Zune Insider

As you can tell by the new design, we’ve dusted off Zune Insider and relaunched it with a new look and feel!  If you are reading this in RSS, click here to head to the site and check it out.  A few things we want to point out:

• We love social media! We’ve added widgets for Facebook and Twitter in the sidebar to the right.  If you aren’t part of the Zune Nation on either of these, please join us!
• We love the Zune Nation! We have added commenting system Disqus to the site to encourage healthy conversation, feedback, tips and tricks.  But remember…just like on our social networks, we want this to be a place that everybody can enjoy, so please behave.  If you’re not registered on Disqus make sure to do so, we want to hear from you!
• We love links! Check out the sidebar on the right, there you will find information about other RSS feeds, product info and just about anything else Zune related.
• Don’t forget to subscribe! In the top right corner of this blog you will see links…one of them is to our RSS.  Click it and get updates delivered right to your reader.

Thanks for stopping by! As a special thank you for reading all the way to the bottom of this very short post, we’re going to do a little mini-contest to see who actually got this far.  Everybody that leaves a comment on this post between now and April 19th at midnight PST will be qualified for a chance to win a free month of Zune Pass! We’re going to give away a few, so send your friends our way too.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

The Zune team is hard at work to bring you the next level of entertainment service.  In preparation for our new Zune service launch, we are going to be doing some work starting on Monday, September 14 at 11:00 a.m. PDT.  At that time Zune Marketplace, Zune.net and Zune Social will all be taken offline for scheduled maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are sure you will love what you will see on Tuesday, September 15th. Not only you will be able to get your hands on the new Zune HD at retail, but you will also be able to download the new Zune 4.0 PC software and experience the new Zune.net benefits.

Set the reminder now. Grab some music, podcasts and TV shows, and sync it all before Monday at 11:00 a.m. to tide you over, because come Tuesday, you are going to want to focus on exploring our new Zune service.

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On Tuesday, June 16th from 12:01 AM PST for up to 24 hours, the Zune service will be offline for maintenance. As a result, the Zune Social, the forums on Zune.net, and all of Zune Marketplace will be offline.

As you may have heard the Zune and Xbox systems are coming closer together and this service maintenance is to prepare for some of the recently announced Xbox LIVE features that will be available later this year.
It is important to note when the service returns, you will not have any new functions or features. This is for scheduled maintenance only.

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Hey folks!

We’ll be taking zune.net down at 10 p.m. tonight for a bit. When we return, we’ll have some new features on the web – including “follow an artist,” where you can explicitly state that you like a particular artist and get news and updates from that artist. We’ll do RSS feed aggregation on artist pages – which means that from the one artist page on zune.net, you can see your favorite artist’s latest Twitter posts, blogs, and so on (and if your favorite artist doesn’t have this data already, you will be able to add the links yourself). We’re adding more content, including concert dates, to the web, and we’ve redesigned our home page to showcase more of our social data. And finally, we made a bunch of improvements to the site performance.

Our friends at insidethecircle.net and zuneluv.com are already talking about the update – head over there and take part, or leave us some comments here.

Ecosystem, Zune Social, jessica zahn, zune.net

Have you seen Windows Live lately? If not, check it out – it’s become a great way to aggregate your activity online. You can include your Facebook updates, photos you post to Flickr, custom RSS feeds for your own blog…and now, your Zune Social activity!

Your Windows Live friends can see when you earn new badges, write album reviews, leave comments, or add new Zune Social friends. Check it out.

How to add Zune to your Windows Live profile:

1.      Go to http://profile.live.com/WebActivities/Add.aspx?appid=6333180533609995

2.     Log-in to your account (your Zune account must use the same Windows Live ID as your Windows Live account)

3.      Click “Add Zune”

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