A few weeks ago, I was given the opportunity to review a second generation Zune care of matchstick.ca.

I have been living with my new Zune and using it on a daily basis. Before I received the new Zune, I was solely an iPod user. I have an old fourth generation iPod and a first generation nano. They have been very good to me as music players over the years and I was not quite sure about not using them for a while.

I decided to leave my pro-Apple bias at the door and see what the folks at Redmond produced for a music device. Here are my thoughts.

What’s good

For some quick stats, the Zune I received is an 8GB second generation Zune which retails for about $180 CDN. It is comparable to the iPod nano. It is very similar in features, except the Zune has a few extra goodies thrown into the mix.

The feature that I liked the most is the inclusion of an FM radio. The reception isn’t great in my basement suite, but outside it is crystal clear.

There were also a pair of Zune premium ear buds that were thrown into the bundle. These are probably the best pair of ear buds that I have used. The cord doesn’t get tangled!

What’s bad

The major complaint I have about the Zune is that it is a windows only device. This means no Mac and no Linux. I do have an XP box, but my primary machine is a mac. To sync the Zune, I was forced to use my windows machine. iPods work on windows; why can’t the Zune work on the mac?

The second pitfall is related to the first. The Zune forces the user to use Zune software. I do admit that the iPod also has the same problem and I would be complaining about how the iPod only works with iTunes if I was already an established Zune user. I guess that is the benefit of getting to the market first for Apple.

The Verdict

I would defenitely recommend the Zune to anyone looking for a new mp3 player. I wouldn’t, however, recommend this to established iPod + iTunes users, as it is quite a hassle to transfer all of your music and media to a new device. Besides this downfall, the Zune is a solid mp3 player and I will defenitely keep using mine.

The new search engine, Cuil, has had a hundreds of redundant stories written about it in the last week and I’m jumping on the bandwagon. I still don’t understand what all the fuss is about, as it is a terrible search engine. It has been produced by a few ex-google employees and is backed by lots of VC money.

I searched for the term “BMW M3 E92″ just to test out the new search engine. I was extremely disappointed  when I was presented with this screen below:

Google, however,  was able to find 1,180,000 results for the same term. What’s going wrong here?

My Macbook is almost approaching its second birthday and it has generally treated me well. Apart from the power cord, I haven’t had any physical problems with it.

Recently, however, the battery has just died. It no longer charges and the computer dies as soon as I unplug it. I have been searching throuh various forums, but none of the solutions that I have tried have worked.

Any body have any ideas?

I have many gripes with Facebook. My biggest is that they don’t allow for full resolution photo galleries. They even have the guts to try to get people to buy prints at crappy resolution. I have swallowed my pride and have pretty much come to terms with the uselessness of facebook albums.

Recently, I have been receiving a lot of invites to the the application “Watch this video.” This application is totally useless, and unnecessary. It only exists because a few developers wanted to jump on the Facebook application ad revenue bandwagon. What I don’t understand is how can people not see through this transparency of applications like this, and why don’t people just send links to youtube if they want me to watch this video. Having to install a Facebook application just to view a video is just crazy. That’s the end of my rant!

For non-seinfeld fans that didn’t understand the title:

Today is the official release day of Firefox 3!!

I have been using Firefox 3 since the beta versions came out a few months ago. Simply, Firefox 3 rock. I am a heavy tab user, which is where Firfox 3 has made major improvements. Gone are the days of crashes, maxed out CPUs, and memory leaks.

Even if you need any more excuses to download firefox, Mozilla is trying to set a new world record for most download in 24 hours…

Go and download it!!!!

I have just completed my new computer setup. I have shared one keyboard and mouse across two computers with synergy.

Check out the video:

This is the last post resulting from my free time this week off as I am back at school today.

I was back at home, and my old box of Lego from my childhood was beckoning me. I didn’t know what to make, but I knew I needed to make something. I decided to make Chris Prillo’s set up. I have been watching Chris Pirillo’s live stream from time to time. I like his rants and have gone through quite a bit of his stuff on youtube.

Check out my creation of Chris Pirillo below. Sorry Chris for depicting you as a pirate. This was for the fact that Lego has much better pirate figures than ninjas. If they had better ninjas, I would have depicted you as one.

Rogers, a Canadian wireless provider, announced today that the iPhone is coming to Canada. To that, I say Duh! Rogers is the only Canadian provider with a GSM/EDGE network that could even support the iPhone. Rogers was going to be the only provider all along, which is why I think that today’s news doesn’t matter that much. It only means that Rogers and Apple have come to an official deal. Ted Rogers issued the following statement in a press releases: “We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it now, but stay tuned.” A release date is still not set, which leaves Canada pretty much at the status quo.

Well, that was a long introduction to what I really wanted to talk about. Why is Canada still in the technological dark ages? The iPhone has been out in the states for almost a year and a second generation iPhone is being readied while Canada still hasn’t got the first one yet. I am not just referring to the cell phones. Canada often gets new technology months or years after it is released. Canada still doesn’t have Amazon’s Kindle, Netflix (although we do have alternatives), and videos in the iTunes store. Another example is the recently released Livescribe smartpen. It is only available to people with a US address.

I am writing this post not to answer the above question, but to explore it because I don’t know the answer.

There are a few possible reasons. Firstly, Canada is a small market and it is not worth it for companies to market new products immediately. Also, with regards to movies and TV shows on iTunes, I am pretty sure that there are legal issues. For example, Apple doesn’t have the rights to broadcast certain shows in Canada. The third and most probable reason is that there are only a few wireless providers and they have a huge monopoly. Most of the products that Canada is lacking use cell networks and it is ultimately the Canadian telcos that prevent the release of new products in Canada.