Vendor: Incipio
Price: $19.99

One of the 1st things that anyone needs to do when spending a decent amount of cash for a gadget is to protect it. Cases, cleaners, screen protectors, etc... When the Zune 80 hit the streets, there really were not many options other than the "Zune Branded" Black case. Now that some time has passed, there are more and more cases becoming available. One of them is the Incipio Flip Case I am presenting today.

This classic design offers great access and excellent protection. Your Zuneâ„¢ has to be ready for today's fast paced world. The Incipio Flip case is up to the task. The Flip case is made of premium supple leather on the outside and soft micro-suede lining.

Features

• Made of high-quality, premium Top-Grain Leather
• Easy access to all buttons and features
• Clear shield protecting the screen
• Backed by Incipio's lifetime warranty

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... at least according to Jasmine France in her recent article, "Best MP3 players for podcasts"

This article highlighted the pro's and some con's, of different MP3 players and their podcasts. The Microsoft Zune was proudly positioned as #1, followed closely by the Ipod Touch in the #2 position. This is the blurb about zune podcast support taken from the article:

Microsoft Zune: A fantastic podcast option, the Zune even ekes past the iPod for the top spot. The software is excellent for podcasts: You can manage how many episodes you want to sync to your device on a subscription-by-subscription level, meaning you can update three episodes of Buzz Out Loud, but only one of MP3 Insider and so on. You can also unsubscribe from podcasts directly from the player, and there's an option to wirelessly sync new podcasts when you charge your player at night. The Zune also offers accelerated fast forwarding and passive bookmarking to automatically remember your spot in each podcast.

Zune clearly does excel with podcast support, but their is still room for improvement, and many other aspects Microsoft needs to put more emphasize on to get a stronger foothold in the MP3 industry. Always glad to see zune on top though(at least at Cnet).

I have been bragging and going on about how much I love my new Zune Originals.  I even bought a Griffin clear hard case at Target that I wanted to share as well. So it is unfortunate that I have decided to send it in for repair/replacement.  I may not even get back my Red, substituting for a black. Call me petty but when I spend more than $100 on an item I want it to at least meet some quality standards when it reaches my hands or home.  

After spending much time looking closely at my Zune I noticed a few issues that opened up to a few more issues.  It's sad how we continuously have quality issues with products from China.  I at one point believed China was trying to kill us slowly with the amount of lead products, razor blades in candy, paint in toys that metabolizes in the stomach as GHB (a.k.a date rape drug), and now my precious Zune.

I have read many times about dead pixels and dust under the screen.  I have found dust under the glass, scratches from taking it apart and a broken tab on the case (all of this due to them taking it apart to perform the custom engraving.)  See the pictures after the break.

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The kids over at Zunerama got their hands on the iHome ZN9 and have tons of pics and a pretty thorough review written up.  It's the first clock/radio designed specifically for the Zune.  Check it out!

As many of you may know, the Joy Division is on the brink of it's June 17th release, and as you can see in the picture below, it does feature a black back. Now, for any of you who read one of my past posts about black backed zune's, it becomes apparent that this Joy Division was the Zune 80 pictured.

However, the zune 80 was not the only zune with different color. Also found by Zunited, was a red flash zune, with not only a black back, but a black touch pad as well. Does this mean a new limited edition zune coming in the near future?  It sure would be nice to see.

Microsoft is running a promotion where if you try MSN Mobile, you will have a chance to win a Zune.  I have used MSN Mobile and it is pretty good.  Check their site for details, and best of luck scoring a free Zune!

http://www.msnmobilefix.com/zune/

Ok, I want to start off by apologizing for being out of service since last Saturday. Over the weekend, The Planet, which is our hosting company, had an explosion that knocked out power to the data center that we use. Monday morning power was restored. Unfortunately, we still had issues. 1st it was internal networking problems with their name servers. We finally got a tech support person to dig deep and he was able to find that their was a problem in our revolvers config. That and we were getting slammed by bots at the same time made for 4-10 minute page loads. It was a weird problem and I am very happen that we finally got it fixed.

I want to thank everyone for the emails, tweets, posts, etc in support of this issue. Thanks to Julie for updating twitter with the status. It was a very low time for me and I was very frustrated. I took being up 99.8% of the time for granted. I am so happy to have our collective voice back.

Another issue that was brought up with all this is ads on the site. There were some ads that expanded over the content that were implemented shortly before we went down. Those have been removed too. I have requested that our new ad agency not serve those type ads on our site. Sorry for the inconvenience.

As always, I will refund each one of the readers their monthly fees for viewing this site to make up for the downtime. Wait, it's free... nevermind. We have some catching up to do everyone. I'll get on that tommorow. I am very tired.

Continuing with the 2-cent suggestions, here are ways to improve and expand "The Social".  This is one area the Zune markets itself above the rest as other portable media players do not have social sharing aspects to them.  The current Social is a great start, but there are definite areas to improve upon.

2 CENT SUGGESTIONS - ZUNE SOCIAL

• Drop the 3 plays limit and DRM on non-DRM Files.  There should not be any DRM on unprotected audio files I have on my device which I want to share with other Zune users.  Not everyone is a music pirate and not everything shared is under copyright.  If it was a purchased DRM song, then I can understand keeping the DRM limits on it, but other than that, drop the DRM and limits on shared media.
• Podcasts displayed on Zune Tag.  A great feature of The Social is showing what you are listening to on your Zune Tag.  Why can't the podcasts I listen to show up on my Zune tag?  It would be great if a user could click on the podcast I recently listened to on the Zune Tag, in which they can directly listen, watch or subscribe to the podcast.
• New ways to discover new music.  Many of us want to discover new music.  Pre-populating your friends list with people who have "similar" music tastes as your own is a good place to start as not everyone is walking down the street with a Zune just yet, but I feel more friends could be pre-populated based on your listening preferences.  With the 2.5 update, one friend was added to my friends list with dissimilar musical tastes.  Sites such as eMusic.com and Netflix.com show users with similar tastes to yours and suggest new media for you.  Possibly have music suggestions based on the styles you listen to, much the way Pandora.com does, and even have clips of the songs downloaded to the Zune so you can listen to them while on the go.
• Video Sharing.  I want to be able to share a video just as I can share audio and pictures.  Sending a video over Wi-Fi is currently not possible.
• Shared files are transferred to the computer at sync time.  Someone just shared you a great song or picture of a friend's recent engagement; wouldn't it be nice to have it transferred back to your computer the next time you sync your Zune at home?
• Share within the Zune software.  Wouldn't it be great to be able to share media directly via the Zune software or Zune.net just by right-clicking a media file and sharing it with a friend?

Any other ways to improve The Social?

Over at Zune Insider, Cesar lets us know that over the next few weeks the video portion of the Zune Marketplace will be expanding by 50%, adding 400 new shows, including ones from the USA network (hooray Monk!).  He also says that eventually they'll be bringing Bravo Network hotness to the marketplace as well (hooray Top Chef!). 

Here's a full list of all the shows set to drop over the next few weeks (the first two have me especially hyped):

Wednesday, May 28: COMEDY CENTRAL

o    “The Colbert Report”

o    “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”

Friday, May 30: NBC Universal

o    “Friday Night Lights”

o    “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”

o    “Law & Order”

o    “Life”

o    “Lipstick Jungle”

o    “Saturday Night Live”

Tuesday, June 3: SCI FI Channel

o    “Battlestar Galactica Classics”

o    “Destination Truth”

o    “Ghost Hunters International”

o    “Ghost Hunters”

o    “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?”

Friday, June 6: USA Network

o    “Dr. Steve-O”

o    “In Plain Sight”

o    “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”

o    “Monk”

o    “Psych”

o    “The Starter Wife”