Zune
The Xbox Companion app, available now in preview form in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, provides an integration point with Microsoft’s best-selling video game console and entertainment device. Similar to the Xbox Companion app for Windows Phone, this new Metro-style app lets you browse and interact with content in Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE-based online markets.
more Since releasing its Metro-style Xbox 360 Dashboard Update last fall, Microsoft has bolstered its console's entertainment services many times, most recently adding XFINITY TV, HBO GO, and MLB TV to the lineup. Despite some egregious hoops to jump through, the Xbox 360 is suddenly the top choice for the living room hub.
more Microsoft is in the process of consolidating all of its somewhat separate online accounts--Windows Live ID, Xbox LIVE, Zune and Zune Pass, and many more--into a single aggregate account it will call Microsoft Your Account. Kudos to my Windows Secrets co-author Rafael Rivera for uncovering this change.
more Here are the Audible books and Kindle eBooks I read and recommended on the Windows Weekly podcast this past year.
more Amazon Cloud Player, Apple iTunes Match, Google Music all offer interesting options for digital music enthusiasts, and all work well with Windows. Less obviously, perhaps, they can work together in interesting ways, too. I'm particularly intrigued by the notion of managing my music collection in the cloud rather than on a single PC desktop. And with these services, that's become more possible than ever before.
more This retrospective covers the second half of Zune's lifetime, from roughly 2008 through 2010, and encompasses the third and fourth generation of the platform's software, services, and devices. Microsoft did something special there, but then they just let it die. And that's a shame, because Zune was ultimately pretty darned good. It's just too bad most people will never know this.
more With the digital music market bifurcating with the introduction of useful new services, we now have more choices than ever before, not just between the actual services themselves, but also between the types of music services we can access. If you're a digital music lover and an avid consumer of this kind of content, it's likely that you'll want to use two or more of these services in tandem. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
more Previous to last week, Spotify was available only in several European nations, which sounds like a recipe for irrelevance. But Spotify has garnered a whopping 10 million registered users in Europe alone, 1.6 million of which are actually paying the company a monthly fee to use a higher-end version of the service. And it is quite suddenly the music subscription service to beat.
more This first of two Zune retrospectives covers the first half of Zune's lifecycle, from late 2006 to mid-2008, a period during which Zune matured from a sad, me-too product into a full-fledged, innovative product line of its own. I went from Zune critic to Zune user and advocate during this period, and my growing excitement over the Zune platform explains the sheer amount of time and effort I devoted to it.
more Sometimes you run into a mobile app that is so useful yet so simple in purpose and so elegant in implementation. Shazam is such an app.
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