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.

In case you weren’t paying attention to negative Apple rumors and news this week, there was plenty. AppleTV finally launched overpriced and under gunned — 40GB hard drive, what are they smoking? They doubled the hard disk space of the Xbox 360 which launched in November 2005. Head’s up people, we can walk into any Best Buy and pick up a 500GB hard drive for $250 or less, why can’t we get a device for $300 that includes at least half the storage space? I realize that it streams from your Mac or PC and you can have tons of storage there, but why only 40GB on the device itself?

For those falling for the Macs are more secure spiel (I never was in that camp), a Symantec report found Microsoft Windows more secure than the Mac. Finally, the “have a nice weekend” kicker: Leopard which was supposed to be released in April could be delayed until October because:

If Leopard supports only Windows XP, then the chances of the new OS attracting Windows users to buy an Apple computer decreases, stated industry observers.

Apple niche site MacSlash takes issue with the rumor:

Apple only ever said they would release Leopard in “Spring,” which technically ends June 21 - just in time for Apple to release Leopard at WWDC this year should they choose to.

Pick your spin cycle. After all, industry observers are often wrong. It’s possible the study that found Microsoft more secure was biased and flawed, although the report cites the following numbers:

More than 35 Windows vulnerabilities were found, each taking an average of 21 days to fix … OS X - the cool, chilled out entertainer of operating systems - had 43 vulnerabilities and a whopping 66-day turnaround on fixes.

Ouch.

As for AppleTV which could eventually be coined LemonTV arriving at a typically (Apple) overpriced $299. Earlier this week I spent a good 20 minutes chatting with the confused online Apple help. My test question seemed fairly straightforward, but clearly puzzled the person helping me. See if you can figure this out in less than 20 minutes.

I have the 1.25 Ghz PowerPC G4 eMac that is connected via ethernet. It does not have a WiFi card built-in. We have a LinkSYS wireless router. My question for support was would AppleTV work without needing me to deal with an Airport base station? Could I just connect through the same wireless network?

The answer is yes, but took 20 minutes to get there.

Not an impressive week for Apple but their stock (disclaimer: I’m a shareholder) wasn’t really impacted. I remain semi-anxious to buy an Intel Mac and replace my aging eMac. Yeah, I’ll be among the last on the Mac block to upgrade but I don’t have this burning desire to keep up with every new Apple product. My preference is to buy a Mac with Leopard preinstalled and if that’s October or beyond so be it.

Goodbye gamer thumbs? Someday that could be more reality than fiction. The start of this could be companies like Neurosky that are marketing a “cost effective bio sensor and signal processing system for the consumer market.”

A man dressed as Darth Vader from the “Star Wars” film series demonstrated the NeuroSky invention on Thursday by turning his toy light saber on and off at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco without pushing a button.

“It’s like the Force,” he said, referring to the film premise that unseen energy could be tapped and channeled by the mind.

The Nintendo Wii has enjoyed success by providing a unique controller design (the Wiimote) which can be used in many different ways to control gameplay, so the timing of a mind control controller could be coming to a game system in the next couple years. These types of controllers and games have seemed more like gimmicks to date, I suspect a future where we control devices with our minds is not that far fetched.

How about moving your mouse with your mind? Forget voice-activated commands — most haven’t worked that great to date anyway — how about mind activated commands? Launch Firefox. Delete spam. Or perhaps for the Twitter denizens: I’m thinking about doing a search on Google.

Humor aside, this could lead to a whole different kind of computing. The evolution of many technology innovations begins with pleasure activities. People seem most interested in using for entertainment purposes first. After or along with games will be more er adult uses and then it will move into the mainstream technology sector.

To follow dealership deception story which is getting some good feedback so far, Best Buy is making me think twice about doing business with them too. Apparently they have websites with two different prices. The one you see inside their stores and the one you see from your browser at home.

Download Squad:

So far the Attorney General says he’s learned that Best Buy policy is that it’s the consumer’s responsibility to inform store employees of the lower price. But if employees are routinely showing customers a fake website to indicate that the price must have changed again, or perhaps they had misread the website the first time, that’s just silly.

Here’s what you do, go inside armed with your laptop, Tablet PC and EV-DO connection OR cell phone or PDA with internet access. Then you can point to the price on your device from the real internet, not the inside store one.

This sucks and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Attorney General slaps Best Buy with some serious fines if their investigation turns up this happening. I’ve never had any Best Buy employee refer to a price on their internal store web pages, but if they are running a different website and passing that off as the “official price” to customers than that is very dishonest.

Although I’ve stuck up for the Best Buy Reward Zone program before, we visit there at least once per week doing hundreds of dollars a month on average over the last couple years and I know they don’t always have the best prices, I could take or leave them tomorrow. If some other retail electronics chain opened up in the general area that had comparable selection and prices I’d shop there too or maybe even instead. My loyalty to Best Buy as a customer is weak at best.

Alternatives? Wal-Mart electronics and DVD selection isn’t there, although they have good prices, so they’re usually out. Circuit City has the selection but is too expensive. CompUSA went out of business in our area within less than a year. Office Depot doesn’t have the selection or the prices. There isn’t a close Frye’s, last time I checked. Target and K-Mart are too cheesy. What else is out there?

I remember shopping at Smith’s Home Furnishings a lot, then Incredible Universe, Futureshop and others. These type stores don’t seem to last very long. I wouldn’t do a penny more worth of business at Best Buy if they ever tried to pull some internal website pricing stunt on me, but the fact is every time we’ve ever challenged them on a lower price, they’ve given it to us with zero hassle. We haven’t had the problems receiving Best Buy Rewards coupons either and we’re regularly invited to private members-only events.

One time I remember a DVD that was 40% cheaper elsewhere and the cashier didn’t even ask us for proof, she just gave us the lower price. My Reward Zone card pictured in my hand above pretty much tells the story.

BTW, for those curious, the weekday Hmmcast will be back tomorrow at 4:20pm. Took my first vacation days of 2007 on Friday and again today.

Forget basketball, the real March Madness could be happening next Sunday, March 11 at 2am, in the form of a Daylight Savings Change.

Devices from the tiniest BlackBerry to the largest mainframe computer must be updated to ensure their internal clocks “spring forward” by one hour at the right moment rather than on the old date, which has been written into countless programs. Similarly, they must be reprogrammed to revert to standard time a week later than usual, on Nov. 4.

Who do we blame if this results in technological confusion? Congress, of course!

Google Calendar + Google Homepage + events
We’ll get back to this March daylight savings stuff in a second, but something more productive first. Have you checked out AmbientClock (free gadget)? If you use Google Calendar and the Google Homepage you can see your events at a glance, including help with drive times commute. Pretty handy. Thanks Lifehacker.

No daylight savings concerns here, you?
I’m not worried that I’ll wake up next Sunday and find any of our computers confused. My wind-up watch, which needs to be manually set will be wrong, but it’s showing the wrong date now too (pause to change from the 30th to the 3rd). The Washignton Post story makes it sound a little like another Y2K scare for some businesses:

At T. Rowe Price, about two dozen information-technology staffers have been coordinating with more than 160 vendors to make sure the 200 computer applications used in the Baltimore brokerage firm’s offices will operate seamlessly March 11 and beyond.

Yikes.

Perhaps a little hyperbolic, but just remember Y2K? The biggest non-event event in recent computing history. Back to basketball, the real March madness.

Where do you check for local movie times in your area? I check Fandango and have been disappointed how quickly it forgets my zip code on their site. There is a Fandango Google gadget (see below) that keeps the zip code active longer than the Fandango website. Set the cookie to expire in six months or a year already, Fandango. There are widgets that automatically retrieve the local movie times, have readers tried out any of the following?

Google Gadgets
Fandango
Movies

Yahoo movie widgets
Show Time
Now Playing
Movie Times

Apple Dashboard movie widgets
Ticket Widget

Microsoft / Live Gadgets
Moviescout

Download Hmmcast #44 mp4

Twilight Zone, IZ (Blue, affiliate), Dynex AA rechargeable batteries

Macenstein first alerted me that it won’t really be Cingular that the Apple iPhone will work on, but AT&T which is on my personal do not do business list:

According to The New York Times, on December 29th, AT&T (which had owned 60% of Cingular) gained sole ownership of Cingular when it acquired BellSouth (which owned the remaining 40%). The de-branding/re-branding effort is slated to begin this month, and by June (coincidentally when the iPhone is scheduled to ship) the transition will be complete.

For those who like AT&T this will be good news, for those who don’t, this is yet one more reason not to buy the iPhone. My ‘do not do business with’ list isn’t of the when hell freezes over variety, but I remain pretty disgusted with how AT&T treated our business long distance service pricing. Disgusted enough that’s it now more like a when the Bahamas completely freeze over feeling.

Guess that means I’ll be reading from others how cool the Apple iPhone is/isn’t from others this coming June. Blockbuster and Dell are also on my list. The former because of bad customer service and no reply from corporate office and the latter because of lousy lease agreements and inferior customer service.

Do you crave something else from your phone than, well, just a phone?
Paul O’Flaherty wonders when was the last time a phone was marketed as a phone?:

I noticed that not one of the phones on offer was being sold on the merits of it being a “good phone”. They were all being pitched on their ability to play mp3’s, show video, listen to radio or the megapixel count of their inbuilt digital camera’s.

Everybody wants to be the one gadget we carry around. Thing is, that one gadget is only a dream not something in theory yet. If you like music, you’ll probably gravitate toward an iPod. If you want to keep track of lots of web passwords and addresses and sync with a desktop program a Pocket PC works good. Most of the smartphones I’ve seen are awkward to hold as a phone, but they could also fit that niche. Want to play a game? PSP or Nintendo DS.

You see, nobody has the swiss army knife of portable devices because depending on what you like to do, there is a different gadget that is the best for that purpose.

When I want to talk on the phone the thing I’m most interested in is ease of phone-related operations and call quality. Can I hear the other person? Can they hear me? Will it remember enough phone numbers (used to be a huge issue with phones, but getting better as memory expands). I’m with Paul when it comes to phones: simple, straightfoward and specific works better for me. I’m not going to carry something gaudy around like a Simpsons phone but I don’t begrudge other fans.

Do you want phones that can do a bunch more than be a phone? Are you in search of the ultimate swiss army gadget? Have you found it and I’m overlooking it? I’m all eyes and ears in the comments/trackback area below.

My wife has been trying to run down an iDog, but I’d like to check out one of these Echo Bots:

To the untrained eye Mel and Belle are what’s called Echo Bots or Voice Messengers - you record your own message in the mic to the rear of the baby blue, then sit back while some unsuspecting passer by walks within sensor reach and sets them off.

The recorded messages can be up to 10 seconds in length. The Echo Bots could be good for practical jokers. Almost 10 pounds for the Echo Bot which works out to roughly $19 USD at current exchange rates.

Forget shrinking, honey, I freaked out the kids!