Surviving Z2K: Zunes Start Working After Leap-year Glitch

Zunes across the world are unfreezing today as they recover from a leap-year glitch that rendered an estimated 1 million of the digital media players inoperable.

After mass outages were reported, Microsoft explained Wednesday that 30-gigabyte models of its Zune digital media player had malfunctioned as a result of “a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way a device handles a leap year.” In other words, the Zune didn’t know how to handle the fact that 2008 had 366 days, instead of the usual 365, so it froze up. The fiasco quickly became known as “Z2K” or “Z2K9,” after the feared Y2K bug that never materialized in 2000.

Revelers who had spent hours crafting New Year’s Eve playlists to power their dance parties were left scrambling for alternatives.

But it’s day one of 2009, and word is spreading that Microsoft’s advice — let the battery drain completely, wait until at least 4 a.m. PST on Jan. 1, then sync the Zune with your computer — is working. Some of …

iTunes 8 Review

Apple earlier today unleashed iTunes 8, the newest version of its media player application. iTunes 8 gives you a fresh way to browse your music, improved accessibility for the vision-impaired, and a new automatic playlist-generation feature dubbed Genius. Judging from my test-drive of iTunes 8, the new features are useful, but none are particularly groundbreaking, must-have additions. Read more

Sony Walkman E Series

The new Sony Walkman E series is expected to be hit the store in the next few months. Read more

New Archos 5 and Archos 7 Players on Sale

The newly announced Archos 5 and Archos 7 series portable media players are on sale on Amazon.com. Read more

Samsung’s YP-S2 Launched In Korea

Samsung just launched their new YP-S2 MP3 players in Korea. The shiny looks of the audio ‘bulbs’ drawn all the attention they could get. If you don’t already know, the device includes features such as MP3, WMA, DNSe audio processing, OGG support and comes in five colors. The ‘pebble’ MP3 player has a $54 price for 1GB of storage space, and about $65 for the 2GB models. Read more

Bat MP3 Player Alongside Bat Headphones Out This Summer

The Bat-mania has embraced the world of portable audio players. Here is the Bat logo shaped MP3 Player which features 1GB of memory. The 7cm long Bat MP3 Player includes stereo headphones shaped as bat ears and it’s also compatible with Windows XP/Vista or Max OS X v10.4.8. The BatMP3 will be out in June/July 2008 for a price of about $80.
Read more

MP3 Player Mistaken For A Pistol

According to Daily Mail, a 28-years old man from Stoke-on-Trent, UK, was arrested after the police mistaken his MP3 Player for a gun. Darren Nixon was going back home from his workplace at a garage and he was listening to his 4GB Phillips MP3 Player when the police followed and stopped him.

The police was alerted by a woman who thought she saw him carrying a pistol. Mr. Nixon was interviewed, fingerprinted, taken a mugshot and a DNA sample. After the cops realized that they made a mistake, they dropped him home and said a quick sorry for any inconvenience.

We hope that we never have to see a sample of this ”nice” treatment of the police.

Source

Buy My Broken iPod

Old iPods can be sold on eBay but a new opportunity arose with BuyMyBrokeniPod, one web site that claims it purchases any type of iPod, either working or not, without asking any questions. They will even give you an estimate price before you send it to them. The only catch is that you have to pay for shipping and they will send you money back via PayPal or Check, your choice. This web site launched last year and they claim to have purchased over 1,000 iPods from happy customers and they even offer customer feedback as proof. One working iPod will average around $100 and a broken one will average around $30 (with prices varying from $2 to $216).

What is interesting is that they offer the same price as on eBay so it is much more comfortable to use BuyMyBrokeniPod. Broken iPods are usually broken down for parts or sold in bulk while working iPods will be fixed and re-sold. Quite a profitable business I believe.

Amazon Launches DRM-Free MP3 Download Service

People have been talking about Amazon launching an MP3 download store for a long time, especially because it was considered to be DRM free. We have seen the company going back and forth on this. They even considered a team up with Apple on iTunes but later decided to do it all alone. Then, Amazon came to the conclusion that they could not compete with iTunes so they decided not to do it. After that, another change of heart brought the company to launching the download side because they thought they can compete with their DRM-free feature. OK, we love that, it is great that they included DRM free mp3s for download but the selection available is not that great. This comes with the constant belief that DRM free music is bad, exhibited by many music labels and different bands. You must keep in mind that CDs are DRM-free so I can not really understand why this fear of DRM-free. On the other hand, Amazon does not seem to realize that the real problem with iTunes stands in their pricing. All songs cost $0.99 or $0.89 each, while we live in a world where one single individual can walk around with one iPOD of “just” 160 GB, all filled with music. It will be interesting to see whether Amazon will be able to compete or not, but it is highly unlikely.

Apple Confesses – Faulty iPod Touch Screens

After we got to see many complains concerning this problem, it seems that Apple has finally admitted that some early shipped units of their quite popular although just launched iPod Touch have problems with defective screens. The company claims that only a small number of units were affected and that the problem is “being remedied”. Nobody really knows what this remedy is and we still do not know any estimate figure of how many iPod Touch units were affected. Also, there are different reports connected to the iPhone. Some customers claim that there are also problems with their mobile phones’ touch screen. It seems like all the reports are linked to units launched after the much debated price cut. Apple did not mention this at all so far so we need to wait and see how this goes as well.

On the other hand, there is quite a talk going on about the iPod Touch. Few people are actually complaining and the similarities between the iPhone and the iPod touch are currently debated as well. It seems there are many applications that can run on both and that the display screen is better on the iPhone. On the other hand iPod Touch is not a mobile phone but the iPhone is also quite an interesting media player.

Mobal world phones has the best in cell phone rental! Starting in the UK, we have quickley become the leader in international cell phone deals. Ourr cell phone plans can offer you high quality at a low commitment. Sign online and learn how oursatellite phone rental will establish a sound relationship between you and the cellular industry.

Display Problems with iPod Touch

Apple always had problems in the past with launching new products. Their first generation line is almost always faulty. It seems that this is the case with the much talked about iPod Touch as well. Many users have reported different issues with the device’s LCD display. You can actually find a lot of images on the Internet showing various display problems, including Apple’s own forum with a picture of an iPod touch screen with black level image problems. We can notice poor black levels and the real problem is that the color bleeds into other colors. This makes a lot of images and movies look really bad.As we expected, Apple did not make any statement on the problem and we still do not know why the problems with the LCD displays appear. There is also no word on the scale of the problem and whether or not there are just remote cases or not. Unfortunately for Apple, there have also been reports about iPod nano display problems with LCD screen alignment. We are now waiting for an offical statement on the problems.

The First iPOD Nano Clone – Already?

I will never forget the first time I bought a Sony walkman some time ago. I was pretty happy, got quite a deal on it too, but then again, it was not Sony, it was Sunny or something. It looked exactly like the Sony walkman I wanted to purchase. This is why I am not at all surprised to see any clone to any digital product, especially if it comes from Chine. Now we have exactly the same thing with the first iPOD Nano clone. It definitely appeared very quickly but it was bound to happen sooner or later. We still do not have any extra details on this clone but it still looks very similar to the iPOD Nano being sold in USA.

Hints: 240 GB iPODs by 2009

Toshiba recently launched a prototype hard disk that uses special Discrete Track Recording (DTR) technology in order to create a 120 GB storage space system on one 1.8 inch platter. This is the first ever use of DTR. The entire technology is based on increasing areal density of PMR by 50%. Mass production of these hard disks should start in 2009.

Up until now all 1.8 inch hard disks were only able to get up to 160 GB. This was available through two 80 GB platters. With the above mentioned prototype we have a single platter that can hold 120 GB of information. A double platter system can make it possible for a 240 GB 1.8 inch hard disk to be created and this immediately makes us think of the possibility of having 240 GB iPODs.

Users are currently wondering if the entire system is efficient. The fact is that not much information is known about Toshiba’s breakthrough. Transferring 200 plus GB of music to an iPOD can be a very time consuming task. The new hard disk would need to be very fast in order to please users. On the other hand, any increase in iPod storage capacity is a plus because people keep wanting more from Apple. So far the company managed to deliver and the implementation of Toshiba’s DTR based hard disk could be the next big step in iPOD HDDs.

Apple Announced the upgrade of iPod Nano, iPod Classic and the Ipod Touch

Apple has announced today the upgrade of iPod Nano, iPod Classic and the new iPod Touch.

The iPod nano sports a 2-inch display 65% brighter than the older versions, QVGA, 320×240 pixels resolution, with a pixel density of 204 pixels per inch. This player is wider than the older version one and features a better UI, with Cover Flow. It has a battery lifetime of 24 hours of music playback and 5 hours of videos, has 3 games bundled, with the option to buy more from iTunes. It comes in two versions, a 4Gb silver one, priced at $149 and the rainbow-color one with 8GB of memory, priced at $199. It should be available in stores starting this weekend.

The new iPod Classic comes in 80Gb and 160Gb versions, also feature a new UI with Cover Flow and have longer battery lifetimes. The $249 80Gb one can playback music for 40 hours and videos for 6 hours, while the 160Gb one, priced at $349 will play 40 hours of music and 7 hours of videos. Also, both the 80Gb and 160Gb Ipod Classic should be available starting the weekend.

iPhone Touch has a 3.5-inch widescreen display, just as the iPhone, features WiFi, slide-to-unlock and the multi-touch interface. This is thinner than the iPhone, with only 8 millimeters, has a battery lifetime of 22 hours of music and 5 hours of videos, but won’t be available as soon as the others. It will be available in an 8Gb version, for $299 and a 16Gb one for $399.

iAudio U5 MP3 Player Announced

Cowon had a lot of success with the launch of the 16GB Cowon iAudio 7 but that did not stop them. The company just launched the soon to come iAudio U5 MP3 player. It is thought to be a flash player that could replace the Cowon iAudio X5. We have here a device that comes with a 1.8 inch TFT LCD display at 65k colors with a 128 X 160 pixel resolution. It will come in 8Gb, 4 GB and 2 GB storage versions and should support a lot of audio formats from MP3 to WMA. Talking about battery life, Cowon announced that the iAudio U5 comes with a battery that will be capable of 20 hours of audio playback. Since consumers want more than MP3, the player will also have an included FM tuner and a microphone for audio recording. Price and availability remain a mistery but it is expected soon!

Next Page »