Third generation Zune pictures leak: 120GB and 16GB flavors — Electronics NEWS - about-electronics.eu

The third generation of Microsoft’s Zune portable media player product line has been talked about and speculated for quite a while now, but very little has managed to leak out of Redmond, until now.

A Canadian has supposedly somehow gotten his hands on both 16GB and 120GB flavors of the Zune, both of which are expected to be released under Zune 3.0 (recall that the original Zune 30GB is considered first generation and that the Zune 4, Zune 8, and Zune 80 are considered second generation).

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Looks like Apple may be releasing some cheaper iPods for the holidays. Lets hope Microsoft does the same and we get a slew of new players for the holiday season.

Apple Could ‘Rock’ Cheaper iPods - Forbes.com

Steve Jobs isn’t even bothering to hide it this time. Apple has invited the press to a “special event” on Sept. 9. And while the tech giant isn’t saying, exactly, what it will announce, any journalist who hasn’t figured it out by now had one too many jars of stupid sauce over the Labor Day weekend.

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A Zune website has been sold for $62,000. Zuneboards.com creator Hansup Yoon is a 15 year old student from California who built and sold his Zune site in under 2 years time.

I think Hansup is smart in dumping the site now because Zune is not going to be lighting up the sales this year and he can use the money maybe to build another site for something else maybe. Let’s hope the site does well and keeps on moving at the pace it is going. It was said to make $1,000 per month already and they paid over 60 for it. Now they have to monetize that site and keep the traffic running.

Zune player forum makes teen a fortune - BostonHerald.com

Young entrepreneur Hansup Yoon, 15, recently sold his creation ZuneBoards, an Internet forum devoted to Microsoft’s Zune media player, for $62,000.

The teenager, who lives in Fullerton, Calif., created the site months before Microsoft introduced its answer to Apple’s iPod in 2006.

“It was the most perfect time to start a Web site about Zune, and I was one of the first few to create a Zune-related site,” he said.

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Don Reisinger friom CNET news says Microsoft would do better by making Xbox Live gaming available for free to everyone and I must say I agree with him. If Xbox came even with a limited account that basically gave you access to certain games at no charge then it would have a HUGE advantage over any other gaming system and be more able to take a sure lead in the console wars.

No other player could compete with the Xbox for overall value and it would put huge pressure on Sony to do something more then be the high end player. If Microsoft offered Xbox Live for free and then added an option to buy an external Blu Ray player for HD movies and gaming on the 360 they why buy another system besides some exclusive game title?

The Xbox is a better deal for me because I’m an MS fan with a Zune and I like playing halo online. I’ve seen the PS3 and it’s nice but not so special to me. Maybe Microsoft should make the Xbox more special to others with some free online gaming.

Why Xbox Live gaming should be free for all | The Digital Home - Don Reisinger’s take on the tech closest to home - CNET News.com

Over the weekend, I spent some time playing online. I did so on Xbox Live and through games on both my PS3 and Wii. All the while, I was thinking about the one simple fact that kept sticking out in my head: for now at least, I can play online with my Wii and Playstation 3 and the experience is basically the same.

And considering Microsoft keeps losing ground to both Sony and Nintendo, why not find a new way to offer a more compelling alternative out of the company’s most popular service?

Sure, it sounds radical and losing $50 per year from the millions of Xbox Live subscribers may be a major sticking point here, but it needs to be done. Microsoft’s latest NPD numbers have been less than stellar and the Wii, DS, Playstation 3, and the PSP all sold better than the company’s console in July. And if you want to compete in the hardware business, that’s simply unacceptable.

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I couldn’t resist the title. It’s a cool t-shirt I used to own.

Microsoft has had a hard time in Japan and the 360 is finally making some inroads in the difficult to crack Japanese gaming industry. Sony and Nintendo are the powerhouse companies from Japan and obvious choice for most Japanese gamers.

That Microsoft is making progress shows that no matter how strong a company brand is the game player and games are what matters. Xbox is selling units because japanese kids like to play the games and console and thats the bottom line.

I remember playing halo online with some kids in Japan when I had the first Xbox and I am certain they are playing on the 360 now.

TG Daily - Microsoft’s Xbox 360 slaps Sony’s PS3 in Japan

Once again, it is an exclusive game title that is the decisive factor in console sales. In this case, it is worth a special note, as the Xbox 360 sold almost three times more units as the PS3 over the course of one week. Nationally and internationally, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 seem to be involved in a dead heat with sales advantages shifting almost every month. Who will make the winning move?

Microsoft usually has a tough time grabbing positive video game headlines against Nintendo and Sony, but we are sure that Microsoft is celebrating at least this week. According to a Reuters article and an Ascii Media Works report, the Xbox 360 dramatically outsold the PS3 in Japan, a market that has been extremely difficult for Microsoft.

In the week ended August 10, Microsoft sold 28,116 Xbox 360 units of the Xbox 360 compared Sony, which sold 10,705 PS3 units. Microsoft’s success is believed to have been driven by Namco Bandai’s role-playing game “Tales of Vesperia”, an exclusive title for the Xbox 360. The sales result is impressive, but still far behind Nintendo’s Wii, which sold 41,044 in the same time frame.

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Just about everyone has need for office supplies of some kinds. Whether you be a student or an office manager or just a regular person with a job and apartment most everyone of us has need for paper, pencils and other office materials and of course all of us can use a good deal online.

Shopping on the web has become a difficult experience with a glut of new websites offering the latest and greatest gadgets and gear online for heavy discounts. Sadly not all of these sites are the actual service provider and most are simply affilaite sites offering links to products they don’t even stock. These middlemen sites get in the way and stop you from getting the things you need at the prices you want to pay. Check that the shopping site you are surfing actually offers the product for sale or find one that does. What looks like a deal may not always be the case and shopping at places like Ebay can be outright scams or dangerous. The holiday season is the best time for scam auctions and other online scams and complaints spike towards the end of the year.

Lots of the major sites like Amazon and Shopping.com have in store deal but what can really help you save on your shoippping are online coupons from sites like OfficeDeals.info which offer deals on major stores like Office Depot and Office Max. Get a Newegg free shipping promo code or save on ink from InkGrabber with this easy to use coupin site that can save you up to 60% on your next shopping spree.

What I like about this site is the fact that you can still shop the major stores which will with some hope take care of your customer service and ordering properly and you still get the discounted rates the coupon site offers without the hassle of working through a middle man website or auction brokerage.

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Mavado is known across the world for his hard hitting lyrics and Gangsta for Life attitude and his performance was no disappointment to his fans in Montego Bay on Thursday evening for Dancehall night at Reggae Sumfest 2008. Mavado and his mentor Bounty Killer have been touring the country relentless and his stage show is solid and well rehearsed. Mavado had a great performance at SumFest. He puts on a great show and if you ever get the chance to see him perform live in Jamaica its a must do experience.

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I have actually wanted to chuck our Xbox out the window and into the pool when my kids fight over it. It can be rather frustrating to be honest and I can completely understand how he feels. It’s pretty crazy how bad the kdis can get over these games and I don’t think any parent would be wrong for doing something like this. it’s certainly not violent as many of the commentors seem to feel and i think it’s a very creative way for dad to nail the message in

Of course it may be that I’m sick and violent like this guy but I don’t think so. it’s been a long time since I hit anyone or anything and I don’t have a record for violent crimes or anything like that. If I were violent I imagine it would have come out by now. Anyway, here is a creative way to make your kids share their next game player.

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I was hopeful that this Holiday Season would see the release of a new Zune player, the Zune 3 as it would be, but even if we do see a fancy new portable media player from Zune this year it won’t make much of a difference to the struggling new grouo under the Entertainment Division of the Microsoft umbrella of companies.

Zune is having a tougher time getting into the PMP market then Xbox had with gaming and the third Zune will not be as big as the third Xbox or playstation I’m sure. As a matter of fact the Zune 3 may in fact be a software roll out over the Nokia line of phones as has been reported in the media recently. I think Zune may also have to dfear the tough economic times American and the rest of the world are facing right now.

It’s not going to be a very Merry Christmas for lots of folks this year and I think Zune may see a tough shopping season because of it. I think this holiday we’ll see more smaller gifts and people sticking to things they know. Apple will sell lots of Nano players but many of the other manufacturers should plan on weak sales as buyers stick to things they know. none of this is good for Zune in my opinion but maybe they have a new idea. Maybe Zune 3 will retail for under $50 and be a smash hit this season.

There are some bright spots in the economy and maybe things will pick up before December. I understand there are some great opportunities available in things like real estate in maryland or maybe real estate in virgina where I understand things are good for some like those buying up foreclosed homes for investment and new home owners taking advantage of some great deals available on newly constructed homes discounted by builders. Websites DROdio.com offer great advice and articles like How to Buy Auction & Foreclosure Homes that may help someone looking to capitalize on the market conditions.

So, it will not be a good holiday for Zune but maybe some of you will have a decent enough year to make enough money to buy a Zune for yourself and a friend. Then you’ll have someone to use the WiFi sharing with

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I must agree its been a long time coming but we should coniusder that maybe Microsoft is looking for more than just a portable game player. Maybe they have polans for a line of poretable devices and they are slowly building up to it?

Maybe we’ll see it by Zune 4?

Feature: Is the Xbox Portable Just a Pipe Dream?

For all intents and purposes, the Microsoft Xbox 360 is still doing very well in the marketplace. People are still more than happy to enjoy games like Halo 3 and Rock Band on the Xbox 360, so it’s clear that Microsoft has a formidable game-playing following. Why is it, then, that Microsoft has yet to grace us with any sort of portable gaming ambitions? Where is the Xbox Portable?

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A Zune can’t kill you but the iPhone bill just might!

Does anyone care what Stephen Colbert uses for a phone?

I mean if he had a Zune Phone would you buy one? He’s got an iPhone. Going to buy one of those because he likes itr?

Colbert Threatdown: iPhone Kills! + Zune… Does Nothing | The iPhone Blog

Attention iPhone users! When Steve Jobs admitted the iPhone had a “kill switch”, everyone thought it was just industry jargon for disabling potentially malicious applications. Everyone but noted fake-news anchor and iPhone luster, Stephen Colbert, who says this makes the iPhone the #1 threat: “Your iPhone Can Kill You.” His solution? “A Zune can’t kill you… or do anything else.”

Colbert’s stare down with a Facebook and AIM sporting 3G is classic, complete with a subtle nod to one of this year’s… er… least comprehensible iPhone appearances in film…

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I’ve had a blessed life and things have always been better for me than those around me. I’m lucky to get to work from home and play with my kids and the Internet pretty much all day long. I’ve come to realize my family and the web are my new addictions. I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict although it’s been a long time since I have those things up I can still see the addictive tendencies in me and now in my children. Yes my kids are junkies but their dope is electronic or digital. My kids are hooked on television, video games and cartoon movies and I’m hooked on Google, Wordpress and just about anything Internet and as mentioned the boys are my driving force. My Internet addiction is fueled by my goal to build a better future for my sons so the work they do is volunteer and not paid for by the hour.

I find myself online some days for more than 12 and even up to 16 or more hours out of 24 and I’m pretty sure thats not good for anyone. I read a lot of crap on the web and it must be cluttering my mind with all the junk articles I have read and even the junk ones I have written. I can spend hours each day just consuming news and media and much of it is done through a small number of websites such and my fave GOOG where I email, surf and research just about everything. I dropped my Yahoo and Hotmail accounts long ago and I bounce around Google and my three primary email accounts for at least an hour every day. I kinda have to or things will get messed up in my business although I have been known to take off a few weeks in a row on occasion just to get away from things.

Life has been a real trip for me and although its been better for me than most its not always been perfect. I’ve had my fair share of pain and trouble in life as everyone I suppose. When I was a kid I got started drinking and smoking pot because everyone else around me was doing it. I took to pot pretty fast but alcohol was the one that got me in trouble and cost me the most heartache in life. That and the legal troubles that came with drinking or “partying” as we called it have made some days of my life drag on a bit longer than others. I can’t tell you how strange it is to me that I used to want to “get f__cked up” just about every night for a couple of years there. the idea of getting trashed for fun seems dumb to me now. I guess many would call it a waste of time but I don’t feel that way at all about any time in my life. Whatever it took to get me where I am seems worth all the trouble thus far.

I have become more conscious of wasting time now that I have children but I still waste lots of time on the web and I can be found reading just about anything online. I am subscribed to dozens of forums and communities, social networks and blogs and sites of all kind. I even read a blog about Alcohol Rehab and Drug Addiction because it interests me to know whats happening in the field today. Watching my kids grow up and seeing how hooked they can get on certain things forces me to try to counteract these tendencies by offering them other choices or placing limitations on their usage of things like the Xbox or the computers. I even try to manage my own internet addiction by forcing myself to do other things such as work more with the kids and their education or just doing something outside by myself or as a family so we can keep ourselves busy with other more healthy activities.

Addiction Treatment of any kind is not a joking matter for those who live with it. If you find yourself hooked on something than get some help at a qualified 12 step program if you can.

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Nokia and Microsoft working to bring Zune marketplace to Nokia handsets?

If the majority of new products and services from wireless carriers and handset manufacturers recently seems to be an answer to something from Apple, it’s probably because it is. Sure, Apple’s iPhone, iPhone 3G, iTunes integration, and AppStore may not be directly responsible for all of the wireless industry’s recent advancements, but Cupertino’s entry in to the mobile space certainly sparked a new appreciation among manufacturers and service providers for sleek and integrated user interfaces that deliver a user experience to be desired.

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Here is an interwesting read on the new Dell MP3 players and what that might mean to Apple. I’m doubtful Dell will have much success against Apple buyt Zune may have some things to worry about.

Dell’s MP3 Player Move: How to Beat Apple - Talk Back by Digital Trends

Last week the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Dell was again looking at the MP3 business and that I was involved in the effort. I’ve been fascinated with the success of the iPod for some time now and the fact that even though it is very clear how Apple took the market, there has yet to emerge a truly serious competitor to Apple’s leadership. This is primarily because no one wanted to match Apple on all aspects of their program initially, and now that Apple is dominant, matching alone won’t do it anyway.

On the other hand, just like Apple moved around the companies who dominated the MP3 player market before Apple entered, so too (in theory) could another firm. But, it will be harder this time because Apple has already captured many of the likely early adopters with either the iPod or iPhone product lines (you can check out our Apple iPhone 3G review).

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ZuneMAX.com has had a bumpy life and there have been some issues with this site over its lifetime. When I first built this site I never expected how fast it would grow and we had some serious downtime issues because of the volume oif traffic and users reading articles here in the Zune blog and also people talking about the new media player from Microsoft in the Zune forums. When the Zune was released in November 2006 the site crashed and we lost a lot of users and data.

The site came back to life when I moved it to a new dedicated servers hosting account and the site had its own server. I thought that would be enough but not so as my luck would have it that I would have more than one popular website on the same server at the same time and then this site became the target of a coordinated spam blast and denial of service attack where we were being pinged by a zillion topsite scrapers looking for free links from a link exchange script we ran on this site. We also had some sql injection hacks taking place in the forums with all sorts of spam posts and ghost accounts screwing things up.

The repeated hack attempts eventually took the old servers down and had to find a new more powerful website server that could handle the larger size and multiple scripts being run on my network of sites. We still get some of the spam junk in the forums and its been kinda slow since we had so many troubles but its still around and on a new dedicated hosting account with an established hosting provider like you can find at RapidSwitch.com or any of the other large scale hosting providers online. RapidSwitch offers competitive pricing on dedicated servers and web hosting support.

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Dell computers is taking another run at the portable media player market after the beating they took on the DJ. It seems they bought a company that manufactures a wireless media player, not Zune but Zing, that may help them with a new shot at the market.

People are calling it another shot at Apple of an “iPod Killer” but thats the sheeple following the pack. There is never to be an “iPod killer” unless Apple decides to kill it. No other company is going to design or develop something so radical it overtakes iPod as the dominant PMP. They were the first to mass market the devices and they will remain on top forever.

What this new Dell device may be is not an “iPod Killer” but a “Zune Killer”. Lets face facts Zune is not burning things up and Microsoft has had more fumbles than successes thus far and Dell must realize just how badly Microsoft has screwed Zune with the DRM crap and horrible marketing approach and what Dell saw was just how fast and easy Microsoft took the #2 slot with Zune players regardless of how poorly Zune was introduced to market and they decided to try again.

I think its too late for Dell to take #2 because Microsoft would rather lose more cash and build a better Zune then to be pushed out of the market by Dell but they probably realize they can do well in the #3 spot and maybe thats good enough for Dell.

Byte of the Apple Here Comes Dell To Compete With The iPod, Again - BusinessWeek

Looks like Dell is going to make another run at the music player business. All I can say is “here we go again.” Perhaps you’ll remember its ill-fated attempt to compete with Apple’s iPod. It lasted all of three years.

What’s different this time around? Well last year Dell acquired a little music software outfit called Zing which in 2006 was demonstrating a concept design that essentially put Wi-Fi streaming inside a portable player, thus giving it the ability to, among other things, play Sirius streams.
Sound familiar? Well yeah, actually. My very favorite thing to do with the iPod touch is to listen to streams from Pandora and Last.fm. Okay, Sirius and XM aren’t on the iTunes App Store, but if they know what’s good for them, they’ll offer their subscribers who like to listen via the Web (ahem) an iPhone/iPod touch application that will work via Wi-Fi and/or 3G, but I digress.

Dell’s player might include streaming capabilities, and could also work with Rhapsody, which isn’t a bad service at all, or it might launch its own music service. And hey, if it supports MP3 music files, as it presumably would, it would support music sold on Rhapsody, Amazon, eMusic and whoever else has decided to go the MP3 route. The problem, will of course, come down to marketing and positioning aganst Apple, and we all know how that tends to work out. Its closest rival in the U.S. is SanDisk, which has a market share of about 11%, though it has tended to be a profitable share profitable share.

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Domain investing and speculation has been around a long time. Domainers have been trying to snatch up and sell so many domains that a huge industry has sprung up around it and domain buying and selling is a full time job for some of us. The domain market can have some sweet payoffs if you have the right talents and foresight to grab the right domains when you can.

As an example this website cam about as an idea in the domain forums at NamePros.com when someone announced Microsoft had a new project comingzune and I jumped on the bandwagon and scored some Zune domains. I have quite a few great Zune domains that all point to this website and help in our search engine and internet marketing efforts.

I have my own custom set of tools that I developed for use in prospecting domains and I do ok with the large number of domains I secured in 2003. each year since i have sold off an increasingly larger number of domains and each year the prices have been mind boggling. I sold two domains just yesterday for a total of over $5,000US to an Israeli investor in the moving and relocation industry. He purchased two top keyword .org domains and should be able to recoup his investment by the end of the year with proper planning and development.

The domain industry is now loaded with websites offering domain tools and investment tips on how to buy and sell domains but be wary of anyone trying to turn you onto this business. All the good domains are boiught up and traded around regularly. You can try to play the dropped domains game like so many others do or you can become a sitebuilder as many domainers should.

Websites like i Go Mogul offer some great advice on how the domain industry operates and would be a great resource for anyone just starting in the domain investment markets. Before you get to wrapped up in making money buying and selling domains take a look at the information they offer and see how it may help you before you make a mistake that costs you.

For me I made a huge profit on a domain which has cost me less than $40 to own. It’s my intellectual property for sale and I was happy to make such a great return on it. Domain

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