Tuesday, December 04, 2007
I'm Becoming a Zune Fanboy
Well, thats not saying much since I've never given into the temptation to get any mp3 player, but this latest round of deep discounting on the first generation brown zunes got me interested. My son actually decided to take his birthday money and bought one off of buy.com for $90. OK the price is cool enough right there, but wait theres more. Microsoft enabled the first generation players to be updated so they have the version 2 software (yay). The install took FOREVER! But it eventually did install and everything is working great, all except for the fact that I tried (in vain) to get the zune to synch with the kids windows 2000 box. Well, ok, that thing is old as the hills, I know, so I'm not TOO upset about that one...
Now we have ripped a bunch of cds, subscribed to some pod casts and even dipped our toes in the zune market place. But here's the real bummer, the Zune software has no way to transfer movies onto itself and there really isn't anything worth watching in the market place. I searched around for some solutions and there are a bunch of programs that claim to transfer DVDs to the Zune. In fact there seems to be a blog dedicated to this pursuit www.zunevideoconverters.com.
But they all seem to cost anywhere from $40 to $60
Lucky for me, my friend Jill (a fellow buy.com sale zune owner) found a free alternative on one of the zune chat boards. She found a post that said to use DVDdecrypter to rip the DVD VOB files onto your hard drive and then use a piece of software called SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) to convert the movie file into a format that the Zune can use. Being in a festive holiday mood, I tried it with our copy of Charlie Brown Christmas on DVD. I eventually got it to work, but SUPER is anything but simplified. They should replace the 'S' with a 'C' for 'COMPLEX'. SUPER offers so many options and so details that it might be a bit daunting to the average person. But me being a geek, I was determined to figure this out. Unfortunately the option to go directly from VOB to Zune format failed every way that I tried (I even tried it on a brand new Sony Vaio just to be sure). I ended up getting it to work by selecting the VOB to MP4 option. I did it at 320x240 resolution and 25 frames per second. It converted a 1 gigabyte VOB file into a 150 mb MPG file, so you could fit quite a few hours on the Zune! One thing I didn't figure out was how to make the two VOB files that make up the 1 hour special into one single MP4 file. I'm sure there's a way, but it wasn't overly apparent to me.
Anyway, I thought this would be helpful to fellow Zunies.
Well, thats not saying much since I've never given into the temptation to get any mp3 player, but this latest round of deep discounting on the first generation brown zunes got me interested. My son actually decided to take his birthday money and bought one off of buy.com for $90. OK the price is cool enough right there, but wait theres more. Microsoft enabled the first generation players to be updated so they have the version 2 software (yay). The install took FOREVER! But it eventually did install and everything is working great, all except for the fact that I tried (in vain) to get the zune to synch with the kids windows 2000 box. Well, ok, that thing is old as the hills, I know, so I'm not TOO upset about that one...
Now we have ripped a bunch of cds, subscribed to some pod casts and even dipped our toes in the zune market place. But here's the real bummer, the Zune software has no way to transfer movies onto itself and there really isn't anything worth watching in the market place. I searched around for some solutions and there are a bunch of programs that claim to transfer DVDs to the Zune. In fact there seems to be a blog dedicated to this pursuit www.zunevideoconverters.com.
But they all seem to cost anywhere from $40 to $60
Lucky for me, my friend Jill (a fellow buy.com sale zune owner) found a free alternative on one of the zune chat boards. She found a post that said to use DVDdecrypter to rip the DVD VOB files onto your hard drive and then use a piece of software called SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) to convert the movie file into a format that the Zune can use. Being in a festive holiday mood, I tried it with our copy of Charlie Brown Christmas on DVD. I eventually got it to work, but SUPER is anything but simplified. They should replace the 'S' with a 'C' for 'COMPLEX'. SUPER offers so many options and so details that it might be a bit daunting to the average person. But me being a geek, I was determined to figure this out. Unfortunately the option to go directly from VOB to Zune format failed every way that I tried (I even tried it on a brand new Sony Vaio just to be sure). I ended up getting it to work by selecting the VOB to MP4 option. I did it at 320x240 resolution and 25 frames per second. It converted a 1 gigabyte VOB file into a 150 mb MPG file, so you could fit quite a few hours on the Zune! One thing I didn't figure out was how to make the two VOB files that make up the 1 hour special into one single MP4 file. I'm sure there's a way, but it wasn't overly apparent to me.
Anyway, I thought this would be helpful to fellow Zunies.
Social Networks - The Next Revolution on the Web
The Buzz is in the air, Facebook is being called the new Google and the social networking scene is growing by leaps and bounds. I have been reading A TON on this subject lately, and will try to post some links and other internal memos at some point, but in the mean time, two particular posts I think are worth highlighting.
The first is by Tim Berners-Lee, where he talks about the evolution of social networks as being the next phase. First, the important thing was connecting computers together, then Tim invented the web and showed that the important thing was connecting documents together not just computers. He says the next important development is happening right now where the content of the documents are what's important and that social networks are the means to extend that content and context for the information online. (Wikipedia, Amazon Comments, RSS feeds, Facebook and MySpace)
The second is by Shel Israel. He was commissioned by SAP to study social networks and compile a report. SAP has allowed him to publish his findings on his blog. The posting of his key findings are very interesting. He finds that social networks are growing, its way more then blogs now (that's so two years ago!). He also finds that few enterprises are paying attention to social media, but that will change very quickly. He goes into much more detail, so check it out!
The Buzz is in the air, Facebook is being called the new Google and the social networking scene is growing by leaps and bounds. I have been reading A TON on this subject lately, and will try to post some links and other internal memos at some point, but in the mean time, two particular posts I think are worth highlighting.
The first is by Tim Berners-Lee, where he talks about the evolution of social networks as being the next phase. First, the important thing was connecting computers together, then Tim invented the web and showed that the important thing was connecting documents together not just computers. He says the next important development is happening right now where the content of the documents are what's important and that social networks are the means to extend that content and context for the information online. (Wikipedia, Amazon Comments, RSS feeds, Facebook and MySpace)
The second is by Shel Israel. He was commissioned by SAP to study social networks and compile a report. SAP has allowed him to publish his findings on his blog. The posting of his key findings are very interesting. He finds that social networks are growing, its way more then blogs now (that's so two years ago!). He also finds that few enterprises are paying attention to social media, but that will change very quickly. He goes into much more detail, so check it out!
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