Dec
09

WowZune Christmas List Revealed

We know how it is - Christmas is closing fast and you FORGOT to send that important someone their Christmas gift and now you are stuck!

Worst still, you haven’t even bought them a gift yet and just cannot think what to get.

Fear not - we are here to help you! Just check out out list of great-things-to-give-for-Christmas below. PLUS we provide a link to where you can buy it ONLINE, plus it WILL be delivered on time!!! (I know we are terrific):

As you can see we are recommending the Windows Phone 7 as the ultimate gift for this Christmas.  Just to put your mind at rest we also recommend you check out the Engadget review - which is pretty thorough (perhaps with more information than you could ever want).

PS - check out our next post for lots of free MP3’s to download to your new device (or to give with the new device you are giving)

Oct
18

Warm Up Your Zune - The Latin Grammy Awards 2010 Are Nearly Here!

Each year on WowZune we remind our readers when the Latin Grammy’s are about to be held. This is a fantastic music event with huge glamor and talent on display. Here are a couple of videos of the performers at last years 10th annual event:

The first one features  Laura Pausini at the  Latin Grammy 2009 performance - how glamorous is this!

This second video shows some of the closing ceremony - and again the glamor, movement and color of this event!

The event is staged and managed by the Latin Recording Academy, and will be held this year at  the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on November 11, 201. The nominations were announced recently at the 11th Annual Latin GRAMMY Awards nominations press conference held at the Avalon in Hollywood.You can see the nominations as presented at the press conference  - presented in both Latin and English - on the LatinGrammy site.

There are bound to be quite a few YouTube videos of the event - but as they get taken down  almost as fast as they are uploaded to YouTube (LatinGrammy seem quite determined to be the sole source of media on the event) you are going to have to keep a close eye out to enjoy watching them before they are gone again!

Feb
04

Win A Zune HD and A Years’ Worth Of Music…

Zune are going all out to get Zuners on board with their Zune music store. And to help us get motiviated (any that aren’t already!) , To win a Zune HD (valued at ) and a year of free music, all we have to do is:

Zune Free Trial

The Zune give away ends February 15, 2010 - so get your free trial asap! The free trial lets you try out the Zune pass and see just how cool it is. With a Zune Pass  you can stream and download as much music as you want (but you can’t keep any of it on the free trial).

Sep
02

Zune HD Demo Reveals Secret New Features!

The recent preview weekend at Best Buy gave those who went some unexpected insider information. It looks as if the new Zune touch will also offer apps!

Now when you think about the fact that Apple are currently celebrating the billionth app download, its not really surprising that Microsoft would realize that the market has spoken - clearly and loudly applauding the whole app revolution!

All the same, they have not been publicizing this feature.  In fact it was only discovered by accident - as this amateur video captures:

……………………………. ….

Our last post discussed the new Zune HD and what it has going for it. (plus where you can buy it at a discount) But it really has to be seen to be appreciated! So do check out this demo video - taken at recent the Best Buy reveal.

And the bad news is that Microsoft are discontinuing all previous Zune models!

So the next Zune you get WILL be this one!  LOL!

Aug
27

Getting Zune Movies Is About To Get Easier

Been thinking it might be time to upgrade your Zune? Well, the about-to-be released Zune HD is definitely worth considering. Why? Because it will have web browsing capabilities powered by Microsoft’s “Bing”!!

Screen shot of Facebook Web page on Microsoft Zune HD.

Looks pretty cool, doesn’t it? Having a browser will mean that downloads for Zune can be accessed directly - no need to go to our PC’s first! What Zune has to say about the new Zune HD:

  • Zune HD will include a full-screen Internet browser optimized for multitouch functionality.
  • Zune HD is Wi-Fi enabled, allowing for instant streaming to the device from the more than 5 million-track Zune music store.

It will also have a touch screen,  and ten hours of HD video storage!! The Wowzune team reckon this will be a major step forward in functionality and makes takes the Zune into the 21st century! And - compared to the iPod Touch, its super cheap!! The Zune HD will start at a price tag of $219.99 . Follow this link to pre-order the Zune HD. It is being released on September 15, 2009.

Jul
02

Free Audiobook Downloads for Zune

Zunes can now use audiobooks!  Two sites that are worth mentioning - because we can get free audiobooks from them - are  audible.com and overdrive.com. Audible are currently offering a free 30-trial to Zune users which includes three free audiobooks of your choice. Which is cool - but remember, if you forget to cancel your free trial, you will get billed for $22.95 every month till you remember to cancel

Download Three Free Audio Books Today.

Overdrive is a whole other ballgame - and its great to see Zune making it possible for us to use this service. It has been available on iPod  and now  it cab be used by that Zune owners as well.

Download Audiobooks and e-books logo

zune-spacer.jpgWhat overdrive does is makes it possible to borrow books from libraries via the Zune format - in other words,  as an audiobook. Now only some libraries offer the service and only some books are available in this format. But a quick check at overdrive will tell you whether there is a library near you that offers this service. And its free! Potentially dozens of books  can be enjoyed this way!

For example, I am a Lee Child fan - and 3 of his books have been published in the MP3 format by Books on Tape, including “Gone Tomorrow” which I have not yet read. Overdrive shows that this title is available at dozens of libraries around the US. When I click the link to the State Library at Seattle for example, there it is!

Free Zune Audiobooks

So long as we are a member of the library, we can borrow this book for free - download it to our PC and then  to our Zune. Now most libraries explain that the OverDrive WMA Audiobook excerpts are delivered as WMA files. These  can be used with any version of Windows Media Player.

To use a full OverDrive WMA Audiobook title, you will need to download OverDrive Media Console 1.0 or newer and complete a one-time ‘Windows Media Player Security Upgrade’ on Windows Media Player version 9 or newer.

Its not difficult and every library provides guidance to help get us setup. Check it out!

Jun
28

Michael Jackson was a genius!

We can’t let Michael Jackson’s passing go without paying our respects. He was a true musical and movement genius. There have been a LOT of videos tributes made. We like this one:

But perhaps even more astonishing and moving is the following tribute performed by CPDRC inmates in Cebu, Philippines - amazingly - only 10 hours after the world heard officially that Michael Jackson had died.  The choreography was reminiscent of MJ, and the execution was unbelievable. May Michael Jackson rest in peace.

May
30

Very Expensive, free Zune Music!!

If you look around the Wowzune site you will see that we have found a lot of great places and ways to get free - or nearly free - music, videos, games etc for Zune. And we are always looking for new sources. So we were excited to find this site that looked like it was offering some great free music!

Look at this -

( WATCH OUT - THIS IS A SCAM )

Music scams

Seems clear enough - 1000 free songs, and free registration to get them!

But its all a scam - and a potentially expensive one at that!

Check out the information that appears down below this image on the site:

*This is a subscription service with an initial set up fee of $5, then $5 twice per week until cancelled by sending STOP to 19933991

This  is the actual size of the print! - and whats worse,  its actually colored white on an orange background. Which makes it hard to notice and even harder to read.

Let’s repeat it in big letters:

*This is a subscription service with an initial set up fee of $5, then $5 twice per week until cancelled by sending STOP to 19933991

That’s  $45 for the first month and $40 per month after that!! Hardly FREE!!! That’s massively expensive. You can check out a couple of the membership sites we have reviewed on this site. They offer genuine free trials and free songs and then low monthly subscriptions for those that decide they really like the service. There just is no way to justify these massive charges.

Our guess is that most people who sign up, don’t even realize that they have agreed to these massively high fees.

So - go check this site out and then AVOID it! Here is the home page - doesn’t it look legit? But its not - as you’ll soon discover. It looks like a normal music site. But its just a scam site to trap the unwary.

I guess it means we have to be careful to check what the small print says before we use give out our cell phone number. They might SAY its free - but they could be lying!

Apr
20

Zune Concert Series in Whistler

As promised we are reporting from the Telus World Ski & Snowboard Festival in Whistler! For any snowboarder or skier, the Whistler Telus event is a must-go-see. The last time I went, the snowboarding big air event was fantastic but the entertainment was fairly amateurish. This time was way more pumped with major promoters on the spot giving out freebies to the crowd - monster drinks, free razors from schik, $50 discounts off Zune purchases from Bestbuy, discounts of Bolle sunnies etc - the usual razzmatazz and the constant deep bass vibrations from the zune DJs.

Zune Concert Series

and

Zune Concert Series

Zune had their usual “resident artists” (those that design for the “Zune originals”) on the spot happily putting their designs or signatures on snowboards for those that were interested. They also had the art work on display on snowboards - continuing their “living art” theme that drives the artwork designed for Zunes.

Zune Concert Series

Despite the glitz that surrounded it, the big air event was -for me - less impressive than the last one I attended (in 2003). Partly because I am a snowboarder and there were no snowboarders in the event this time round and partly because the organizers decided not to provide publicly visible scores for the contestants. As you can see in the next image, it was kinda hard to see just who was doing the tricks!

Zune Concert Series

Having said all that - Whistler is one of my favorite places and I was happy to have an excuse to go see this years events. For those interested to know - the winners of the concert series set up to find the top undiscovered band in Canada was:- the British Columbians

Apr
03

Free Zune TV While You Travel?

Well, not quite - but with the addition of a small bit of gear we can watch our Zune videos on TV! And because we can port our videos with us (via Zune) when we travel, we can set ourselves up to watch the videos we want to watch - wherever we go. So no more watching TV shows in foreign (to me) languages when I travel! As you can see below, the equipment needed so that we can watch our own videos through

the Zune is light and small - so easy to include in a backpack. And - yeah, I know what your thinking - who wants to watch TV while their backpacking? Well …. me for one! My month backpacking round Italy was fantastic - but yeah, I occasionally ended up in a hotel that had TV and believe me I was happy to zone out watching TV for a while - or would have been if I could have understood Italian!

Its a simple matter of plugging the cables in to the TV and lying back, using the remote controller (Oh yeah) and watching the movies we want - rather than the ones the hotel limits us to. But if you feel the need to get more guidance on the technical details, you can get them from Gadling - along with some interesting  advice on how to “deal with” those TVs that have chastity belts attached.

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