Microsoft to Embed Viral Growth into Zune MP3

 Network marketing in the 21^st Century. Move over Amway!

 http://www.adrants.com/2006/10/microsoft-to-embed-viral-growth-into-zune.php

 
In what could be a masterful viral approach to growing a business that goes far beyond viral marketing, Microsoft is embedding viral expansion into its new iPod competitor, Zune. Users of the Zune MP3 player can send songs to friends over the devices Wifi who have three days to listen to them before they disable. If the recipient of the song decides to buy the song within the three day period, the sender of the song will receive a portion of the song’s purchase price in the form of credits to be used towards purchasing music and other items from the Zune Marketplace.

 

 

More Zune

There’s a been heaps of buzz here in Seattle about the Zune (I go by at least two billboards on my daily commute). I just watched a little vblog post by Robert Scoble and came away with the following thoughts.

• I like the larger screen size. Being able to customize the background is cool.
• Full album art is alright. Doesn’t excite me.
• Photos and video will be much better on this device than on an iPod. The shifting screen/landscape mode is ok. I’ve used the feature on my iPaq fairly often.
• I would like to see a touch screen.
• I don’t know if I the Zune to Zune thing is something I want. I hope I have the ability to turn off the sharing feature. I can see some clown inventing a virus that propagates with this. I do see that this could be a nice feature. I’m glad that the file must be “accepted.”
• Hmm…photo sharing…that’s more along the lines of something that I might use.
• Parental Controls: sounds good.
• I would love a car stereo with Zune built in connection via wi-fi.
• What about 3rd party stuff and hacks?
• Getting a camera on this device will be critical.
• Some cameras have wi-fi; can pictures be transfered via this connection?
• Dig the headphones – these little magnetic things should help with keeping cords untangled.

IE 7

I just upgraded to IE 7 on my home machine; I just love being on the cutting edge. I’ve been using the beta for several months, and was interested in seeing what differences there would be. A quick note: this article was written in Google Docs in the new IE version.

Upgrade process surprised me. It was surprisingly long, and not running in the background. I was wondering why the process needed to be so dominating of my system. I guess I had forgotten how tightly integrated IE is with Windows. The install required two reboots, which is surprising since installing Firefox from scratch doesn’t even need a single reboot. And takes far less time.

The first thing I noticed different about the release version versus the beta is the speed at which the tabs load. Not as quickly as Firefox, nor as cleanly, but much faster than the beta or the IE 6 with MSN Toolbar (OK, infinitely faster than that dog).

One other tab issue is that IE doesn’t always open new pages in a tab in the existing window. I occasionally have this problem with Firefox (opening messages in Hotmail, for instance), but it is very rare.

It annoys me how slowly new tabs open, and how slowly they close. Plus, there’s a system lag as they open/close. I’ve also noticed that, as I write this, there are some lags where the cursor takes a long time to catch up with my typing. I haven’t’ seen this in Firefox.

One nice thing was that all my toolbars seemed to update nicely after the install. Google gave me a little heads up that it had done so. Yahoo needed a more formal process (clicking on the “upgrade here” button), including restarting IE.

This is, probably, one of the better updates for IE (especially considering all the security issues of late). However, it’s not enough to catch it up to Firefox. Internet Explorer will be, as it’s been for sometime now, the browser I pull up for those sites that won’t work in Firefox (or that are a bit twitchy). For me, most of those sites are banking related. Oddly, I’ve found several sites that don’t work well on IE but fine on Firefox. More on that another time.

Treo 680

Palm Announces Palm OS GSM Treo 680 & Surprises! – Treo and PalmOS news:

I’m quite excited about the potentials here. Bringing the cost of these phones down is the next key step to expand their usage. Ok, there’s a somewhat selfish piece, too, in that I want to be able to get my hands on a decent device without going bankrupt.

When Palm brought out the III series, it helped expand the market for handhelds, and cemented Palm’s place. Even though things have slipped some with the plethora of PocketPC devices, Palm still holds a strong place. Part of that is the lack of a sub $100 device in PocketPC world. Getting people onboard with a platform is the hardest step. As they grow in sophistication (for their usage, if not tastes) they still gravitate towards the known. Toyota and Honda have executed this exceptionally well. When you start to present the notion of migrating their “data”, people are even more inclined to just stay put.

The 680 is an exceptional step by Palm to cement their place in the handheld communicator market. I have some key concerns, though. When are they going to release the blasted thing? Cost? Sub $200 will be great. Sub-$300 will be ok.

This all started with quite a bit of a buzz, but it’s gone pretty quiet fast. We’ll see what kind of energy Palm can create. Personally, I think this is a key step to maintaining their place as a market leader.