo handsets) to a gaming console (Xbox) -- so it's no coincidence that the project is being developed by the same Mobile and Entertainment division that's also in charge of these categories. All in all, tomorrow promises to be a big day: not only is Palm making a potentially breakthrough announcement, and the faces of Apple and Micro...

I'm told that tonight, at 12:01am EST (okay, so tomorrow), the division of Microsoft that launched the Xbox and the Zune will unveil something very special . What it is, we do not know for sure, but it's "something totally new coming out of the Entertainment and Devices division, and it's going to change the way people interact with technology." The e-mail (which was not a tip but rather was mistakenly sent to me through official channels) also stated that "you really have to see it to believe it." How tantalizing.
The timing is good, since tomorrow is when Bill Gates and Steve Jobs get to point fingers at each other under the grandfatherly gaze of Grand Vizier Walt Mossberg, and in these heady iPhone days, Gates needs all the ammo he can get. But what the heck is it? We're convinced Zune 2.0 is still a ways off, but then again, what else would this division be up to? Stay tuned, and we'll get back to you with the details right around midnight. – Wilson Rothman...

Apparently the 1 million Zunes sold celebration we told you about last week was just a tiny little bit preemptive, thanks to a slightly bigger mistake by the Chronicle. The error? Mis-transcribing an intervie with Robbie Bach. Instead of claiming 1 million Zunes sold, Bach actually claimed:
Bach: When we finish our fiscal year in June we'll have sold a little over a million Zunes, so we feel very good about that. So Microsoft actually has yet to sell that millionth Zune, and has one month left to do it. – Jason Chen
Microsoft's Zune: Still Shy of 1 Million Sales [Business 2.0]