Zune Insider

A new installment of the New Zune Insider Podcast just went live today, get excited! This week you can listen to the dynamic duo of yours truly (Skipdeez) and Jessica (Jetherealz) rap about new music and upcoming shows. We also answer some random questions from our Twitter followers (hit us up! @skipdeez and @jetherealz). Oh, and I should also mention we talk about a little something called Zune HD and discuss the new Xbox Zune video Marketplace. We also trade Zunes with our bosses, which is not only exciting, but makes for some good comedy. You love it, you know you do…

Not subscribed to the Zune Insider podcast yet? You can subscribe via the Zune software by clicking here. You can listen right on the web on from here. Or, you can just download the podcast directly from the RSS feed here.

Comments? Questions? Post a comment here or send us a tweet, we’d love to hear from you!

Enjoy!

Culture, zune podcasts, Jessica, Matt, zune insider

Hey folks!

So this week, let’s go with the “Jessica’s son” edition – the starting artist will be Fall Out Boy, since I had to listen to Fall Out Boy songs over and over and over again Friday night when the kid and his friends were playing Rock Band…and the ending artist Led Zeppelin, as my friends and I try to give him a good rock education.

Last week’s challenge was won by “sableholic,” who was the first person to get from Dieselboy to Sarah McLachlan in 10 steps. (Note: the starting artist was Dieselboy – all one word – not Diesel Boy – two words.)

As a reminder, here’s what you have to do to win the Zune Home A/V Pack*:

• You can use the Zune client software or the Zune web site – click “Mixview” when you’re on the starting artist
• You can click from the starting artist to any other artist or album that appears in Mixview – but NOT listeners (since listeners cards change)
• You have to submit your path to the “ZContest” account via a forums private message in the official Zune forums. No other method of submitting a path will be accepted!
• To do this, just go to forums.zune.net, search for a post by user “ZContest,” then click “Private Message” when you’re viewing the post.
• The artists will be announced on Zune Insider (here) every Monday at 10 a.m. PST

The contest closes each week at 5 p.m. PST on Friday – so your submission needs to be in the ZContest private message box by then.

* No purchase necessary. Open only to US residents 18+. Challenge ends May 15, 2009. See full rules for details.

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About a year ago, I put out in the Zune forums a question. What if we tried to develop a feature “out in the open?” Typically we do our development behind closed doors, and we do this for a number of reasons: competitive advantage, because things ALWAYS change mid-cycle and if we promised one thing in November, what we delivered in April would likely be totally different, and to get the most out of the marketing splash when the time does come.

However, to try to be more “social” about Zune development, we experimented with asking the community to help design a feature, scoped to the web and to a “fun” activity that could be cordoned off from the rest of the site so we wouldn’t give away our secrets. The community came up with a music trivia/quiz game, where users could write their own questions and answers and post quizzes to their own profiles.

Well, this process has really sort of proven why keeping things quiet until we’re ready to release is a good thing. The quiz feature was slated for our 3.0 release in September, but had to be cut because of prioritization of more important features. It was then supposed to be in our release in November, but a personal problem with the main developer caused delays from which we couldn’t recover and still ship on time. And now, it’s March and here you go.

There are actually two parts to the quiz, only one of which we are releasing today: the ability to create and publish quizzes on your own profile. Eventually we’d like a process by which real music trivia questions get into an overall Zune trivia quiz, with great questions contributed by users. That’s stage two (which is TBD in terms of release date, or even if we’ll do it at all – your feedback on the quiz as it is today will be crucial to the prioritization process of that work).

So, the Quiz Builder can be used for a few different things: a fun, “get-to-know-me” better quiz (I’ll be posting on of those on my page very soon); true music trivia questions you write yourself; or, frankly, trivia about anything. It’s just another way for users to connect and contribute to The Social. I hope you have fun with it – let me know what you think!

To get to the quiz, go to your ”my social” page and click “my quizzes” in the Quick Links. From there you’ll launch into the Quiz Builder. To take another user’s quiz, you can visit his profile page – if he’s got a quiz set up, there will be a link towards the bottom of the right hand column.

To help you get started, here are some sample personal questions that rely on music as their answers.

• What was the first concert I chose to attend?
• What was the first record I bought?
• When I was 12 <or whatever age>, which of the following bands did I listen to?
• Which of the following musicians have I met in person? <if you’ve ever met someone, of course>
• Which of the following albums would I take with me if I were stranded on a deserted island?
• Which American Idol participant is my overall favorite?
• Which of these songs best describes my personality?
• What song describes how I feel about the weather? (Here are some ideas: Only Happy When It Rains; Let it Snow; Good Day Sunshine)
• What song describes how I feel about my job? (Ideas: Workin’ for the Weekend; 9 to 5; Short Skirt, Long Jacket; Working Man)
• Yay! Go have fun with it! And post links to your quizzes or good questions or feedback in the comments! (more…)

Here’s a thing about software development. This dude I used to work with would sometimes, in the winter, head up to the mountains for some pre-work skiing before rolling in to the office at noon or 1, and in the summer, take off early for some afternoon wakeboarding. When asked about it, he pointed to the cyclical nature of our jobs: during certain parts of the software development lifecycle, he works from dawn until the wee hours of the morning…and during other parts, not so much. He called those long days the time when we earned our money.

Right now, I’m in a phase where I’m earning my money. I see the light at the end of the tunnel – the week after next is going to be much easier – but right now, it’s crazy. And all this is my way of apologizing for being a day late with this post. In fact, since Seattle and Redmond are blanketed with a few inches of snow, I’m working from home – so time to get a lot done, whee!

My guest listener this week is going to be my kid, because he’s the only person walking by my “desk” (otherwise known as my kitchen table).

“I’m listening to AC/DC (High Voltage and Back in Black) and some Metallica right now,” says eight-year-old Gabriel. “I really like Metallica’s “And Justice for All” because I just like hard music like that.” (Note: the album “High Voltage” is as old as I am. Weird.)

Okay, he’s not the best interview. Oh well. The Zune Insiders this week have a decent variety of music:

Matt (Skipdeez) says, “I  heard this new track “Magnificent” from Rick Ross and John Legend last week on G-Unit radio. I fired up the Marketplace on Tuesday and was stoked to see that it’s already in the catalog. Rick Ross’s new album should be out soon, but this should hold you over until then. Check it!”

Candice – Bliss16 – adds, “Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can’t Stop. I love the harmonies and if you are looking for the real Chili Peppers rap/funk styled song, this is the one you should listen to from this album. The music video is also available on the marketplace, check it out when you can…It has the band members doing all these random things and my fav part is John Frusciante singing while sitting in a trash can.”

And The Social himself, Justin, answers, “‘Beautiful’ by Akon. The new features I’m working on in Zune right now are populated with test data, and this song happens to always come up in the tests.  So I’ve heard it dozens of times in the last week, and I love it.”

As for me, today I’m going old-school with my introduction to electronic music – Delerium. Two of their older albums, Karma and Semantic Spaces, will forever be a couple of my favorites for listening to while working hard. Melodic, trancey, and chill – check them out!

K, post what you’re listening to in the comments. And before you ask…no, Justin and I can’t tell you what we’re working on.

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Hey!

So we were messing around with Mixview recently, trying to play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with various artists. Turns out it’s actually kind of fun…especially when you take two artists who are totally different, and try to find a path from one to the other. Like, check this out: Metallica to Barbra Streisand:

Metallica to Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath to April Wine

April Wine to Boston

Boston to Bad English

Bad English to Journey

Journey to Garth Brooks

Garth Brooks to Billy Ray Cyrus

Billy Ray Cyrus to the album “Love Songs” by Billy Ray Cyrus

The album “Love Songs” by Billy Ray Cyrus to the album “Breathe” by Faith Hill

The album “Breathe” by Faith Hill to the album “Fly” by the Dixie Chicks

The album “Fly” by the Dixie Chicks to the album “Come on Over” by Shania Twain

The album “Come on Over” by Shania Twain to Victoria Boland

Victoria Boland to Barbra Streisand

One of the marketing guys and I came up with an idea for a contest: each week for 12 weeks, we’ll pick two artists, and ask users to submit the shortest path they can find between them. The first person to submit the shortest path by the deadline wins a Zune Home AV Kit.

Here are the rules (official rules are here):

n  You can use the Zune client software or the Zune web site – click “Mixview” when you’re on the starting artist

n  You can click from the starting artist to any other artist or album that appears in Mixview – but NOT listeners (since listeners cards change)

n  You have to submit your path to the “ZContest” account via a forums private message in the official Zune forums. No other method of submitting a path will be accepted!

n  The artists will be announced on Zune Insider (here) every Monday at 10 a.m. PST

n  The contest closes each week at 5 p.m. PST on Friday – so your submission needs to be in the ZContest private message box by then

For this week, let’s start with something fun: Amy Winehouse to Ray Charles. Shortest path first wins!

* No purchase necessary.  Open only to US residents 18+.  Challenge ends May 15, 2009.  See full rules for details.

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