istartedsomething

The Microsoft Zune team has officially become “region control” extremists. First, they locked down the Zune Originals site with geographic IP blocking so you couldn’t even fantasize about the cool and stylish new Zunes if you didn’t live in the United States. If that wasn’t enough, they’re also blocking enthusiasts from populating their Zune Card with play lists. Now comes a third restriction which hides the Zune Marketplace in the latest version (2.5) of the Zune software.

If you installed version 2.5 of the Zune Software and you don’t live in the United States, this is what you see. There is no “Marketplace” button in the menu bar.

After some digging around, I’ve found a quick and dirty, but effective, workaround anyone can use to restore the Marketplace back in the Zune software, until at least the Zune team realize there are people outside of the North American continent who share a passion for music too.

To apply the workaround, find the “Regional and Language Options” settings in your Control Panel. Vista user can get to this by searching for “regional” in the Start menu. Under the “Locations” tab, select “United States” as the country. Apply generously.

If you now launch the Zune software, you should be in business.

As far as I know there’s little or no side-effects to this workaround because the “Locations” setting is not widely utilized. At most you’re losing a bit of national pride. Perhaps one day you won’t have to lie about your nationality to discover some music on Zune.

Several hours ago Microsoft released the Zune Spring 2008 Update with a new Zune software package (version 2.5). Embedded in the resource files is an interesting image of a new red “Scorpius” (4/8GB) Zune. Instead of the model available today with a silver backing and red touchpad, this had a black backing and black touchpad.

(Left) New red Zune with black backing and touchpad. (Right) Existing red Zune with silver backing and red touchpad.

The last time a “Scorpius” Zune with a black touchpad was discovered, it turned out to be a commemorative 16GB edition exclusive to the Zune staff. I would assume a commemoration only happens once, so could this be a new 16GB Zune for everyone else?

For any skeptics out there, the two images have notably different positioned logos which confirms these are not the same images colored differently.

If by now you still don’t understand what Microsoft’s Live Mesh is, then let this short 60-seconds promotional video originally featured at the Web 2.0 Expo explain it to you in ultra-slow-motion.

While you’re at it, see if you can spot and name all the third party products and brands. All I can say there’s a-plenty. Bonus points for identifying the model of the car. Special thanks to “Avatar X.” for uploading the original high-quality video.

In a couple of hours, the four-month long “It’s not cheating” Facebook competition hosted by Microsoft is going to end and it’s going to be a close call.

Some of you might remember me promoting the istartedsomething.com group all the back in December where I promised to give away the prizes to whomever joined the Facebook group.

I’ve kept my promise and has already given away a Smartphone to a lucky member in the first round, but we’re a few members short to win the final round with the prize of an XBOX 360 bundle with 3 games. I’m not too sure if GTA IV is one of them, but at least you could score a free console to play it on.

At the time of writing, there’s another group who’s in the lead with 669 members, compared to 627 members in the istartedsomething group. That group promises to give the XBOX360 away to charity for fund raising which is a notable cause so I won’t discredit them, but I think it’ll be a shame for everyone to have so far and lose in the last mile.

I know it’s always hard to ask people to invite others into a competition which in fact reduces the chance for themselves but some is still better than none. As a matter of fact, one in seven hundred chance of winning an XBOX 360 is still pretty decent for clicking a link.

If you know someone who’s not already in the istartedsomething.com “It’s not cheating” Facebook group, get them to sign up and one of you could very well be playing on a new XBOX 360 and perhaps GTA IV in a matter of days.

Update: With about an hour to go, the other group is till in the lead with ~80 people.
Update2: It’s over. The other group has won.

It is a lesser known feature of the Zune media player to revive small animals using the hybrid headphone defibrillator, which this following beautifully crafted spec commercial dutifully demonstrates. Check it out.

In case you were wondering, “spec” is short for speculative and it means this was an unofficial ad created by a third party as part of their personal portfolio to showcase their creative skills. In case this, the director - Stewart Hendler is obviously not short of talent. Human Worldwide who produced the soundtrack also deserves a lot of credit for a mesmerizing composition.

A recent interview on Screen Magazine with Human reveals some details.

Human recently teamed up with director Stewart Hendler, who is with Ubercontent, to produce and score a 30-second spec spot for Zune entitled “Music Is Life.” In the spot, a young African-American boy is walking down the street, listening to his Zune music player. As he walks through a less safe part of town, he sees a dead bird lying on the sidewalk. He kneels next to the bird, and gently places his earphones against the bird’s heart. Much to his surprise, the bird springs back to life, and flies away. We see the graphic “Music Is Life.” Then we see “Zune is Music.” The boy quietly continues his walk.

Instead of existing as secondary to the visual content of the ad, the musical score is a surprisingly vital part of the ad. Human composer Morgan Visconti describes the track as one with a “bittersweet, haunting feel. We wanted a track that would be instantly memorable – one that would sound more like a record than a scored piece. We wanted to write something that a potential Zune user would want pre-loaded onto their machine. We used acoustic instruments—piano, guitar, drums and violin. In post, we added reverb over the whole stereo mix to give it a ghostly, ethereal sound, featured during the bird’s ‘resurrection’ sequence.”

Behind the scenes what’s probably even more exciting is that Stewart produced this with one of the new Red One cameras - an extremely affordable high-definition video camera set to revolutionize the cinematography industry. Here, the result (even at such low resolutions) is nothing short of a visual spectacle.

From what I can also gather by reading a forum post by Stewart about the production, he produced this in one day with only 7 people. I presume the bird doesn’t count. Here’s one of the higher-quality stills he posted for a better look.

I really think the Zune could use some more emotional advertising like the one above instead of the abstract and psychedelic acid trips it currently portrays.

Update: Found some information posted by Stewart where he talks about how they shot the scene with the dead bird.

We found a bird that was already trained to lie on its back (only in LA, right?) and it was handled on set by two wranglers. There was a piece of mono-filament line attached to it’s leg so it couldn’t fly away (which we’ll paint out eventually).

We also had a matching, taxidermied bird with an air bladder in it’s stomach to simulate the first breath.

I’ve given away some mousepads, headwear, reading material and a couple of software licenses before but I think this might top all of that in terms of size, weight, usefulness and most importantly, value.

Some of you might remember the HP Pavilion HDX 9000 “Dragon” Entertainment Notebook (possibly inspired by War and Peace) computer I reviewed last September, well there’s no better way to put it except HP is giving 31 (thirty-one) of them away. This site will be giving away one of them.

If the sheer number of them isn’t existing enough, the upgraded model they’re giving away is actually not even fresh on the market. The specifications include:

• Operating system: Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
• Processor: Intel Core2 Extreme Processor X9000 (2.80GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
• Display: 20.1″ diagonal WUXGA High-Definition HP Ultra Brightview Widescreen (1920×1200)
• Memory: 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• Graphics Card: 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS
• Personalization: HP Imprint Finish (Dragon) + Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone
• Networking: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Network Connection and Bluetooth(TM)
• Hard Drive: 500GB 5400RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (250GB x 2)
• Optical: Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer
• TV & Entertainment Experience: Integrated HP HDTV Hybrid TV Tuner and 4 Altec Lansing speakers + the HP Triple Bass Reflex subwoofer
• Primary Battery: 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

But the excitement (for you) doesn’t stop there. The good people at HP and BuzzCorps also thought of what the winners might want to do with their new portable powerhouse - perhaps edit some pictures and videos, play a few games or watch some movies - and that’s the reason why they’re also throwing in:

Microsoft Office 2007, Corel PaintShop Pro Photo X2, Corel Painter 4, Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 Plus

Viva Pinata, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Microsoft Flight Simulator X Acceleration Expansion Pack, Gear of War

Pirates of the Caribbean – The Curse of the Black Pearl, Dead Man’s Chest, At World’s End (Blu Ray)

The competition works like this. The 31 machines are distributed amongst 31 technology blogs - some you probably read already and some you might not have heard of. Each blog will draw a winner on each day starting from May 9 to June 8. How each blog will pick a winner is unique but they will only accept entries starting from 7 days before the draw. Going to each blog to submit an entry is allowed and encouraged.

The schedule (iCal download) is as follows:

Remember to check out those sites at least 7 days before the giveaway draw date to find out how to enter. As for this site, how I’ll be doing the competition is still undecided. Keep a watchful eye.