This post continues my Microsoft Zune review, courtesy of the Matchstick and Chatthreads viral marketing campaign. The first part of my review dealt with the installation process and Zune jukebox software. This installment will finish up the software review. Previous posts in this series can be found at:

• Jons Zune Review Part 1
• iTunes to Zune Playlist Converter

Oh, and if you’re reading this and feel so inclined, give the good people at Chatthreads something to do by clicking on the image below and submitting your comments about the Zune.

The Software (Continued)

The Device View

Status

This simple screen shows the current status of your Zune device, and allows you to control the sync operation. There’s really nothing else to say about it, except that just about everything on the page is a link that takes you to a more in depth analysis of that aspect of the operation.
When installing, I chose to manually sync items to my Zune, simply because I have well over 8GB of music that I care to listen to. I started by dragging an album from the artists view in the music section down to the handy-dandy Zune icon. The entire album took about a minute to add. The main device page shows what is currently syncing to the device, what you’ve recently added to the device, and the completion percentage of the operation.

Every time that you drag some object (be it an album, a playlist, or a video, etc) to the device, a record called a sync group is created. These groups can be viewed in the device settings menu within the jukebox software, and allow you to easily see what you’ve added to the device, when you added it, and remove the entire group with a single button click. As you can see, I’ve added a few albums and a playlist to my device.

From this page, you can also manually create a sync group, which is similar to creating an autoplaylist that syncs directly to your Zune. Again, it would be nice if this feature were a little more developed, but for something simple like adding a bunch of Classic Rock tracks to my device, it’s more than adequate.

The main failing point of sync groups is also one of the bigger failing points of the autoplaylist feature. There is no option when creating either to limit the list by size. Meanwhile I have an 8GB Zune, and well over 60GB of music in my library, which makes adding any playlist to the Zune a guessing game. Nowhere in the software is the size of a playlist shown, until you try and put a list that is too big onto the Zune, at which point it complains and refuses to sync until you shave down the size of the list. A nice addition would be emulating iTunes, where the software syncs as much of the selected playlist as possible, and then tells the user which songs didn’t fit.

Even more exasperating is that the software gives the option to automatically re-encode audio files that are over a certain bit rate threshold to a lower bit rate when syncing to the Zune. This is a fantastic feature, as it allowed me to put roughly 150% more songs on the device for a small loss in quality. Again however, nowhere in the software does it list the size of the playlist before and after the conversion, making filling the Zune an even bigger game of chance when this feature is turned on.

Music, Playlists, Videos, Pictures, and Podcasts

Each of these sections acts exactly as its counterpart in the collection view of the software, with few exceptions. These are obvious things, like not being able to create a new playlist directly on the device in the playlists view.

Friends

To be honest, I haven’t quite figured out this part of the software yet. Jake and I, while reviewing on our own, haven’t had much time to use the two devices together. I would imagine that this section of the view will come alive once we do.

The Social View

The social view in the Zune jukebox software provides a direct link to the Zune Social from inside the software. It contains three sub views – friends, me, and inbox. The friends tab is the default, and shows a listing of all your registered friends. In this case, since my Zune id is linked to my Xbox Live id, it shows my friends from Xbox Live, only one of whom (Jake aka ev98) actually owns a Zune.

Friends

Clicking on the Zune tag of one of your friends takes you to an in-software summary of their Zune use. It shows their Zune card, all of the songs that they’ve recently listened to, and a list of their friends. Some of the songs in the listing are tagged with a button that says more info that takes you to a webpage containing album and artist details for that song. Below, you can see Jake’s Zune page and all the Slanty-Haired music that he listens to:

These online pages are where the Zune Social really excels. They remind me of the golden days of the Yahoo Launchcast service, a customizable online radio that played songs based on your ratings of album, artist, and genre. It had a huge index of songs, and much like the Zune Social, offered artist and album info for most every available song.

A typical album page on the Zune Social contains a large cover art picture, a listing of the songs on that album, complete with playable samples and the option to purchase either individual songs or the entire album, and a listing of other albums by that artist. The page also has a place for a professional album review, and a number of listener views, and highlights a Zune user who is the top listener to that particular artist. Each of these page elements hotlinks to another page of the site, giving it a Wikipedia-like quality, that allows an unsuspecting user to simply browse for hours on end.

Similar pages, although without option to purchase, can be accessed from directly in player by clicking on the artist name instead of the more info button. These in-player versions of the pages are separated into categories that give artist information (including top-played songs, every album ever released, and a listing of your friends who listen to the artist), a full length biography complete with pictures, a listing of all Zune users who listen to the artist, and a list of all related artists in the Zune Social library. All of this make the service a prime tool for discovering great new music, which really, is what music should be all about.

Here you can see the Zune Page for Eminem

The Bio page for Eminem

And Finally, a list of artists related to Eminem. This feature makes finding new music that you might like very easy

Me

This page in the software is very similar to a friend’s page, simply showing your Zune card, your plays, and a listing of your friends. Following the hotlink from the page to the Zune.net profile website allows you to customize your Zune card, and post it to Facebook as an application.

Customizing the appearance of the Zune card was a simple matter, although for some reason, the word ‘Zune’ is not allowed to appear in your status message – its banned like a swear word. So instead of ‘is reviewing the Zune,’ I had to settle for the status message ‘is reviewing the Zoon.’ Below, you can see my Zune page. Note the lack of Slanty-haired four-pieces in comparison to Jake’s page.

Inbox

Another aspect of the social that I haven’t quite figured out yet – this appears to be some sort of in-service email client. I’ll write about it later on once I’ve used it a little bit more.

The Disc View

As expected, shows the disc currently in the CD-Rom drive of your computer. In my case, it happens to be Guns ‘n Roses Appetite for Destruction. The view gives album art, a list of songs, and the option to import them into your library. The player can rip CDs in WMA CBR, WMA VBR, WMA Lossless, or MP3.

Outro

That concludes Part 2 of my Microsoft Zune Review. To recap, this part concluded the Zune Jukebox Software portion of the review, and touched ever so lightly on the Zune Social.

Stay tuned for my review of the Zune hardware device, as well as my impressions regarding the Zune Social.

Thanks for Reading,

Jon

Introduction:

Regular readers of this weblog will already know that some time ago, Jake was contacted by the Matchstick marketing company and asked to review a Microsoft Zune, seeing as he’s all important and stuff on the internets. He received his device and has since written three parts of his overall review, available here, here and here.

As part of the marketing offer, Jake was also given the opportunity to refer a friend into the program. I submitted an application, and received my review package a couple weeks ago. What follows here is the first part of my Microsoft Zune review, courtesy of Matchstick and Chatthreads.

Unpacking

The Zune arrived in a beautiful manila envelope, complete with super-lucky-deluxe-bubble-wrap on the inside that contained the slim, trendy looking box and some Matchstick documentation. The Zune box itself is pretty looking, a sure eye-catcher when placed beside an iPod box.

Oddly enough however, the sticker on the bottom of the box read “For Distribution in US only. Security Device Enclosed.” This immediately started me wondering – if this is a review program for a Canadian launch, shouldn’t I be reviewing the Canadian version of the product in question? Perhaps the two products are one and the same, but even so, a mistake like this could serve to alienate touchy Canadian consumers.

The securely packed Zune popped out of its box easily enough, but although the plastic wrapping on the device claimed that pressing the play button would turn it on, the Zune appeared to have been shipped without charge.

Continuing to unpack the box, I noticed the words “Welcome to the Social” emblazoned across the inside. Microsoft seems to be attacking the iPod from the social network community angle, which admittedly, is something that the iPod is lacking. We’ll see how that measures up later on.

The well designed ‘Start’ pamphlet inside instructed me to hit up the setup page to download the Zune jukebox software. I noticed that the other side of the pamphlet was written in Spanish, instead of the French that we are accustomed to seeing here in Canada. It’s a small detail, but again, it seems odd to court early-adopting Canadians with such obviously American packaging instead of taking the time and effort to ship a truly Canadian-branded product.

The Software

Installing

I went to the download page to get the Zune jukebox software and sign up for the Zune Social. If the social is anywhere near as engaging as the Xbox Live service, I could easily imagine it as a true iPod killing feature.

Unfortunately, upon arriving at the page and attempting to register for the service, I received an error message telling me that the Zune Social is ‘Not Available in Your Region. But please continue to check back with us in case we just so happen to decide to get our shit together for our Canadian Launch that is coming up on June 13^th… Oh wait, that was one-and-a-half months ago. Huh.’ Guess we’re not killing any iPods today, folks.

Apparently Canada has been ip-banned from this service

Later on in the day, I complained about this error to Jake (who also happens to be my roommate). He claimed that he had no trouble whatsoever signing into the Social, but that instead of attempting to register, he simply signed in with his Windows Live account that was linked to his Xbox Live profile. Going back to the registration page, I tried this workaround, and was immediately granted entrance. Check me out here.

Now in case I haven’t said it enough times already, I’d just like to re-hash my frustrations with the Zune program – not an hour after opening the envelope, and before even trying out the device. The Canadian launch of this product appears to have been severely fumbled. The device I received was marked for US sale only, the device documentation was in English and Spanish, and the Zune Social IP-bans registration for Canadian citizens unless you already have a Windows Live account that may or may not have to be linked with an Xbox Live profile. Here’s to hoping that the jukebox software and the device itself are in better shape than the launch effort.

The Collection View

The Software is Pink

The install process went smoothly, and I was soon looking at the main window of the Zune jukebox. It’s a pretty, though unconventional user interface. Since I’m not all that comfortable with my overwhelming masculinity, I quickly found an option to change the default pink background to a trendy and edgy greenish one complete with paint splatters and blades or something called Everglade.

I told the software to monitor my music folder, which at last count contains roughly 8500 pieces of media. Initial import of that folder took roughly 10 minutes, which I consider more than reasonable for the size of the operation.

Plugging the Zune into the computer emitted no immediate response of any kind, but there was an ultra-faint charging symbol displayed on the screen of the device. Unfortunately, it seems that neither my machine nor the Zune jukebox software will recognize the device during this initial charging phase. In that case, I guess we’ll begin by reviewing the jukebox software.

The Main UI

Once the import was complete, I started playing a song and noted that it sounded pretty good, even though there is no equalizer feature within sight. While unconventional, the user interface is interesting. The standard viewport on start up looks like this (honestly, I have no idea how that Jewel album got in there. Seriously guys):

Jewel? Not in MY library!

The first thing we notice here are the two view selectors. In the upper left corner, we find music, playlists, videos, pictures, and podcasts. The default is music, which has three additional view categories to choose from, namely artists, genres, and songs. It is important to note that all are in lower case letters, in case you forgot that the boys down in Redmond are in fact, trendy and cool.

The default view is artists, which gives a handy listing of all artists, all albums (complete with cover art), and all songs in the three columns. The Genres category yields a listing of the genres in your library, albums by artist, and all songs. Songs gives a listing similar to iTunes that includes the title, artist, album, and genre of each song in your collection. According to that view, there is a song in my music collection entitled “!!!!!!!” Allegedly it’s by the Roots. Huh. The things you learn.

Anyway, in any of these views, clicking on some entry in one of the columns brings up all the associated tracks in the other columns, which is pretty cool and very straightforward. Overall, the three views give a wealth of great ways to organize and find your music.

Unfortunately, perhaps my favourite and most used feature in iTunes, the five-star rating system, seems to be mysteriously absent from the Zune player. Instead, it gives me a useless yet trendy heart, no heart, or broken heart ratings system that was surely conceived by a 5-year old on a bad sugar trip. The lack of resolution provided by this rating system is sure to cause me headaches.

Aside - This just in, after a solid 30-minute charge time, the Zune came alive and connected itself to the computer. It seems that I need new firmware, the description for which is (this time) actually repeated in French. The update restarts the Zune and takes all of 3 minutes to complete. /Aside

Playlists

Switching over to the playlists view, I am informed that I do not have any playlists. This surprises me, as I know for a fact that there are quite a few m3u files in the music folder that the software is monitoring – admittedly, I don’t use m3u’s, as I long ago surrendered myself to the double-edged sword that is iTunes and stopped manually managing my music - but I do know that they are there, and wonder why they weren’t imported as playlists.

In any case, I am faced with two types of playlists, which seem to be static and automatic. The first works as would be expected. You can name the playlist and then drag and drop items from the music view into it with ease. Once inside the list, items can be reordered at will.

Autoplaylists are a little different. They are akin to the smart playlist feature of iTunes, if by akin we really mean ‘gimped to all hell and back.’ Unlike iTunes, which allows you to select multiple different rules for most any piece of metadata related to a song and separate the rules by either an AND or an OR statement, Zune allows you to select only from album artist, rating, genre, date added, year published, composer, and song plays. Furthermore, all the relations that you enter are linked by an invisible ‘AND’ statement, meaning that the rules quickly become limited in scope.

Yeah, it works, but it could definetly be better

For instance, one could easily select all songs recorded by the Eagles, or all songs in the genre Rap, but it would be impossible to select all songs by the Eagles as well as all Rap songs, because the Eagles never recorded a rap song. That list would be empty and useless.

As an iTunes user, their smart playlist feature continually frustrated and annoyed me with its silly limitations, but the Zune version of the feature is far and away worse. I have a huge music collection that spans five decades and most every conceivable genre. In order to organize and find great songs in that proverbial haystack, I have become anal-retentive about ensuring that my meta-data is present and correct, and use smart playlists and star ratings indispensably. The fact that both a decent smart playlist system and any kind of granular ratings system are lacking from the Zune software are a huge turn off to me.

When testing other jukebox solutions that lack smart playlists, I have often grabbed the contents of one of my custom lists from iTunes and dragged them into a static playlist on the other player in order to at least have a list of songs that I feel like listening to while testing. Unfortunately, there is no drag and drop feature to the Zune player, nor is there an ‘import from software x’ feature, which could have been easily added, since iTunes can export its library as an xml file.

Aside – for anybody interested, I worked around this problem in true nerd fashion by hacking together a quick VB app that reads an xml file exported from iTunes and converts it to Zune-compatible zpl format (which is just a variant of the smil markup language). This program has allowed me to easily export all of my playlists from iTunes to the Zune player. If there is enough interest, I’ll put the app up for download. /Aside

These are small features that, while not immediately necessary, help to ease the transition between players, which is important if you’re trying to say, capture market share from a company that currently has over 80% of the worldwide player install base and the vast majority of mindshare amongst the general public. I feel that at this point, even if the Zune player had a better rating feature, I’d think twice about switching due to the simple fact that I’d have to wade through and re-rate over 8000 songs. That’s a lot of work and one huge deterrent.

Granted, if you’re just starting in the mp3 player field, have a music collection with less than 1000 songs, or aren`t as OCD about organizing your library, these missing features may not be a big deal. Perhaps I’m the outlying case here.

Videos

On install, I didn’t have any videos in my collection. Now as you may have gathered from reading Jakes weblog, our house is slightly different than most in the way that we manage our media. We keep a central server in our living room that holds all television and movie content in a central place. Being as we’re all movie lovers, we’ve ripped quite a few DVDs to that box for easy organization and viewing on the television, as well as network access from our other machines. It’s just the premiere way to share media among the members of a household, and prevents discs from being lost or damaged.

I decided to throw the Zune player a loop and try to add a folder full of video files from across the network, just to see how it would respond. After stalling for a minute or so, it started adding the files to the listing. Unfortunately, (and after some reading) I discovered that the Zune software only supports files encoded in WMV, MPEG4, and H.264 formats. As the vast majority of my content is encoded in XviD format, only a few were successfully imported. Watching local and network content in the player is easy and looks great, although the video player lacks a full-screen option.

It should be noted that there does not seem to be any option to add videos to playlists, or to make a separate type of playlist just for videos. However, if you select multiple video files and edit their information, you can assign them a TV Series tag, and enter a name and season number for that series. Then, when viewing videos by TV, they can be sorted into series.

Pictures

Adding pictures to the jukebox software is as simple as adding folders for the software to monitor. It automatically arranges them by the folder that they were found in, allowing you to keep your family vacation pictures and naughty adult pictures separate from one another.

Clicking on any picture in the collection starts a slideshow of all pictures in that folder. You can access and change your currently playing song from within the slideshow, although you are limited to the playlist or album that you are currently listening to. This is a really slick feature that far outpaces any comparable picture support in iTunes.

Podcasts

On import, the Zune software recognized all of the podcasts that I had downloaded from iTunes and sorted them into a separate section of the UI. They are arranged by Podcast title, and can be browsed easily, although you cannot put podcast files into playlists. On import, the software did not detect the URLs of any of my podcasts, although that is to be expected. The software does give the option to assign a URL to a podcast, allowing you to continue your subscription and pull up to date information from their website directly into the player. Overall, the podcast support seems to be very full-featured and quite a bit more advanced than that of iTunes.

Now Playing

Clicking the little bar-graph thing in the bottom right hand of the main window does not (as I had hoped) launch an equalizer, but rather, a now playing window that, while an interesting departure from the white and grey of iTunes, is almost as much of an eyesore as the myspace page of a 13 year old girl.

Help! My eyes ran away!

We can see my album covers randomly arranged in the background, with my currently playing song, playlist, and playback controls hovering above. I guess that this is the Zune’s answer to Coverflow. It’s awfully pretty, but probably not something that I would keep open on my display, strictly due to distraction value.

Search

This is a seriously cool and really easy to use feature of the jukebox software. If you select any list of song information within the interface and start typing, the software pops up a search box and automatically starts searching for the phrase that you’ve typed.

Go out and buy some Matt Good albums right now!

The search is fast and responsive, and not only finds the exact thing that you are looking for, but other possible hits around it that are related by some meta-data to the item in question.

Find Album Info

By far the best feature ever put into jukebox software. While in the artists view of the music section of the software, right-clicking on an album cover that is missing artwork and selecting ‘Find Album Info’ from the context menu launches a search for the missing album art and meta-tag information. The search almost always returns the requested album as the first hit, automatically replaces the artwork, and updates all of your existing meta-data with correct values.

Ah, One of the only good things to come out of the 80`s

The only issues that I encountered with the feature occurred when trying to match up double albums – the database that the software reads from seems to treat double albums as two separate entities instead of one whole record. Otherwise however, this feature is incredible and something that iTunes could take a cue from.

Outro

Well, that concludes Part 1 of my Microsoft Zune review. To recap, this part included the unpacking and install process, as well as the Collection view of the Zune jukebox software. This view is analogous to the whole of iTunes feature set, and almost as good.

Overall, my first impressions of the Zune software are that it is very well written, and would be a serious contender to iTunes if not for a few pesky missing features such as a decent ratings system and improved smart playlists. Unfortunately, I also feel that the Canadian launch of the product was somewhat bungled, and could have been better handled.

Stay tuned for upcoming parts of my review, including the device, social, and disc portions of the jukebox software, as well as a review of the device itself.

Thanks for reading,

Jon

Update by Jake: This post was giving Internet Explorer a case of the bricks. I’ve removed some of the extraneous tags to make things display properly.

This post continues the Zune review series. I received the device for free as part of a Matchstick promotion. My goal is to provide a technically engaging and impartial review for people interested in MP3 players. Other posts include

• Marketing in action: Matchstick sends out a Zune
• ChatThreads follows up on the Zune feedback sweepstakes

From futility to mass-market?

One thing that always struck me about the Zune is how futile the first Redmond effort seemed: when it launched in the United States (and US only), the iPod was definitely entrenched and all the reviews basically said the same things. Microsoft didn’t build the player - they simply tweaked a Toshiba Gigabeat and ran with it. The software at the time was a pretty skin on Windows Media Player that didn’t use the same library.

From my initial impressions, much of that has changed. The Zune software, in its 2.5th iteration, still has a very unique interface that might appeal to indie kids - but it’s snappy and stands out on the desktop. The hardware feels well-built and has wireless synchronization: a feature Apple can’t yet match.

Hardware first impressions

Zune arrives in compact, Apple-style packaging, although the encased plastic skin is hard to remove and caused immediate smudging of the screen. Removing the device from its container wasn’t as obvious as the iPod Touch removal process. The back, metal enclosure has a nice tactile feel and should resist scratching: this solves a huge problem with the iPod classic models that causes resale value to plummet.

The device didn’t have any battery charge by default. After plugging it into the PC, a very faint battery indicator appeared - although I thought a USB port had failed since the device didn’t appear to respond right away. Switching to a different USB port fired up my hard disk, and the IDE activity LED told me that a device was being connected. The screen displayed on zero charge is so dim that I had to get confirmation from a friend that the Zune was actually showing something.

While I didn’t get an accurate time estimate on the total charge time, it took less than an hour for the Zune to become active. I’d peg the MP3 player as fully charged (from zero to 100%) after four to five hours.

While the Zune is attached to the computer, all controls are inaccessible and the device simply displays “connected”. Synchronization activity is displayed with a slightly inaccurate percentage indicator, which looks nice but seems to always stall at 84%-85% completion when new songs are copied to the unit.

Using the “squircle”, a touch-sensitive control pad, is intuitive and works as expected. You can either touch (swipe) or click up, down, left or right on its surface. In playback mode, these directions perform the usual actions required from a portable music player (volume up, volume down, previous track and next track). Other screens use the directions to navigate left, right, up and down. Clicking the centre of the pad activates the currently selected item.

The “back” and “play/pause” buttons feel firm and make a distinctive click when pressed. It’s definitely possible to use the device while it’s still in a pocket, although users may want to disable touch sensitivity if this is the primary means of use.

On the device, anyone familiar with the Xbox Live “twist” user interface will be pleasantly surprised.

Categories, such as albums, artists and playlists are displayed across the top of the screen; items within that category can be scrolled up and down. The album browser displays a thumbnail of the associated image, and expand to two lines when highlighted, much like the active item in the “My Games” screen above.

(I don’t know how Avril got on there, or even why her pop-punk drivel is in my library. It’s definitely time to rate some of my music so this travesty can never occur again.)

The build quality of the device is excellent. Its solid construction and easy “gripability” provides a confident feel - I’m not concerned about dropping the Zune on the sidewalk or having it slip away from my grasp, unlike the iPod touch.

Audio quality on the unit itself is good, although the stock headphones leave quality to be left on the table. Using the premium headphones included with my review kit was a much better listening experience - they’re comparable to my favourite pair of Sony MDR-EX61 in-ear buds for audio range. The premium headphones also have magnetic backings so that they’re less likely to tangle in a pocket.

Compared to the BlackBerry 8320 that I’ve been using for basic MP3 listening on the bus, the Zune has a richer, more full bass sound on the same audio files. It’s definitely noticeable when switching from one device to another. This may be equalizer-correctable in the BlackBerry OS, but the software upgrade to OS 4.5 isn’t available on a wide scale yet. For now, my verdict is that the default Zune settings are quite good for standard music listeners.

More hardware details - such as FM radio support, podcasts and video playback will be detailed as I explore those features over the next few weeks. Here’s what’s ahead:

What’s impressed:

• Video playback appears to be smooth and looks great, even on the small screen.
• Support for FM radio is a unique feature that’s nice to have out of the box.
• The wireless synchronization works like expected without complaint.

What’s failed it:

• Slow performance when browsing the Pictures menu.
• Inconsistency in scrolling some menus: the wrap-around feature doesn’t work by touch.
• Overshooting artists and some other menu items by touch - reversing direction is not immediate.

Software first impressions

I’d already had the latest version of the Zune software installed, so there was no installation experience to speak of. To replicate the experience, I tried downloading and deploying it to a new Windows XP virtual machine - the process was fairly easy, barring the fact that running Windows Update concurrently caused the installer to fail. Finishing all the critical updates and rebooting the VM solved that issue, and the software installed without complaint. It’s hard to fault anyone but myself for that scenario.

I have all my music stored on a remote server, which isn’t a typical home user configuration but provides the most convenient way for my laptop and desktop to both use the same pool of media. Windows Media Player takes a long time to seek for the files, even over a gigabit LAN - and refuses to share content to my Xbox 360 without a series of long, painful permission changes.

Running the same process with the Zune software started badly. Windows Vista takes an inordinately long time (compared to Windows 2000, XP or any non-Windows OS) to enumerate all computers on the same workgroup. Simply expanding the Network icon started the hard drive churning - I switched over to My Computer,  mapped a network drive with the direct UNC path to my files, and switched back to the Zune software before the process finished.

After selecting the “M” network drive, the import was quick and displayed albums immediately. Unlike Windows Media Player, the background process appears to have increased priority, letting users get started listening to their music right away. This snappiness is an excellent change and bests every other audio player but Winamp.

Ratings in the Zune software are either nothing, a complete heart for “like”, or broken heart for “don’t like”. During the import process, the library seemed to import some metadata for these files from Windows Media Player at the equivalence of five stars for the “like” rating. Without the granularity of a standard 1-5 (plus zero for unrated) rating system, it’s difficult to customize playlists appropriately.

More software features and functionality will be detailed in an upcoming review, since the software is what really makes the device shine. Here’s a sneak peek:

What’s impressed:

• The find album info feature is accurate, consistently good and fixes ID3 tags without complaint.
• Interface effects are well-designed.
• When it comes to device software updates, the process is seamless:

What’s failed it:

• No mini-player mode, unlike iTunes or Windows Media Player 11’s toolbar. The equivalent is the Now Playing mode, which doesn’t offer album or artist sorting.
• Rating the current track involves switching to the “now playing” view. The collection also lacks a “go to the currently playing” command - Ctrl+L is one of my most-used iTunes shortcuts.
• Returning to a default view once you’ve filtered a search involves clicking from “artists” to “genres”, then back again. There’s no easy way to start at the default Collection screen again.

Social community first impressions

A large part of the Zune experience involves “the social”, which is a Windows Live ID-based system that assigns you a Flash-based card. The card displays a custom picture, background image, and recently played artists, and it can be embedded on other social networking profiles such as Facebook:

Unfortunately, the Facebook application is not always at its best:

When I clicked Sign In from the Zune software, it pleasantly surprised by displaying a list of all Windows Live Messenger accounts saved on the computer - a neat integration capability that you’d probably expect to see on a Mac. After providing the account password, I was prompted to accept updated terms of use through a browser, completely removing the immersive user interface experience. As per usual with Microsoft, the page redirected about four times and then attached to a Windows Live ID sign-in, which required the password yet again.

The next screen asked for some more personal information, most of which was already filled in the fields. A curious requirement was the Web site’s insistence on receiving a birthdate during signup. The information should already be present in my Windows Live ID account, but I’d have a hard time seeing why they’d need this detail: even complying with COPPA, they’d have known that detail when I initially attached my Xbox Live account to the Live ID. Overall, the signup seemed simpler than a comparable Apple/iTunes account, since Windows Live already had most of my information.

The final stage in the process launched the Zune software (even from Firefox) and prompted:

Did you know…?

Now that you have a Zune account, you can:

Join the Social, a beta online community where you can discover new music, share music with friends, and customize your Zune Card with your personal pictures and favorite songs.

Buy music and music videos and download free video and audio podcasts at Zune Marketplace.

Manage your account, configure privacy settings, and buy Microsoft Points online at Zune.net.

I was slightly offput to hear that the community features were still in beta, considering the software has already been through three major releases. Then again, the term “beta” these days seems to have been redefined to mean “lacks official support”.

Activating the Social component for the first time, my account was activated with this garish, zebra striped card. It would have been nice if Zune would have imported my avatar from Xbox Live’s selection, since the zune.net default selection of profile pictures and backgrounds leaves something to be desired.

Notice those non-striped avatars at the bottom? Along with my Xbox Gamertag list, I seem to have picked up some “friends” who are definitely not the same people I know from Xbox Live. My initial assumption was that they must have been default Microsoft-assigned accounts, but wasn’t sure if they were alter aliases of Xbox Live friends. I ended up having to look at each of the new profiles to find out why I had friendship foisted upon me.

Looking at “DJ Ms E”’s profile page on zune.net, all was explained:

This member of the Social is a Zune DJ. They’re automatically added to new members’ friends lists to get them started, and don’t count against your 100-friend limit.

It would have been nice to get more of a notification of who these additional friends were. Perhaps a badge or custom icon next to their profile image would have been a better cue than simply dropping them beside my existing Xbox Live friends. There’s also no way to remove these people from within the Zune interface - all remove requests are handled through the zune.net website.

It’s also interesting that this was the first time I’d heard about the 100 friend limit, and the limit includes Xbox Live friends. For people with distinctly different tastes in music and online gaming companions, I could see social butterflies easily running into problems here.

What’s impressed:

• The signup process is much less painful than I’d expected.
• Integration with Facebook is a nice touch.
• The Zune card appears to give badges or awards for listening to various types of music. Continuing along the lines of achievements is addictive and awesome!

What’s failed it:

• The Facebook application has occasional issues when clicking on the left-panel link.
• Horrible selection of backgrounds and avatars.
• Who are these people on my friends list, and why wasn’t I told about this earlier? And why can’t I remove them from within the application?

More impressions: marketplace, device synchronization and performance

What’s next for the Zune? I’m going to publish an in-depth look at the marketplace, syncing music and videos, and how well the software performs. Here’s a summary of what’s ahead:

• Marketplace: Not entirely there yet. Unknown error messages and content purchases just don’t work well. If content isn’t available in Canada, don’t display it!
• Music synchronization: Simplistic and easy - perhaps even too dumbed down. There’s no apparent way to fill the device with content, and autoplaylists are a shadow of Smart Playlist capabilities in iTunes.
• Performance: It’s a memory hog, but it’s only frozen once; all my data was saved out properly to boot. Zune beats iTunes hands down in this matter.

Be sure to check back soon for more impressions and thoughts - and maybe some more technical content!

This post continues the Zune review series. I received the device for free as part of a Matchstick promotion. My goal is to provide a technically engaging and impartial review for people interested in MP3 players. Other posts include

• Marketing in action: Matchstick sends out a Zune
• Zune hardware, community and software first impressions

After contacting the ChatThreads team regarding their contest sweepstakes regulations, I received a response from Walter J. Carl, who is the ChatThreads founder and Chief Research Officer. Walter was very responsive and explained why the default regulations restrict Canadian residents: the company runs a number of concurrent programs, but when users sign in with an emailed link or conversation ID, the correct terms of use appear - they appear to be tied to a session ID or cookie based on the campaign.

From Walter’s email:

Regarding the sweepstakes/contests… We run a number of different Contests and Sweepstakes depending on the program in which people are participating. The page you went to doesn’t have the specific rules for the Zune program (specific rules are contained when a person is in a survey for a particular program). I can see how this would be confusing so we’ve added a message to that effect on the page that you found to help clarify this issue. The people you talk to can see the full Official Rules when they log in to tell us about the conversation. Please note that those in Quebec and/or those under 18 are not eligible to participate in the Contests but they can have us donate to charity as an alternative.

If you’d like to participate in the draw, keep in mind that the correct contest rules (I’ve mirrored them here as they appeared on July 4, 2008) require all entries to be submitted by 11:59pm this evening! (Update: The correct close date of the contest is August 4, 2008.) Feel free to use my conversation ID: go over to the ChatThreads site and enter 102 986 0195.

Walter also gave his opinions on disclosure, which I thought I’d share as it’s in line with my own thoughts. I also appreciate his reassurance that they don’t spam people:

By the way, I also read your larger blog post: I appreciated your comment about the importance of disclosure in programs, which is consistent with the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s ethical standards. I just did an interview on a National Public Radio news show this morning about this and other related topics to word of mouth marketing. Regarding e-mail addresses of the people you invite… We don’t send their email address to Matchstick or Microsoft, etc. (you can see our privacy policy for details) so that people feel comfortable providing their honest feedback. The conversation cards can also be handed out as well, or you can send the email link from your own email program. Please let us know if there’s a way we can make this more clear.

Another feature of the ChatThreads program is a “web tag” - likely a Javascript snippet - that you can embed in posts, so that they can track visitors to sites and try to build a graph of conversations. I’ve decided to try inserting it in this post to see if it affects anything from my end. I’m not too concerned from a privacy standpoint because there are at least two other such tags on my site for statistics, and you can use NoScript or disable JavaScript to block such a tag. (I don’t link the URL here because Google might index spam referrers, but if you hit up the “webalizer” directory you can see everything I serve.)

More details on my experiences with the Zune itself are coming shortly - expect to see a first impressions review at some point this weekend!

Update: Here’s the Web tag - it’s not JavaScript like I’d assumed, but a link. This is actually a better solution for disclosure and I’m impressed that ChatThreads is this upfront with a visual representation.

Update 2: The close date of the contest is August 4, 2008, and not July 4th. More time to get your entries in!

While I may not go as in-depth as Anand might or post with the furious pace common to Gizmodo authors, I enjoy reviewing new technology purchases from a few different perspectives. As a Computer Science student, tech is interesting because it’s a practical application of concepts such as linked lists and binary trees and software architecture - and how most of those concepts get thrown out the window in order to ship on time.

From a business perspective, having firsthand experience with some of the same devices our clients use is helpful from a support angle. It also determines whether we’ll recommend them to end users. I’ve had great experiences with Asus mainboards, and every system I quote includes one - the (potentially) reduced cost of going with something else is not worth the extra aggravation it causes.

And then there’s the geek who talks about RAID-5 controllers just because they’re awesome.

Free Zune, And It’s Not A Pyramid Scam?

SmartCanucks is a regular visit from my feed reader, and they’d posted an article about qualifying for a free MP3 player. Unlike most “free stuff” contests and promotional offers online, everything from SmartCanucks will be applicable to Canadians in some form. Further intrigue ensued when commenters suggested it wasn’t the traditional $20 low-end Shuffle device, but a Microsoft Zune player.

I’d heard about the Zune launching in Canada recently and had played around with one in March for a few minutes, during at an Infusion Angels conference in the Accelerator Centre. It seemed to have a nice UI, but it’s hard to judge when you’re already being inundated with the distinctly Microsoft flavour of the building and presenter. (The XNA conference was very entertaining, for the record, and very encouraging for third party developers.)

After applying through the online survey, I received a call a few days later from Matchstick asking some followup questions. Most of them were repeated from the original survey, but I expect the representative was checking for consistency; one of the biggest problems in obtaining statistics is making sure the interviewees don’t contradict themselves. Some other questions were intended to get a baseline for my pre-existing opinions about Microsoft, and I was also asked if I’d review the product on my site or other social networking connections.

When the question period was finished, I was told that I qualified to receive an 8GB Zune package and that I’d get the option to send one to a friend or recommend another user.

Since I just received the device on the 24th, the next few weeks will be interesting as I properly put the Zune through its paces and try the wireless functionality, as well as provide some technical details on the software. To give it a fair shake, I’ll use it in real-life situations before making a judgement call. I’ll be reviewing the hardware, software and online social service in separate articles over the next month or so, giving people the chance to add their own comments.

Above is the only obligatory image of the unit. There are already dozens of “unboxing” posts online - if you’re into that sort of thing, check out these other sites:

• iamjay.ca: Unboxing the Zune
• random process: A Zune from Matchstick
• Bioscisweetie’s Insights: Meet My 8GB Zune! (Part 1)

The Marketing Effort

For now, it’s probably worthwhile to talk about how the Matchstick (and ChatThreads) process is tinged with just enough marketing effort.

Let’s get one thing straight, though: a large number of people participating in this type of marketing effort go to great lengths to whinge on a certain subject. Namely, is accepting merchandise as part of a promotion ethical? There are dozens of posts from Matchstick’s Nokia 6682 efforts to this effect, with the gamut of predictable, tired reactions ranging from “I got an awesome phone for free!” to “these spammers killed my dog.”

I’m sick of this debate. Disclosing where you got the product is a significant part of the review process, and established press organizations have done this for years. If you don’t disclose your connections, you’re an astroturfer - in other words, the same as the company behind AllIWantForXmasIsAPSP.

Furthermore, being solicited for marketing campaigns is part of maintaining a reasonably popular site. How many press releases do you think Engadget receives daily? I actively sought out this opportunity, so I can’t make the same claim - but those who can’t seem to work out the “ignore” function in their email client or respond with a polite “no” need to seriously reconsider operating a website.

For this promotion, Matchstick has partnered with a company in the States called ChatThreads. Their purpose is to collect word of mouth responses and correlate them with online activity, and they deliver a set of cards as well as seek feedback though their website. Each card has a Conversation ID that links the original campaign, authorized end user, and the collected personal information.

Before receiving the Zune, ChatThreads sent an email asking me to sign up for their site, containing some interesting requests:

As part of your participation you will be sharing your feedback and conversations about Zuneâ„¢ with ChatThreads, an independent word of mouth research company working with Matchstick.

Each time you have a conversation about Zuneâ„¢ tell us about it at ChatThreads.com/zune. The conversations you tell us about could be face-to-face, over the phone, or online.

If you’d like to see exactly what the end-user survey entails, hit up ChatThreads’ site and enter the Conversation ID 102 986 0195. You’re all my friends!

My initial reaction to the page was that I certainly did not agree to provide email addresses every time I mentioned Zune to people. Even documenting conversations wouldn’t really be a problem - but signing people up for an email message looking like this is not something I’d be thrilled to try repeatedly. At least the “Providing this information is optional.” message at the bottom is present.

Another oddity involves the terms of use adorning the ChatThreads sweepstakes. As a thanks for completing the ChatThreads survey, you can opt to have the company donate up to $5 to specific charities, or win up to $500 in Amazon gift certificates. Unfortunately, even as this entire marketing campaign is intended for Canadian residents, the sweepstakes terms restrict the potential winners to zero.

Eligibility. Open to legal residents of the United States (excluding Rhode Island, Puerto Rico and all other U.S. territories and possessions outside of the continental United States and where otherwise prohibited by law)

Conversely, ChatThreads’ past winners page indicates someone from Toronto as a previously successful winner. At the very least, this point should be updated or clarified before sending out what looks like more-expensive-than-average marketing collateral.

I’ll be forwarding this post to the Matchstick coordinators to get a definitive answer through ChatThreads, before promising contest entries to card recipients. Update July 4/08: See this post for ChatThreads’ response and the corrected sweepstakes rules.

Another interesting element in the pseudo-viral marketing strategy is the ability to recommend someone for a Zune device. The signup page for this process required a weblog URL, regular visitor count and number of friends on a social network:

These requirements really discouraged a technologically adept friend of mine. While he’s active in online social networking, he doesn’t currently host an independent blog. The solution was to have him link his Facebook profile page - the “I just got a free Zune! It’s awesome!” status messages through Facebook are perhaps even better publicity from a marketing perspective than a series of posts.

What’s Next?

I’m interested in how Matchstick continues to follow up on this effort. The welcome letter indicated that there were more email messages and additional promotion possibilities in the future. Hopefully this post gives a bit of firsthand insight into the background process.

What can other companies and future marketing campaigns learn from what Matchstick and Microsoft did?

The good:

• Don’t set terms and conditions other than what’s needed for your target market. I never felt pressured to say anything “good” about the product, which is a better way of getting feedback than three hundred faux-positive MySpace comments.
• Attract technology-focused individuals. They’re more likely to be the recommenders and drivers of product adoption.
• Make it easy for people to get involved. Don’t single out people arriving from high-traffic sources: these are the people you want talking about your product.

The not-as-good:

• Try not to spam anybody who’s already expressed a lack of interest. With a Microsoft product especially, there are serious detractors in the Google search results already and they’re not as concerned about being offered a Zune, as they are with being offered a Zune.It’s always challenging to manage email campaigns. When working for Maplesoft - I did my best to ensure the programs marketing folks didn’t blast people that had already unsubscribed. (I can’t vouch for what they’re doing now, but I hope my email utility still has a good home.)
• Get all your terms and conditions lined up, especially when using external agencies. If people start finding inconsistencies in the fine print then they might start to wonder exactly how professionally the program is managed.
• Don’t assume that everyone manages a weblog or website. This may have been a specific target of the campaign, but some people are just as effective when posting to Facebook or other social networks. Keep the regular user - who isn’t necessarily a content producer - in mind too!

Your thoughts will help shape the upcoming reviews. What are you interested in hearing about - the service? Integration with other utilities? Metadata tagging and support for network shares within the software? Speak your piece in the comments and I’ll get on it!

Update, July 4/08:

This post is the first in the Zune review series. I received the device for free as part of a Matchstick promotion. My goal is to provide a technically engaging and impartial review for people interested in MP3 players. Other posts include:

• ChatThreads follows up on the Zune feedback sweepstakes
• Zune hardware, community and software first impressions

It has come to pass that Pete Wentz (the frontman of Fall Out Boy) has married Ashlee Simpson. You know, the one who did the infamous jig after BOO SHE FAILED onstage. It was parodied in Family Guy and everything.

As much as Simpson’s dancing skills are worth, the marriage is clearly a one-sided commitment. After all, Wentz is clearly the more talented singer in the relationship. If he’s been lipsyncing, at least he hasn’t been caught yet - which is more than Ashlee can say.

As much as I know many teenage girls want into Pete’s undoubtedly slanty-haired pants, he hands down misunderstands the purpose of a title. His ridiculous attitude is best described by a track on Fall Out Boy’s first truly commercially successful disc: “I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me”. Arrogant, snarky and scrolls when you load it on an iPod! Now that’s edgy.

It’s not really appropriate to hate on someone for executing on the capitalist approach, though. Wentz is obviously either very aware of market conditions, or has up to date industry insider advice that lets him rake in millions of dollars. Like DeAndre Way, the “four P marketing mix” is completely satisfied. Woohoo! Now I’ll get traffic from angry fangirls AND communications students!

Product: Simplistic, catchy pop-punk/emo lyrics.
Place: Whereever you can crack open LimeWire and poorly mangle the name of the band. Is it “fallout boy”? Is it “fall out boys”? Is it “that song with the long title, and omg i think it had dance dance in it”? All of the above queries will function equally well.
Price: Ranges from free to “I bought a concert ticket. And a plane ticket to Phoenix because they recorded an album there!”
Promotion: Actually waves his wang on the Internet and gets away with it. Yes, seriously.

Unfortunately from the capitalist businessman perspective, Wentz has made a critical error in marrying Tapdancing Simpson: he’s now no longer ‘available’ for the mass of slashfiction writing girls in the crowd (oh god it burns, don’t actually click it. There are PAGES of Google results for this kind of stuff. My search history is forever tainted.)

Not that I expect it will impact his bottom line, but it dates him as an old man and limits his future potential for album sales. Hah, Pete! You’re soon to be 29! Your kids are going to be all kinds of screwed up!

With a wife, Pete will be less able to continue his oft-mentioned bisexual exploits. After all, if he only kind of wishes that he was gay then the only thing holding him up is that he’s “not a real big fan of penises.” After all, “anything above the waist is fair game.” Might it just be clever marketing strategy and image construction? Here’s a hint: kissing your fellow male bandmates on stage is pretty gay, whether you admit it or not. Why dance around the label when it applies? (I follow the Homer Simpson school of tolerance and acceptance: I like my beer cold, my TV loud and my homosexuals fa-laming. Wentz’s use of “guyliner” meets the last criteria perfectly.)

A constant debate on Wikipedia about Fall Out Boy’s style of music relates to whether it’s ‘emo’ or not. (You can find the same debates on any “post-hardcore” band talk page, but I digress.) Another application of cluebat is necessary: when one tries to kill themselves by purposely overdosing on Ativan in a Best Buy parking lot, that’s pretty emo. While it isn’t as dramatic as a wrist-slitting, the Simple Plan “God Must Hate Me” quotient drastically increases when one:

• has their mother take them to the hospital before the drugs have a chance to start acting up,
• listens to a ridiculously depressing song, Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah beforehand, and
• writes about the experience in two separate songs on one’s next album - an example:
  

  I’m sitting out dances on the wall
  Trying to forget everything that isn’t you
  I’m not going home alone
  Cause I don’t do too well on my own

  Gag. Comparable to My Chemical Romance.

In conclusion:

Next time, on the !grammys: I avoid admitting that I can hit 100% on the vocals to pre-popularity track “Dead on Arrival” in Rock Band after a few beers, or a large glass of rum. Also, Simple Plan may or may not get called out, but since God already hates them I don’t really need to do much. Given that one of my latest comments was left by someone with the alias love.pete.wentz… I’m expecting an interesting response here.

When having one of my brief IM conversations with Phil, the subject of the atrocities committed in today’s modern music came up and. Both Phil and I have musical interests that can be represented in the following Venn diagram. Members of the jury, Exhibit A clearly indicates that while Jake may be a poor judge of music, he does know something truly awful when he hears it.

Thus, Phil and I have decided to collaborate on a project called the !grammys, which is read as “notgrammys” using a Borat Sagdiyev accent. These awards will be given out to the truly horrible songs being shoveled as “top 40 hits” to an unsuspecting public. There is no actual prize awarded.

With this, I give you a preliminary set of awards. The following content is for parody purposes only and you should be ashamed if you take any of this seriously.

Worst Rap Song: Crank That (Soulja Boy) by Soulja “DeAndre Way” Boy
The ringtone-esque “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” was actually nominated for Best Rap Song in this year’s actual gramophone-esque awards, which I can only presume was the result of a sordid backdoor three-way affair between Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group; Jimmy Jam, Chairman of NARAS/The Recording Academy; and a major corporate sponsor - let’s say Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless, since his company charges approximately 2.49 and 2.99US for a thirty second snippet of the song in question. In any event, it’s safe to assume someone and someone else conducted a Lemonparty with a third participant, eventually achieving a remarkable feat of bribery, collusion and flexibility under extreme duress.

original image by Johnthan “Sesshomaru” Speed, used under CC license.
Actually, Johnthan has a fairly good rant about the Grammys which you should check out.

What Soulja Boy brings to the table is a completely illogical entrée of sexual positions set to a horrific steel pan background track. It’s impossible not to wholeheartedly agree with the parents expressing moral outrage this time. Children going around imitating a song that advocates super soaking a ho’ or completing a robocop is more than the usual moral decay that politicians harp on about.

Observe that in a four minute track, DeAndre Ramone Way is capable of humilating a girl in three unique erotic positions: none of which can be found in the Kama Sutra, and all of which require climax to be effective. Even Shiva would be exhausted, and using Cialis is just cheating. To be accurate, Soulja Boy cranks off in or on that ho’ nineteen times, or sixteen if we assume that background vocals are firing genetic material independently.

For pedantic listeners wishing to debate the number of cranking transactions, it is presumed that the segment mentioning roosevelt refers to the urban dance move. This implication is based on the fact that nowhere else in the song features a sexual encounter in a wheelchair. Also noteworthy in this definition is that a ho’ must be involved in the transaction at hand, disqualifying the two alternately accepted definitions of the verb.

original image by Travis S., used under CC license

If one believes that a song can be judged by its quality of listeners, then consider that Soulja supporters have posted the following text of what is presumably their own free will:

HEY I FINK THE SONG IS GREAT

i love dat song and i love soulja boy.

Calm the heck down people! Of course kids are going to know what these words mean at the right age. They will find out eventually. I happen to think it’s better than the kids dancing killing somebody or robbing a store.

Apart from the aneurysm-inducing application of poor logic in the last contribution, we can already determine that ebonics make a prominent placement in the track without even consulting the lyrics. These aren’t typical Jay-Z Umbrella-style chyeah callouts, though. “Crank That” is truly engineered around the core principles of

• Segmentation into thirty second clips, for ringtones, and
• Alluding to sexual innuendo, yet maintaining ability to be censored for radio play

With these two qualifiers, it becomes significantly easier to understand the obnoxious repetition and call/response structure of the track in question. Ho’, a word that when combined with nappy-headed ruined Don Imus, can easily be interpreted as “Oh”. The action of cocking on a partner’s bitch ass is likewise fairly easily removed, and fails to interrupt the act of catching DeAndre at a local party.

As the song progresses past the unreasonably mass-marketable chorus, listeners are dragged forward to the slurred outro of the first verse. The first three lines are possible to interpret without the aid of a street-savvy teenager, but the fourth provides a confusing and frightening shock to upper class, likely-monocle-wearing citizens.

You catch me at your local party
Yes I crank it everyday
Haters getting mad cause
“I got me some bathing apes”

original image by EverJean, CC licensed

Individuals who are not attuned to urban culture might incorrectly construe bathing apes as a racial or sexual reference, when in fact it is neither. In a complete about-face from the song’s other incomprehensible inferences, bapes are allegedly a Japanese brand of sneaker that might be preferred by Entourage’s Turtle.

No truly awful rap song would be complete, however, without a catch phrase. In Crank That’s case, cranking is the predominant activity, but YOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU is the gift that keeps on giving - the shaft.

It is my pleasure to award Soulja Boy the !grammy for Worst Rap Song.

Don’t all stampede through the comments section at once, now.

The big news today (well, yesterday by the time this goes live) was that Windows Vista SP1 had released to manufacturing. Annoyingly enough, this doesn’t mean it’s available for public download yet, and end users will have to wait until in mid-March from Windows Update, or mid-April through Automatic Updates. I’ll keep my eye out for a validated copy from sources with access to the original MSDN files, because SP1 allegedly fixes some of the network copy issues I’ve been having recently.

As background, the network copy issues seem to involve Vista’s auto network tuning utility. I have a gigabit Ethernet connection between my Windows Home Server box and my primary Core2Quad system, and get about 40-50MB/s read speed without tweaking them using XP SP2 or Leopard clients. Vista, on the same Core2Quad and a 10K RPM Raptor drive, taps out at about 9MB/s and is often much slower than that, which is incredibly painful when working with 4+GB MKV files.

SP1 releases, at least with recent Microsoft products, have heralded new standards of stability and less crashiness. (SP2 really went above and beyond in fulfilling this role for XP, but it was an exception since it added additional security capabilities.)

The more interesting post of the day, though, is from Mark Russinovich’s blog in which he discusses the lower-level details of file copy operations. It’s definitely worth a read if you’re of the computer science mindset, and goes a long way to explaining some of the more intricate changes to Vista SP1.

I received an interesting marketing-type email from a Brian from Box.net today, promoting their Facebook application. Ordinarily, I’d ask “why would anyone have the nerve to drop me a message at 6:40 AM on a Friday, other than to tell me my download queue completed?” and “do you know what I usually have to say about Facebook applications, let alone annoying or idiot ones?”

I haven’t written a scathing Web 2.0 review since my Customerforce piece for an intern there; since then it looks like CustomerForce has gone under significant plastic-ification and drastically changed its focus to “social media enabler”. It’d be a perfect story for Uncov, but that’s a different piece for a different time.

I’ll slightly modify part of a comment from my original post on Customerforce, as a preface to how I review Web2 services.

If I can describe your complete business plan in a few lines of PHP and SQL, then it’s not a sound business plan at all. You can’t have a business plan that relies on “SELECT `movie` FROM `topmovies` ORDER BY `votes` LIMIT 5;”. Some sites rely on users contributing the best aggregated content, and then having other friends of these users voting on it. It’s too many steps for the average MySpace click-copy-paste profile whore. Never underestimate the stupidity of users; and never underestimate the concept of “less is more.”

So, does Box.net fall into this category? Short answer: no, but it’s certainly heavy on the Web 2.0 fluff that’s so common these days with anything reviewed by Robert Scoble. Interestingly enough, Scoble just reviewed (read: promoted) the service. Company-wide marketing blitz perhaps?

In any event, someone else will have to tell me what Robert said; I refuse to give into The Streaming Flash Video Service That Could, And Perhaps It Works From My Cellphone of the week when a download link (or even a YouTube video) would suffice. Protip, everyone: Choosing a non-standard place to dump your content does not make you a special and unique snowflake.

What Does It Do, Johnny?
Box.net is a cross between sites like RapidShare and products in the Google Docs suite. Essentially, it’s a file upload utility with granular access permissions. It also has several notable API hooks to connect to other Web 2.0 services, and connect your documents and media to them. They claim traffic of over one million file downloads per day. It sounds like a perfect recipe for a crafty frontend to Amazon’s S3 Storage, or perhaps outsourcing traffic to LimeLight Networks for content delivery.

LimeLight tends to be pricey for startups, and throwing around files online costs real cash money. You also have to have a certain amount of capital around to deal with the inevitable copyright lawsuits and DMCA lawyering that result when people don’t read the terms of service and upload their hastily-obtained copy of Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix[2007]DvDrip[Eng]-aXXo so that “they can watch it at work.”

Something for Nothing: Trickier than Getting Free RealPlayer
Unlike most other Web 2.0 services, Box.net doesn’t rely on users being tricked into clicking on Google Ads. This is probably a good thing, because all the ads would probably key on competing services given the site’s ridiculous attempt at search engine optimization:

Box.net - Free Online File Storage, Internet File Sharing, Online Storage, Access Documents & Files Anywhere, Backup Data, Send Files
This is their title tag. Way to make it a great default bookmark name.

Going directly to their site, you’ve got a clear “signup” button:

This, as any savvy Web user knows, is a dangerous trap into somehow getting something you don’t want at all. All good sites make the interesting or free stuff hidden in a link inside a paragraph of dull gray text. I’ll save you the disappointment here, though, and spoil things: the narrator and Tyler Durden are the same person, and Box.net has no publically available free service. Your options are respectively 14-day trials for a 2GB/$25/year account; a 5GB/$80/year account; or a 15GB/$200/year account.

Wait - that’s not entirely correct and complete. There are at least two other types of accounts. Signing up for a trial of the 2GB account gave me a billing profile with a 1.0GB BASIC option. What if I’d wanted to try a Plus, Premium or Business account, and not the Cheapskate Special?

But hey! I can upgrade my account right now if I give them my credit card number, as I’m constantly and nauseatingly reminded as I flip through their interface. It’s inescapable. Uploading a file? Look at an advertisement for additional services. On the home page? Fully one quarter of the UI is dedicated to “give us some money, please.”

File Uploads Aren’t Bad
There’s a reasonably snappy interface for file uploads, which gives a progress bar and filesize information. The multi-file Java applet also suits the purpose well. It’s also reasonably easy to share (make public) files as hyperlinks, although directly pointing to them is restricted to premium accounts.

It also appears as if downloads go through an “index.php”-style redirector before being deployed to the browser, presumably for access control and database categorization. Sort of weak not being able to access the actual file directly, but that’s a minor point.

What I’d like to see: for video uploads, embed a YouTube-style FLV player on the Download page so that potential users can preview the file. Hell, even an EMBED tag, done tastefully, would let the end user’s browser try to stream the content.

Overall, I’m actually quite impressed with the file upload functionality.

Integration is Quite Good
I do actually endeavour to test services before panning them, so I uploaded several photos and tried the “Edit photos” application. If anything, this convinced me that before I pay Box.net $25 per year, I should pay Picnik the same amount for premium Web-based photo editing. Their Flash utility for managing photos is really well designed and could easily replace all of the low-end photo editing utilities currently on the market.

If the only negative “well, that’s weak” thing I can find is the above message on replacing an unsaved document, then I would vote these guys the next Google acquisition target.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the integration of Zoho Writer. (It’s the “Create Document” option.) The new browser window suffers from the same FAIL as Ted mentioned on Uncov, and this wasn’t even the spreadsheet that can’t deal with 620KB of data. The following font is NOT Arial.

You Said There Were At Least Two Account Options =\
The Facebook application for Box.net offers yet another way to score some free storage, although in a creepy viral marketing “send invites” way. If you want an untethered free account from the start, this may be the way to go. You get 20MB, plus 20MB for each additional friend you invite to the application, probably up to an arbitrary limit (Update 12/29/07: up to 1GB, which would mean you’d have to invite 50 friends to get the full storage. Thanks, Fred.)

There’s also a way to score a year of a premium 2GB account, although it involves completing a “special offer” that will likely ruin your credit rating and sign you up for Video Professor.

It’s essentially a giant Flash blob when integrated though, and for someone running NoScript, the Facebook component looks like this:

Unfortunately, the revealed version is a horrible mélange of Arial, Times New Roman and imitation Zuckerberg styling. It seems to follow no design rules. Did nobody actually test the application on a Mac running Safari? The main box.net website works properly.

Social Interaction: Does It Spam?
More than zero friends on a Facebook developer test account were needed in order to test out the invitation feature and newsfeed functionality. I found that Facebook fails it too when creating a new account:

The invitation process is fairly informative, so you’ll probably only get invites from people who actually want to share files rather than spew Glitter Text all over your wall. Here’s what the invite looks like:

True to form, the promised storage upgrade works properly, but then fails all over itself when it comes to sharing folders with other users. Shared folder notifications take you completely out of the Facebook UI, instead of linking to the grammatically-incorrect “My Friend’s Files” page. There’s also a duplicate notification dropped each time you share a folder or file.

From a Technical Point: FTP Makes Sense
One of the more convoluted pages on the Box site deals with FTP. I assume it’s targeted at managers and monkey-suit type individuals who have heard that the protocol is “a good way to share files.” As far as I can tell, the only mention of the free 1GB account is on this page:

Box.net offers a free 1GB storage account that you may use for as long as you like. If you are interested in trying one of our pay accounts, you are welcome to try any of them free for 14 days.

FTP is a standard protocol for a reason, guys. I’d love nothing more than SFTP or SCP access to my Box.net account; that way I could upload files regardless of what platform or environment I’m using.

Summary: The Facebook App Fails It; The Main Site Doesn’t
I guess Brian’s intention with his email was to drum up traffic for the Box.net Facebook application. In short, it’s a failure: it looks ugly from the Times New Roman embedded font, seems to unnecessarily use Flash, and doesn’t support any of the external publishing/platform providers that make the main Box.net more worthwhile.

Would it be that hard to write a Facebook application using a canvas IFRAME and then apply a custom stylesheet based on the source? (Answer: No. I’ve written them.) It also sprays a disgusting SWF on your user profile, whereas a plaintext list of files with links would be much more effective and not require the initial “click to display” barrier.

Fixing it would be reasonably easy, though. Stick to HTML and JavaScript within Facebook. If not possible in Facebook’s implementation of FBJS, use an IFRAME; and maintain consistency across user interfaces. What’s with the 20MB initial cap on Facebook accounts, when the official site gives 1GB? And furthermore, why can’t I switch my accounts easily from my profile, receiving the login failure message above?

I feel for the Facebook developers that have to wade through the comments and reviews though. Idiots that want an “autoplay my MP3zzzz” option should be unceremoniously shot.

I probably wouldn’t block the application with malice, simply by virtue of testing it out, but it’ll have to be improved somewhat before I allow it access to my real Facebook profile.

Box.net, though, as a separate service, might just replace my tested method of creating new drafts from Gmail and attaching files. It’ll be much easier to drop files there for transferring, and with third party integration for services like Picnik, I expect additional interesting ways to work with files in the future.

In the past, I’ve mentioned to Dave that he’s never steered me wrong with a TV show recommendation. In fact, his selections from digital cable (and mine picked up later the same evening from newsgroups) have been nothing short of excellent: The Sopranos and Entourage have both been two of my favourite programs over the past few years. It’s interesting to note that both of these are typically HBO shows, and I’m always really impressed with the high quality of production.

This past week, I finally gave into another highly-hyped suggestion, and watched the first season of Dexter, a Showtime series.

By day, Dexter is a forensics specialist for the Miami Metro police who deals with blood spatter patterns at crime scenes. His alter ego, similar to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, is a serial killer. His critical influence, though, is that he only murders people who have killed (usually repeatedly) and not been punished properly by the justice system. He rationalizes his own life and morality with a code of ethics instilled by his foster father, Harry.

True to form, the show is fairly gruesome and graphic, often showing large pools of blood and violent images of crimes.

The dialog in Dexter is supplemented by Dexter’s own narration: there are often periods where the monotone voice of the serial killer serves to advance the plot or indicate his own thoughts about a situation. During these periods, there are many extreme closeup shots of eyes or neutral facial expressions.

I’d really recommend this show to anyone interested in psychological thrillers or a faux-CSI type of plotline. It’s much higher quality TV than I’d expected, and the ending of Season 1 was a fairly decent conclusion. I’m onto Season 2 at the moment and fully expect good things from it.