Entries tagged with mp3 - Channel 10

Zune 3 News

sarahintampa — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:10:00 GMT

Beginning September 16th, Zune owners will be able to access the latest firmware update: Zune 3. This update will be available to all Zune devices...even all the way back to the original Zune! This unexpected (but seriously cool) feature is sure to please the Zune early adopter crowd. However, the real excitement for Zune owners involves what the Zune 3 update will offer: some amazing features you won’t find on any other mp3 player today.

Buy From FM

One of the new features of the Zune 3 firmware will let you wirelessly stream and download millions of songs on the go any time you’re in a Wi-Fi hotspot. This feature, called “Buy From FM” is designed to take advantage of the built-in FM tuner in the Zune. You’ll be able to tag and purchase songs you hear on FM radio and download them directly to your Zune. If you’re in a Wi-Fi hotspot, the download will be immediate. If Wi-Fi isn’t available, the songs will queue up to be downloaded the next time it is or the next time you connect your Zune to your PC.

Wi-Fi Store

You’ll also be able to connect to the Zune Marketplace music store whenever your Zune is in a Wi-Fi hotspot or on your home wireless network. On the device itself, you can browse through new releases, top songs, top albums, or type on an on-screen keyboard to type in the song of your choice.

Recommendations & Channels

Another feature included in the Zune 3 update is the new recommendation feature. Using the combination of recommendations from the Zune service, the online music community, and your own play data, you’ll be recommended personal suggestions as the Zune software learns what you like. You’ll see these recommendations in a new area of the Zune Marketplace called “Picks.”

Zune Pass subscribers can also discover new music through Channels. These Channels are created by experts in the music community. Here’s you’ll find channels like the Billboard Top 100, the FADER magazine channel, the KEXP radio channel, and even channels designed for listening to while you workout. You’ll also see personalized channels that are based on your favorite artists and genres. Zune owners who don’t have a Zune pass can purchase new Channels a la carte.

Zune Cards

For Zune Pass customers, the new firmware will also offer an updated way to use the Zune Card functionality. Zune Pass subscribers can share Zune Cards with each other wirelessly when on-the-go. All Zune owners will be able to share the Cards with friends when they’re on the web.

Cool Software!

Also included in the update are some new visual effects: Mixview and Now Playing. In Mixview, you can select an artist, album, or Zune Card and see a visual mosaic of related music and listeners. As you click on the mosaic, you’ll be taken in new directions, allowing you to discover music in a visually appealing way.

Image credit: Wired

The “Now Playing” view has also been improved to display artist imagery, colorful effects, artist bio info, and data from the Zune community in a full-screen view.

Games & Audiobooks

The firmware update will offer two free games - “Hexic” and “Texas Hold ‘Em.” It will also feature audiobook support from both Audible.com and OverDriver.com.

New Zunes

Of course, the Zune lineup is being expanded, too. The lineup will feature 16GB and 120GB Zunes and new blue-on-silver and all-black color schemes.

Here’s the pricing info:

120 GB: $249.99

80 GB: $229.99 (3)

16 GB: $199.00

8 GB: $149.99

4 GB: $129.99 (3)

25 milhões de MP3s gratuitos para baixar - legalmente

Galileu — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:46:00 GMT

O serviço se chama Qtrax e será lançado hoje. Com participação e "benção" da Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, e Warner (as principais detentoras das músicas de hoje), a idéia é fornecer downloads gratuitos para usuários em troca de propagandas. Os artistas seriam compensados pelo número de downloads, compartilhamento e número de vezes que as músicas são tocadas. Portanto, sim, os arquivos contém algum tipo de DRM, parecido com o do Zune. No momento iPod fica fora por não ser compatível com o DRM sendo utilizado. Aparentemente, o Qtrax vai utilizar a rede Gnutella para distribuir os MP3s. Essa iniciativa pode ter um grande impacto, e estão surgindo notícias (aqui e aqui) de que não está tudo 100% certo para o Qtrax ir ao ar. Estou curioso para saber o resultado dessa experiência, e vocês?

E para quem não estava sabendo, a Amazon anunciou que estará levando sua loja de MP3s sem DRM para mercados internacionais ainda em 2008.

TRULY small MP3 players at CES 2008

Laura — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:42:00 GMT

We took a poll and you voted- what you wanted to see from the 2008 CES show was small, tiny gadgets. So I found what I think is TRULY the smallest MP3 player at the event. The added bonus is, not only is it small enough to wear as a necklace charm but its easy to use, affordable, stylish and has great audio quality.

Microsoft Auto at CES 2008

Laura — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:11:00 GMT

This was by far the best part of the Bill Gates keynote for me and probably the highlight of the show overall. Microsoft Auto showed of 2 new great technologies to make all of our driving experiences more pleasant with a focus on the Sync My Ride technology. I can't wait to get this in my car. Not only does it offer voice activated features with your wireless MP3 player and your bluetooth mobile phone- but you will be blown away at the excellent text messaging options. Well, at least I was. Take a look and you be the judge.

Dimensões e funcionalidades do Zune

Galileu — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:08:00 GMT

A comparação entre o novo Zune e o iPod é inevitável, e o Engadget já tratou de fazê-la aqui. Eu puxei a tabela deles e traduzi o conteúdo para que nossos leitores possam comparar as funcionalidades dos tocadores. O software e os novos serviços online do Zune ainda não foram lançandos então eles ficarão para uma próxima etapa. Por enquanto, compare os tocadores digitais.

Conheça os novos Zunes

Galileu — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 04:04:00 GMT

A Microsoft revelou hoje para um grupo de jornalistas e bloggers os detalhes sobre os novos Zunes. As grandes novidades estão nos novos modelos - um de 4GB, um de 8GB e um de 80GB - e nas novas funcionalidades que estes modelos, tanto como o modelo original de 30GB, terão a partir de novembro. Além do hardware, o software e a loja online também serão atualizadas.

No lado de hardware, temos dois novos Zunes de memória flash com capacidade para 4GB e 8GB. Eles serão chamados de Zune 4 e Zune 8, respectivamente. Estes modelos terão o novo botão de comando sensível ao toque chamado Zune Pad, virão nas cores rosa, verde, preto e vermelho, terão uma tela de 1,8 polegadas e dimensões de 41,4 mm x 91,5 mm x 8,5 mm. Preço sugerido será US$ 150 pelo Zune 4 e US$ 200 pelo Zune 8. Segue a imagem do Zune 4 e 8:

Já o Zune 80 é um modelo de disco rígido com capacidade para 80GB. Conta com o Zune Pad para navegação, virá só em preto inicialmente, terá uma tela de 3,2 polegadas e dimensões de 61,1 mm x 108,2 mm x 12,9 mm, tem preço sugerido de US$ 250. Segue a imagem do Zune 80:

O Zune original passa a ser chamado de Zune 30, com preço sugerido de US$ 199. A boa notícia para proprietários desse modelo é que ele receberá todas as funcionalidades dos modelos novos através de uma atualização. As funcionalidades incluem:
- Nova interface gráfica nos tocadores
- Suporte nativo para h.264 e MPEG-4
- Sincronização via WiFi com seu computador
- Suporte para podcasts
- Compartilhamento de diversas mídias, não só músicas
- Sincronização automática com o Windows Media Center (isso permite que você leve suas gravações de TV no Zune)

Veja a família inteira do Zune:

O software para o Zune foi totalmente redesenhado. O Zune Marketplace, a loja que reside dentro do software, agora conta com um catálogo de 3 milhões de músicas, sendo mais de 1 milhão sem DRM (proteção de direitos autorais) e adiciona vídeo clipes de músicas e também podcasts. A opção de assinatura mensal continua, onde por US$ 15 o usuário tem acesso à biblioteca inteira de músicas do Zune Marketplace.

No lado social, haverá um site dedicado a uma comunidade de fãs de música. Cada usuário terá um Zune Card, semelhante ao Gamercard do Xbox, que é um cartão de suas preferências musicais para compartilhar com os outros. Cada usuário poderá ouvir trechos de 30 segundos das músicas que os demais estão ouvindo, a qual é mostrada no Zune Card. Os Zune Cards também ajudarão a gerar tabelas de popularidade de músicas, artistas, álbuns, etc. Veja a cara do novo software:

Todas as novidades estão previstas para chegar em novembro. Não há previsão para a chegada do Zune no Brasil. Fiquem antenados aqui para maiores informações.

Atualizado: Amanhã serão lançados os novos Zunes

Galileu — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:40:00 GMT

Amanhã a Microsoft irá anunciar o lançamento de novos modelos do Zune, tocador de mídia digital da empresa. Junto com os novos modelos virão um novo software e uma nova loja, além de uma comunidade beta ainda desconhecida. Postarei os detalhes assim que possível.

Atualização: As informações serão reveladas hoje à noite somente para imprensa e blogs. Os mesmos não poderão reportar ou postar as informações até 1 da manhã do dia 03/10, horário de Brasília.

O on10 costuma ter vídeos para esse tipo de lançamento, então fiquem ligados na páginal principal ao redor de 1 da manhã.

Silverlight, Expression Encoder 1.0 released

benwaggoner — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 23:38:00 GMT

It's been a long road, but today was the big day for Silverlight to hit the world. Scott Guthrie's Blog has got the best detailed summary of the ton of stuff that got announced today. There are four big things relevant to digital media I want to highlight before I hop on the plane for IBC. I'll be focusing on Silverlight and its scenarios on the blog for the rest of this month.

All drop by the Microsoft booth at IBC if you'd like to say hello and see some demos of both our new codec technologies and Silverlight.

Silverlight 1.0 is out!

The next generation web plugin for digital media is now a released 1.0, so non-early adopters can start installing it and content creators and developers can start authoring to it. Silverlight uses Windows Media for its digital media, so a huge library of compatible content is immediately available. And the current CDN ecosystem for hosting and streaming all works, using Windows Media Services as shipping. Silverlight contains its own implementation of the codecs inside itself, and so doesn't have any dependency on WMP or other OS features, so you'll get an identical experience wherever Silverlight is installed. The set of codecs supported in 1.0 are:

Windows Media Video 7
Windows Media Video 8
Windows Media Video 9
Windows Media Video 10 (progressive only)
Windows Media Audio "Standard" (tested with WMA 9.2 back to WMA 7 files, but the bitstream has been locked-down since WMA 2)
MP3 (in a .mp3 file)

Full details on media features are here.

Silverlight includes robust auto-update features, so support for additional codecs is certainly possible in the future. We'd appreciate any feedback on missing codecs and media features that are keeping anyone from adopting Silverlight today.

Expression Encoder 1.0 is out!

Expression Encoder (formerly Expression Media Encoder) is a new compression tool targeting Silverlight, (although its WMV files will play in all the standard players). Beyond being a great WMV encoder, its real killer feature is easy generation of a Silverlight player experience around the media asset, including subtitles/captioning, thumbnail-based visual navigation, etcetera. It's a deep product, and I'm going to be doing a much more in-depth analysis of it here soon.

One important thing to note about Expression Encoder is that it can be used to build the Silverlight player experience around an already encoded WMV file, so it can be used in conjunction with other compression tools.

Expression Encoder is based on the Windows Media Format SDK 11, so all the registry key tweaks I've been discussing on this blog work perfectly with it.

Silverlight for Linux is announced!

Good details on Miguel de Icaza's web log. In essence, we're partnering with Novell on their Moonlight implementation of Silverlight 1.0 and 1.1 (only 1.1 had been announced before). They'll be providing everything but the media codecs, which will be built by my team and provided via Microsoft.

So, Silverlight today has great reach for Windows and Mac (Intel and PowerPC), with Linux on the way.

Lots of content support!

For any new platform, the chicken-and-egg question is always paramount when discussing adoption - why should users install before there's content, and why should content publishers target it before users have installed it? That we're already compatible with a huge volume of WMV content is a big help here, of course. But nothing beats high-profile content companies targeting the format to get the installs out there (which is also a great validation of the unique value Silverlight provides).

Customers already deploying content include: MLB.com (Major League Baseball), Home Shopping Network, World Wrestling Entertainment, and the "Entertainment Tonight" show.

Silverlight is also now deployed on several Microsoft sites, including the Halo 3 preview site, including the HD version - I worked on the encoding workflow for these assets), Tafiti.com, MSN Extra, and MSN Podium '08. Silverlight will also be used in many other new and updated Microsoft properties.