Zune Raises the Crimson Omen; Declare Your Loyalty to Delta Squad With a 120GB Zune “Gears of War 2” Special Edition
Microsoft Corp. today announced that Zune, the company’s end-to-end music and entertainment service, will introduce the Zune “Gears of War® 2” Special Edition 120GB device with pre-orders going live today in the U.S. at Amazon.com and Walmart.com. The special edition devices will also be available online at Amazon.ca, BestBuy.ca, FutureShop.ca and TheSource.ca in Canada, for an estimated retail price of $279.991 (U.S./CDN) and will begin shipping to customers starting Nov. 7.
In celebration of the sequel to one of the best-selling Xbox franchises of all time, Xbox and Epic Games Inc. have collaborated with Zune to create this unique portable media player. The Zune “Gears of War 2” Special Edition is based on the new Zune 120GB device and features a laser-etched Crimson Omen on the new gloss black enclosure, collectible “Gears of War” packaging, and 244 pieces of “Gears of War” media including the original game soundtrack, behind-the-scenes videos, game trailers and concept art galleries.
“This special edition Zune is a great way for ‘Gears of War’ fans to carry around all their music and videos while sharing their enthusiasm for the game,” said Michael Capps, president of Epic Games.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
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Zune Marketplace Introduces Exclusive Fania Records Digital Store
Today Zune, Microsoft Corp.’s end-to-end music and entertainment service, announced jointly with Fania Records the availability of a custom collection of Fania albums consisting of never-before-digitally-released productions. For the first time, the Fania collection will be digitally remastered and available exclusively on Zune Marketplace. The collection will include legendary artists such as the Fania All-Stars, Hector Lavoe, La Lupe, Celia Cruz, Ricardo Ray and Bobby Cruz, Cheo Feliciano, Mongo Santamaria, Bobby Valentin, and many more.
During the 1960s and 1970s Fania Records produced the best in salsa and Latin jazz and has been credited with starting the New York salsa movement. Fania and its roster of stars have introduced Latin music to the world, and Zune will now make this music available digitally for a new generation to discover.
“It’s exciting to partner with Zune to offer our collection digitally and for new content from such classic artists. Our hope is to have a new generation of music lovers discover these masters of music from such a significant musical era,” said Leda Ceccarelli, director of New Media, Fania Records.
Zune is the only digital media player to offer an end-to-end experience for music lovers with its portal devices, available with 8 GB, 16 GB and 120 GB; software features such as Buy from FM, which allows users to download music directly from the built-in FM tuner; and the subscription-based service Zune Pass, which allows subscribers to download millions of songs for the monthly price of $14.99.
The exclusive Fania Records digital collection is available at http://www.zune.net/musica.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
Xbox Live & Zune services will be offline starting Monday
We hope you weren’t planning any all night Halo 3 fests for tonight, or needed to download any new music tomorrow, because in just a little over 4 short hours, both Xbox Live and Zune online services will be offline for possibly as long as two days.
Larry Hryb (AKA Major Nelson) earlier this week announced on his website that Microsoft will be taking the Xbox Live service offline starting at 12:01 AM PST and that it will be down for possibly 24 hours. In addition, Cesar Menendez announced over at Zune Insider that, beginning at the same time, Zune services will be down for possibly 48 hours.
Hryb and Mendendez have outlined that during this service disruption the following services will be offline. Xbox LIVE, the ‘My Xbox’ section of Xbox.com, Zune Social, the Zune Marketplace and both the Zune.net forums and the Xbox.com forums will be in read only mode.
While Hryb acknowledged that this maintenance window is in preparation for the new Xbox experience, it will not include that update or any other new features for users of either service. The Xbox Live and Zune’s online services are interconnected in many areas including some contact list & profile sharing as well as the "Microsoft Points" currency system.
The new Xbox Live experience is expected to be available later this fall. Is it possible that both systems will be down to further connect the two and that when the new experience is finally rolled out that Zune will take center stage on the platform?
Source- Neowin
Microsoft Network Monitor 3.2 RTM (non-beta)
It looks like this one came out around the same time as the Zune 3.0 software came out. Coincidence? Most likely!
The features are the same as the beta version of 3.2, as mentioned here.
Changes since 3.1:
Process Tracking: Categorize network traffic based on the name and ID of the owning process.
Extensive Parser Set: Parsers for over 300 protocols, including SMB 2.0.
Network Monitor 3.2 API: Create your own applications that capture, parse and analyze network traffic.
Improved Capture Rate: Drop fewer frames on high speed networks.
ContainsBin plug-in: Search frames for arbitrary byte sequences or strings.
Find Conversations: Quickly isolate related frames.
Support for frame truncation.
Indication of the number of dropped frames.
Streamlined UI toolbar
Download Network Monitor 3.2 RTM here.
Zune Brings Powerful New Entertainment Features to Every Zune Portable Media Player With Software Release
Zune, Microsoft Corp.’s end-to-end music and entertainment service, today released its much anticipated free software update that will bring new features to every Zune portable media player. Revealed last week, the new software will allow Zune users to wirelessly stream and download music from the Zune Marketplace store on the go; tag and purchase songs directly from the built-in FM radio; and tap into new, personalized music recommendations and programming. To allow customers to take full advantage of the new wireless functionality, Zune today announced that it is working with high-speed Internet access provider Wayport Inc. to deliver Zune users free, wireless access to the Zune Marketplace from more than 9,800 participating McDonald’s®restaurants across the U.S.
“Wayport is pleased to be working with Microsoft to make it easier for Zune users to access music on the go,” said Dan Lowden, vice president of business development and marketing for Wayport. “Our ability to enable and manage applications and devices over converged networks creates exciting new opportunities for our clients to attract new customers whose digital lifestyle extends beyond their home and office.”
More info can be found on the Press Release here
Cutting the Cord: Zune 3.0 Offers Downloads From the Airwaves
This week the Zune music and media service comes out with a host of hardware and software upgrades that gives fans more ways to connect with new music. Out in time for the holidays, Zune 3.0 features both the usual and the unusual.
Under the “usual” category, the device itself is stepping up, with the premium Zune player now offering 120 GBs of space. The headroom for the smaller flash devices will also double, up to 16 GBs. And the flash devices will be available for the first time in blue. Beyond those upgrades, the hardware itself won’t change much, with Microsoft instead focusing on the software that powers the players.
According to Brian Seitz, group marketing manager for Zune, the device doesn’t have to change much because its initial design created a platform for Microsoft to do what it does best — build software.
Which brings us to the unusual. The 3.0 release of the Zune service takes advantage of the device’s wireless capabilities, its FM tuner, the Zune social network, and the Zune Marketplace to create a sweeping set of new offerings that Zune’s growing fan base can really sink their teeth into.
“The new frontier for personal media players is the software,” Seitz says. “We made an early bet with the FM player and wireless capabilities of the device. Now we can build on those hardware features by delivering great software. That’s what we’re doing with the 3.0 update.”
Source- Microsoft’s Press Release
Zune Client software, version 3.0
New,Zune Client software is available for download.You will need this software to sync contents from a PC to a Zune device.
U can download it here
XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta Release On Its Way!
On behalf of the XNA team I am excited to announce the upcoming availability of the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta. This is a significant milestone and represents the completion of all our features for XNA Game Studio 3.0! We’ll have much more information with the final release but here’s a quick glance at some of the key features and additions in the beta:
Zune
- Compatibility with the upcoming Zune 3.0 Firmware release. Please note that the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP will no longer work once you have upgraded your Zune device to the 3.0 firmware.
- Improved deployment stability.
- Support for Zune deployment on Windows Vista x64 Systems!
- You can now use the Remote Performance Monitor for Zune games.
Xbox 360
- Xbox 360 project templates (You will not be able to develop on the Xbox 360 until our final release. We felt this was important to include so that you could get projects converted over and look at the system, even if you are not able to run the games, yet).
- Support for the Big Button Pad.
We hope that early next week you’ll give the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta a download and run it through its paces. As we mentioned above this beta will be very close to what our release looks like, so if you encounter ship stopping issues (crashes, hangs) please let us know through Microsoft Connect! We’ve paid close attention to your feedback and we’ve added many of the features you requested. If your feature didn’t make it in this release, don’t worry we’ve still got more to come! If you have ideas on ways we can be better share them with us through Microsoft Connect. There you can add or vote on feature suggestions that you would like to see.
Source- XNA Team Blog
