The world needs more thinkers and tinkerers like Hiroyuki Manabe, who wants to find the next great phone interface, via Wired:

Manabe wired a pair of headphones to a system that detects the electrical currents produced by the rapid movement of his eyeballs. The invention is so precise that he can actually turn up the volume on a music player by rolling his eyes up or down, and he can fast forward tracks with a couple of quick eye jerks to his right.

This type of eye-powered interface could also be helpful to the disabled. Although the prototype looks ridiculous and needs serious fashion tweaking, I’d like to see more eye-powered devices.

Could be a few problems though if it tied too much activity to blinking as we tend to blink our eyes a lot of times every day. If it’s 16 times a minute, or 15,360 times over the course of 16 hours (hey, we have to sleep the other 8, right?), that’s a whole lot of unintentional activity. I’m lucky if I consciously think about blinking once a day, never mind over 15,000 times.

But you could do some sort of switch for closing your eyes and keeping them closed for a period of time. Close eyes and hold for five seconds to play Metallica "Enter Sandman" for example.

Here I have these glasses on every day, why can’t I get an eye-powered or eye-enhanced set of glasses that help me multi-task easier? Such a contraption might border on looking like some Borg apparatus and make even Manabe’s headphones look cool.

How about using our eyes to control a 3D viewer like PicLens (left) someday? Is Piclens neat browser eye candy or a glimpse at the future?

It looks like Chrysler is going after techies — in a good way.

I’m going to contact the sales department at our local Chrysler dealer and ask them about UConnect Web and when the 2009 model cars are coming in.

The system is not rigged to keep the driver from doing such things while the car is moving, though Chrysler will discourage it. UConnect Web will be offered in most 2009 Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicles starting in August. The in-vehicle router will cost $449, plus installation of up to $50. Mobile Web access for it will require a $29-a-month subscription, after $35 for activation, through provider Autonet Mobile.

As some readers might recall, our last new vehicle purchase was a 2007 PT Cruiser. Subpar gas mileage aside — I mean you’d think a little car like this would get great gas mileage, but it doesn’t — we’ve been happy with the purchase otherwise. There have been a few other minor dealer-related annoyances, but nothing worth writing about. We really like the fact that all our preventive maintenance was paid for in advance. I’d buy that plan again and would recommend to friends.

I’m mildly interested in the Sebring, but like the look of the Chrysler 300. The next business vehicle we buy will be automatic and likely not an SUV. We’re interested in something small that does at least 30 MPG on highway (the Sebring does) and needs to have something like UConnect. Like the idea of a built-in GPS as well and it wouldn’t break our hearts to see built-in Sirius satellite radio either. This will be my wife’s car and she wants to get her driver’s license for the first time (hence the reason it needs to be smaller).

If someone reading knows of smaller cars that fit the above specs, please let me know in the comments or trackback in.

Been a little while since I’ve mentioned Chumby.

It still sits to the left of my computer monitor, nestled atop the printer, updating me through a dozen different widgets throughout the day on things like stock prices, my horoscope, what happened on this day in history and so on. To date it’s been used like a $179 billboard, rather than anything that useful or revolutionary.

This morning the New York Times has a piece which discusses the monetization scheme for Chumby (emphasis mine):

Businesses are free to distribute widgets that use information from their own sites, except if they want those widgets to display advertising or sell something. In that case, the only thing that is open is Chumby’s phone line. It expects to be paid a cut of all the money made over its system.

At first I didn’t see as many Public Service Announcements on Chumby, but I’ve noticed an increase. I realize the Chumby can be modified to function as a lighthttpd server which better suits my needs and would use 100% of my bandwidth. I’m thinking about doing that because I don’t really want or need to see commercials in between widgets. That’s too similar to the TV model of content, commercials, content. Anybody else reading using their Chumby this way and want to share your experiences in the comments below?

My original plans were to do some amount of Chumby widget development but since I don’t have and have little desire to pay $679 to buy the Flash IDE, I’ve kept on the fence. There are some open source alternatives to doing Flash development, but they looked a little time intensive. Is there an open source Chumby Flash lite IDE that somebody reading knows about and is using? I’d still like to get into developing some Chumby widgets, but if this calls for me buying the Flash IDE, it will probably be back-burnered.

Also, anybody running Silverlight applications on Chumby yet? I see some PHP 5.25 binaries were cooked up already.

If you’re traveling to Montana with shiny new Kindle in hand, might want to buy those books beforehand. Sprint EVDO coverage in Montana is limited, very limited if you look at the EVDO dead zone in the nationwide Kindle coverage map below.

When no Sprint EVDO network is present, the Kindle will attempt to downgrade to the dramatically slower Sprint data network. Unfortunately, coverage in Montana and other white areas on the map is still limited.

Relating to this coverage issue bookofJoe has a post asking: Amazon Kindle a Fraud?:

You and I know now — and Jeff Bezos knew, or certainly should have known — that the device doesn’t work in certain places yet Amazon happily banked the money from the dupes who didn’t, as well as crowing about how demand was so great it was sold out the day it appeared. Not the way a good company does business.

Hey bookofjoe, you’re reaching, mon. Anybody in this day and age who paid $400 for a device that relies on internet connectivity for full functionality and didn’t first check the service coverage area should have their license to geek taken away. Don’t any of these people have cell phones? Who doesn’t know internet coverage isn’t omnipresent? Really?

Apparently, bookofjoe and the commenter he was excited about, Steve Saroff who lives in Missoula don’t believe checking coverage maps before purchase is important? Mr. Saroff goes even further to suggest that this might be some kind of “bait and switch” advertising by Amazon.

Please.

While I would submit that the customer is almost always right, this particular Kindle customer is wrong. Missoula and Helena are beautiful cities with wonderful and friendly people, but they just don’t get much respect when it comes to Sprint coverage. Blame this on Sprint, not Amazon. Lobby them for more towers.

Forget 4GB or 8GB flash drives, forget polyethylenedioxythiophene, forget 30GB, 80GB or 160GB hard drive based players, in a few years it will be possible to put a terabyte (TB) in a very small package. Goodbye to messages like this:

Although no 1TB iPods, Zunes or other portable music/video devices exist yet, you can safely wager they are coming. Even if PMC turns out to be a bust.

I was somewhat surprised our CD collection wouldn’t fit on the Zune 30GB. It took nearly a month of time here and there ripping the CDs to MP3 at 320kbps/44 for a total of 4,927 songs, 42.3 GB. The collection does fit easily on our 80GB iPod, so maybe it’s time for me to update to the Zune 80 (if I can find one somewhere, I hear they are hot sellers at the moment).

PMC plans to put an end to these kind of concerns in a few years. PMC might even allow me to re-rip our collection in FLAC or some other lossless format. PMC will slow aging.

Ok, joking on the last one.

PMC stands for programmable metallization cell and was created by scientists at Arizona State University. In April 2009 the first PMC memory chip is going into production via tech.co.uk:

The new memory uses nano tech to charge copper particles on the molecular scale, making it 1,000 times more energy efficient as current flash memory.

Managing a music collection larger than fits on a Zune
Running out of space did yield one side benefit, to look at the situation positively: I was able to pick and choose exactly what music would be synced. It’s been awhile since I’ve run into space issues with a portable music player.

Choosing what music to sync on the Zune is a matter of dragging individual songs, albums or artists down to the icon in the lower left corner. The Zune will update while you work. It didn’t lag far behind how fast I chose the music from the total collection. I’m not sure about you, friendly reader, but I found a significant amount of music in our family’s collection that I didn’t care to have on the Zune.

I asked our youngest teenager to help me pick a few of his favorite artists. Syncing playlists works similarly. Just click and drag the created playlist to the icon to the Zune device graphic.

It’s too bad these small TB devices aren’t here already, but since I’ve been getting more into HD quality video, I can see the out of space messages appearing for video content. Word to the scientists, hurry up and get us a petabyte storage in small packages for video. I’m positively that, health willing, I’ll be around to see the day that we can comfortably pack around our entire entertainment collection: music, videos, books, magazine.

Looking forward to it. You?

We just got back from a mini road trip to demo our newest car gadget: the Garmin Street Pilot c330. I’ve been checking out these GPS navigation systems for awhile and waiting for the right moment to jump in. One of the Wal-mart Black Friday deals was the Garmin c330 which Consumer Reports rated highly. $128? Are you kidding? I’m there.

Official website product page for Garmin Street Pilot c330
Buy Garmin StreetPilot c330 at Amazon (affiliate)

The c330 comes in one of those knuckle bleeding clam shell cases. Take your favorite pocket knife or razor blade to the case and unveil the contents: c330 which fits in the palm of your hand, suction cup mount and circular dash sticky mount, CD and USB cord.

Attaching the Garmin c330 to the suction cup windshield mount is as easy as pressing it into the grooves and snapping it gently into place. You don’t even need to even plug it into the USB to charge the three hour internal battery.

I wet the back of the suction cup, unhinged the clasp and then stuck it on the front windshield beneath the rearview mirror of our 2007 PT Cruiser. The winshield mount swivels so when you aren’t using the device you can push it up near the mirror and give yourself more line of sight. There is a small plugin on the device for the cigarette adapter which powers the c330.

Note: the states of California and Minnesota prohibit the use of anything that attaches to your windshield. You’ll need to use the enclosed circular dash mount for those cases. Pity really, as the c330 isn’t intrusive (see picture above of limited line of sight interference).

During our trip, we decided to move the unit down further so it had a better view of the skies. We had some issues with locating satellites with it closer to the rear-view mirror.

On first power-up the c330 will communicate with the satellite and triangulate your position. Now big brother knows where you are at (just kidding). This process takes a couple minutes. Meanwhile you can thumb through one of the smallest instruction manuals I’ve received with any gadget. It’s like a half dozen pages with color pictures. The Garmin Street Pilot c330 ranks among one of the easiest to setup gadgets I’ve ever used.

After the initial setup the User Interface gives you two choice: Where to? and View Map.

This simplistic UI is surprisingly effective. Both my wife and I found it very easy to tell the Garmin c330 where we wanted to go.

In the above picture four key items are marked in red:

1. The arrival time to your destination. This will be explained in more detail shortly.
2. Menu button will return you to the “Where now?” screen. You can also access the settings (marked with a wrench). These items are disabled in safe mode while driving. You can disable safe mode if a passenger is going to program new or modify existing destinations. If you choose a new destination along the route to another one, the c330 will ask you if you want to travel to the secondary location along the way to your existing destination. This is useful if you are hungry and need to veer a bit off track in order to get to a nearby restaurant.
3. This is your vehicle. Note that your destination is shown in red. As long as you keep the car in the red, you’re traveling the right direction. Funny that they didn’t use green. Your destination is marked with a checkered flag.
4. On the right bottom corner is how many miles or feet until your next turn or action point. We learned that sometimes the c330 would tell us to “stay right” or “stay left” when the text actually says to turn. A little confusing when you look at the screen but if you follow the road, you’re good to go.

One of the neat functions is being able to choose the “near” option which will tell you where points of interest are like shopping malls, gas stations, restaurants and more. When you find a spot you want to go to, like we did with a nearby Godfather’s Pizza you just touch with your finger and choose “Go.”

Perhaps the biggest issue with these devices is the accuracy of the maps and satellite connection. If the maps are too outdated then it will show you places nearby that don’t exist at all. Godfather’s Pizza in Lacey is now a Round Table, for example. We also found a couple other places on our brief beach trip that didn’t exist.

As for the satellite connection, we experienced a total meltdown with the Garmin c330 while driving through Portland, Oregon. It kept losing the signal and when it found a signal it would be off on streets nearby that we weren’t on. I decided to call Garmin support today to see what they recommended about dealing with outdated maps and inferior satellite connectivity through a major city in the United States. If we lived in and/or regularly navigated through Portland there’s no way I’d want to use this device. I learned that there is a free firmware upgrade on the website which specifically deals with this issue.

Another useful feature is bright, very readable text that shows detailed data about your trip such as (pictured above):

- how long it will take to get there. The estimated arrival time is shown in the lower left corner. This gives you the ability to estimate how many miles away you are. The arrival time and miles will adjust as you move closer to your destination.
- miles per hour traveled both current and overall average. There is also a rather useles max speed counter. We found this number getting out of sync frequently showing numbers like 286mph. In a PT Cruiser? Yeah, right. Even got a number 986mph once, I’d like to see the speeding ticket for that one!
- trip counter (”Total time”). Contains stats for how far traveled, how much time. Some vehicles have these features as part of the cruise control package and this would be a duplicate feature but for those vehicles without, it’s handy.
- stop time (”Stopped”). How much time are you spending stopped at traffic lights?

Both the trip settings (”Reset Trip”) and max settings (”Reset Max”) can be reset with a touch to the buttons along the bottom.

Somewhat quirky search
You can also enter in street addresses and search by names, but the search is greatly dependent on the map database. Again, everything goes back to the map database. We tried finding the Fry’s in our area. We tried misspelling (below) and spelling it correctly but the c330 could not locate the Fry’s in Renton.

Fortunately, we could enter in the exact address and have the c330 help us navigate there that way.

The importance of current maps
Business open and close, it’s very difficult for the maps to stay completely current, but after further more extensive testing I was disappointed that the c330 comes with crippled maps. The reason the c330 is being sold so cheaply is because the maps are outdated and there isn’t enough space internally on the units to hold the entire US and Canada. Since we travel to Canada a few times a year, this isn’t a good unit for us.

Surprisingly, the customer support rep at Garmin was very helpful in recommending the following other Garmin units which would fit our needs better:

Street Pilot c340 - this is the newer model in the 300 series and if it doesn’t come with the current 2008 maps, Garmin will automatically send you the new maps for free ($70 USD for c330 owners). This also adds the feature of voice prompts for the street name: e.g “turn right on main street in 0.2 miles” versus the c330 version of: “turn right in 0.2 miles.” Also the c340 comes with a feature that allows viewing the maps on your computer. This way you can map out destinations from your computer.
nuVee 250 (no voice streets) - comes with enough space to hold full US and Canada maps but doesn’t have the voice prompts
nuVee 260 (voice street prompts = yes) - a little more expensive than the 250.

And finally a more fancy and expensive version was offered: the nuvee 350 (voice street yes, MP3 and picture storage). Not sure we need to go this far as we already have an iPod and Zune with plenty of storage for music and pictures, but it’s nice to know what versions come with the 2008 maps. It’s too bad Wal-mart didn’t do anything to educate people on Black Friday that the c330 deal came with a big *asterisk:

*1. maps are outdated and it cost $70 to update them
*2. unit doesn’t have the capacity to hold full maps for US and Canada. Something important that people who live near the border like we do will probably want to know.

Bad Wal-mart, bad. I suppose we should have expected it was too good a deal to be true.

Points of Interest
One last thing to mention that makes these devices cool are programmable points of interest (POI). You can download POI from various sites on the web to an SD card up to 2GB in size and then be able to access them from all the Garmin GPS devices. I didn’t check into how easy this is to do, formats and the like, but it sounds like a great way to make your GPS even more useful.

After using the c330 the last few days, and especially because I love playing around with new gadgets, I’m not sure how or why I haven’t bought and used one of these devices sooner.

Summary and Grade
If you live in the midwest or don’t travel to Canada, the c330 could be an OK first GPS device at the price. I was really stoked about the device until realizing the number of limitations. Now I have buyer’s remorse. I was on hold calling Garmin support for almost 20 minutes before the rep came to the line (bad), but found the friendly service representative helpful and knowledgeable.

I love how easy it is to read the c330 screen. It will automatically switch into night mode display which is also easy to read in the evening. The touch screen sensitivity was just right although my fingers did press the wrong keys a few times. Overall, not something that would turn me off to the interface which I think is one of the strengths of the device.

It’s rare when a customer support person encourages you to take something back to the store because the device isn’t a good fit for your individual situation. Additionally she knew the answers to my other questions and helped me understand what other units they sold would be a better fit. I’ll end up spending more, but then if we bought the $70 maps that we couldn’t even load fully anyway, we’d be at $200 anyway. I’m thinking for $200 we should be able to find the c340. Amazon shows the c340 for almost $100 more than we paid for the c330.

At the price and if you don’t mind the limitations the c330 could provide a whole new travel dimension. I’m going to take it back to Wal-mart and see if I can get the c340 instead. Grade: C+

As of this writing I’m up to 11 widgets cycling in my Chumby: weather forecast, horoscope, stock quotes, word of the day, this day in history, IMDb died today, Rotten Tomatoes reviews, recent Chumby widgets, Google News - Tech, daily countdown to Van Halen concert and the default blue clock.

Chumby Unboxed And Unpacked In HD (video)

Since my Chumby post yesterday, some folks have asked for my opinion on whether or not they should buy the Chumby or if it’s just another gadget? Longer answer requires a detailed review which will take me some time to get to considering I want to explore and experience both the user and developer side of things.

Short and very premature answer? At this point is if you aren’t a programmer and/or don’t have a desire to do any programming, it’s probably better to wait to buy a Chumby until more applications come out. For example, the one and only Twitter client as of this writing doesn’t even allow posting to your Twitter account. I’m sure better widgets will come along that allows this functionality through the Chumby with time. Give us geeky programmer types more time to get up to speed with Chumby development and I’m certain an increasing number of interesting, entertaining and useful applications will emerge. Right now though, it’s not something I’d tell my non-programmer friends to buy.

With that said, I did shoot some high definition video of opening the box and unpacking Chumby for the first time. This shows how big it is, what comes with it, the neat Chumby stitched bags and more. If you have a High Definition TV then I encourage downloading the 197MB HD video below (thanks Blip.tv, I’m now a pro customer) and watch it there, or if you want the lower quality version maybe you’ve already watched the version above. Watching it in HD is almost like having the Chumby in your hands. The iPod and PSP versions still look pretty good though too.

(Sidenote: should I be writing ‘the/a’ Chumby or simply Chumby? The Chumby.com website seems to use Chumby both ways, so I’ll try to stick with Chumby when referring to it directly or a/the Chumby when talking about it as a device.)

And yes, I’ve seen some folks poking fun at the name. I definitely didn’t buy it for the name. Saw Chumby labeled “obscene” already but don’t think I’d take it that far. Lots of things have weird names these days. Sign of the times.

Hmmcast #178 downloads
PSP .mp4 (480×272) iPod .mp4 (640×480) Windows .wmv (1480×1080 HD)

Here’s my virtual Chumby, which anybody reading can get one of these by simply registering at the Chumby.com website:

Now here’s the real deal which I received an invite to buy a few weeks ago because I registered at the Chumby website saying I wanted to be notified when they were available for purchase:

This morning on Twitter I read this from Dave Winer:

I’d love to get a http://store.chumby.com/ but I’m not one of the “cool” people who are allowed to.

This has nothing to do with how cool you are, Dave. This isn’t one of those private betas where only the cool people get invited. Friends of people who know other people, it’s nothing like that. I don’t know anybody behind the Chumby team, am not part of the cool circle that got to play around with the Chumby at Foo camp in 2006. Now, there is your cool club, Dave.

I don’t like those cool clique private beta deals either. The instructions on the Chumby website were pretty clear: fill out your email address and we’ll notify you ahead of the general public to be able to buy from the Chumby store. That’s what I did, and that’s why they sent the password so I could buy one. As it turns out, my wife actually bought me one because she knew I was trying to decide over a Chumby and a Zune 2 which comes out later this month. She went on my computer, found the Chumby store password and made the purchase of the pearl Chumby shown above.

As of this time, anyway, there are only three choices of Chumby to choose from: basic black, latte and pearl. She bought me the pearl one.

How long to receive the Chumby?
The Chumby is made and sent from a company in China. It took a couple business days to reach Alaska, where customs inspected and then forwarded to the post office in Seattle which forwarded to Pacific which forwarded to Puyallup. A UPS tracking number was provided via email to be able to watch the Chumby on the way to our office.

Describing the Chumby
The Chumby has a beanbag like padding around it with a squeezable button on the top. Squeezing or pushing that button will load a control panel once powered on and updated. The 3.5″ screen a touchscreen. It also has a microphone built-in along the left bottom corner and if you shake it, there is a sensor built-in to detect that as well. Many different programming possibilities available. The Chumby even runs a small Linux-based web server!

On the back of the Chumby:

1 - USB port #1
2 - AC Adapter plugin. It is one of those side AC adapters which makes it easier to plugin to a power strip / UPS.
3 - USB port #2. You can use these ports to load programs from flash USB devices.
4 - Standard headphone jack. The speakers in the Chumby on the back to each side are surprisingly clear. When you first power up the Chumby a demo video walks you through the setup which I’ll cover by separate post in much greater detail.
5 - Power button. After plugging in the Chumby, press this button and you’re on your way.

After the setup, Chumby activation and software upgrade through Wi-Fi period, which took less than 15 minutes in my case — but I saw one other friend on Twitter say it took over 4 hours — you can start adding widgets. Adding widgets from the Chumby website is as easy as choosing the Flash-based widget you want and what channel it will display on the Chumby, setting the amount of time it will display (default time varies by widget and is controllable by you). The default widget is a blue clock with the Chumby in the background and big hands of the clock. You don’t have to set the clock unless there is no Wi-Fi signal, the Chumby sets the clock itself.

The first widget I added was the Astrological widget, I’m a Libra, BTW, and set the default time to 15 seconds. So then I had the time showing for 15 seconds and then the Astrological widget showing the forecast for Libra. Next, I added the countdown widget to the Van Halen concert, which I am about to reduce to five seconds. Then came the Chumby RSS widget using the Google News tech query. I see an error in the format that Chumby doesn’t like so I’ll be tweaking that going forward.

I played around with the Twitter widget last night but took it down because it didn’t update fast enough. Look GrahamEnglish, you’re a star on my Chumby:

Widgets you add from the Chumby will be updated within five minutes on the Chumby automatically. You can also go into the channel settings and force an update by touching the refresh button.

The Chumby folks could help out folks like Dave who would like to purchase one by changing the text to a definitive date when the Chumby will be available instead of: “The store will be open to the public very soon.” When is very soon? I understand Dave’s frustration, because it’s no fun wanting to play around with some new gadget or see the inside of a new website and be denied.

Ironically, I could say the same thing to Dave and others about the video service Seesmic.com by Loic Lemeur, that does seem to be only available to a cool club. I don’t have an invite for that and nobody has sent me one. I thought I filled something out at Seesmic to request one of these invites but maybe I screwed up and didn’t. As it happens, I see numerous people talking about Seesmic and linking up their Seesmic videos but can’t get involved. I just filled out the form to be part of the Seesmic Alpha (again, I think). We’ll see if I have any more luck this time around.

How to buy a Chumby now?
It appears like those who have passwords to the store can buy at least one additional Chumby. I just ran a test and the shopping cart let me choose one and took me to the credit card payment page. So Dave, perhaps all you have to do is contact somebody who already has bought a Chumby that you know (like me) and see if you can order through them? That’s the path I’d take at this point if you really want a Chumby ASAP. Billing address must be exactly the same as the credit card. Cost? $179.95 USD and shipping was included in our order, not sure if it will be that way on any future orders. I’m going to send a direct message on Twitter to Dave with a link to this post, so hopefully he knows somebody out there is willing to help him buy a Chumby.

I think doing this is kosher because Chumby mentions “gift wrap” inside the sales area. If this is not “cool” then somebody please let me know and I’ll update this post accordingly.

Just so it’s clear, I am not volunteering to be the unofficial Chumby order desk, but instead willing to try and help the following people, of which are many in number:

1. readers who have left at least one comment on this blog before today (that’s thousands of different people)
2. friends who follow me on Twitter before today (84 friendly folks)
3. anybody I’ve met in person like Dave at conferences, blog meetups, etc., (lots)

These people if interested in buying a Chumby will need to pay with their own credit card.

I guess, somewhat hypocritically, this my cool club, except the difference is anybody reading this could have gotten into this club with a very small bit of effort prior to today. Like filling out one’s email address on Chumby’s website a few months ago. If you don’t fit into this category, then check with somebody else who has bought a Chumby or has a Chumby store invite and perhaps they can help you. And do one or more of the three listed above.

And now, somebody, anybody, send me one of those Seesmic invites please. I’d like to see what’s behind that curtain.

Update 11:38am PST: Steve from the Chumby team responded in the comments below saying that next week anybody could get a Chumby through the website as part of some beta program. Good. Also, Dave responded to me as well saying he submitted his email and was waiting.

Even though this is Halloween, the following screenshot is not a trick:

iPod fanboys and girls might not like hearing news that their favorite player didn’t even make CNET users top 20 most wanted products list. The only Apple products to make this week’s top 20 list were the Apple iPhone 8GB at #5 and the iTouch 16GB at #10.

Yes, it’s true that the 80GB black Zune v2.0 is topping the CNET users wish list (thanks Zune Insider). The Zune v2.0 player will not be available in stores until next month.

Now for the devil’s advocate position: this is a far cry from Zune vindication, as wish lists don’t necessarily equal sales and the most wanted item isn’t for sale yet. And look who’s #3? The Sony PS3 which hasn’t burned up the sales charts to date (but is getting more attractive). The AT&T Tilt weighs in at #4 and I’m not familiar with.

Any readers planning on buying the Zune 80GB? I’m trying to decide between a Chumby and the Zune. The Chumby isn’t portable, but is programmable, unlike the Zune. I was hoping we’d see some kind of API for the Zune. Maybe that comes in version 3? I am looking forward to the increased podcasting features.

Last night there was a Zune preview event in Seattle that I couldn’t make because I was DJing our VTOR Halloween Party — which we were pleased with how it came out (a ssssssnnnnakkke avatar won). I’m guessing if I had been able to be at this event — why oh why can’t we be at two places at the same time? — I would have learned more about Zune v2.0. Maybe would have seen and been able to touch one of them.

Chumby or Zune, which one to buy?

We’ll have to wait until mid-November for the completely rewritten Zune Marketplace software and second generation 80GB black Zune ($249.99) hard drive version, 8GB ($199.99) and 4GB ($149.99) flash versions to hit stores. The new Zune portable media players will offer something called a Zune Pad which Microsoft describes as a “an innovative touch-sensitive button for navigating on the device, as well as wireless sync, a feature that allows Zune devices to automatically sync over the device owner’s home wireless network when it is connected to an AC adaptor, in a dock or speaker dock accessory.”

That taken from official press release which also explains the new Zune Social (emphasis):

Launching first in beta, Zune Social, a beta online community Web site, gives people a place to share their music tastes, knowledge and experiences with others. Anyone can create a free, customizable Zune Card that automatically updates to reflect the music they are listening to on their Zune or with Zune software on their computer. The Zune Card shows most recently played tracks and highlights that person’s all-time music favorites. Other members of Zune Social can play samples of the songs a user has been playing directly from a friend’s Zune Card or link to Zune Marketplace, where they can buy or download the music … members of Zune Social can send song links and messages to each other, post comments on a friend’s profile page or on their favorite artist pages. They can discover new music by seeing what their friends are listening to, receiving recommendations from others in the community or by seeing what the top fans of artists they’re interested in are listening to

Sounds a little like a cross between Xbox Live gamer cards, iLike and last.fm (which somehow I haven’t registered for yet. Update 10:12am PST: after further review, I found I have registered for last.fm when it was formerly audioscrobbler).

The biggest news to first generation Zune owners and early adopters is backwards compatibility with the new software and features. Very nice, this ties up my “what about the 1 in 25 who bought a Zune instead of the iPod” concerns on Monday.

Perhaps the best news is yet another DRM-free music store option will be born alongside AmazonMP3. That’s right, the Zune Marketplace is going to start selling over one million DRM-free MP3s. The new Zune Marketplace will also have built-in podcast support, something that they were criticized for omitting from the first release.

And speaking of criticism …

Zune bashers are predictably out in full force this morning
Jay Greene at Business Week makes an early doom and gloom prediction: “The next version of Microsoft’s music player won’t make any serious iPod inroads.” And despite starting his article out with this slam, Mr. Greene never defines what he means by “any serious iPod inroads.” Right now 1 in 25 people buy a Zune. If a year from launch 5 or 10 in 25 people are buying a Zune would that constitute a serious iPod inroad? It’s this kind of cheap shot reporting that annoys me. Microsoft never claimed they’d be a serious competitor to the iPod right away, no more than they claimed to be a serious force in console gaming right away with the Xbox. They aren’t doing too bad with the Xbox 360 right about now.
TechCrunch new editor, Erick Schonfeld, can’t resist blasting the color, stylistic snobbery at its finest: “At least [Microsoft is] getting rid of the Zune brown (a color only a UPS delivery man could love).” I guess the first generation Zune Brown (only $165 at Amazon, affiliate) will become a collector’s item, Erick.

Final Hmm thoughts
Despite the naysayers and pessimists, this sounds like a solid second version upgrade path and my only regret as a happy Zune customer is that it’s not available now like when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announces new stuff it’s typically available the same day.

And like John Gruber suggests, why doesn’t Microsoft rip that page out of the Apple playbook? As commenter Jaxim says at the Windows Connected blog, they should release the firmware and new store now to drive interest in the Zune 2 gadgets ahead of sales. Maybe if enough Zune owners encourage them to do this, they will. Microsoft, you have my vote: release the firmware and new Zune Marketplace ASAP.