Newsweek's Steven Levy writes about Microsoft's Zune music player and the "squirting" of songs. Because every time I see someone walk by with an iPod or other music player and I wonder what they might be listening to, this sounds like a very cool thing. A fellow Zune listener within ten meters can send - or "squirt" - you a song from their playlist that you can choose to accept (yours for three days or three listens, whichever comes first).
Another cool feature allows you to see what songs are on a nearby Zune player. I'd love to see what the person on the treadmill next to me is listening to. As the article states, what a great way to get to know someone with similar musical interests. ("You like Robert Plant too? Care to squirt me some of that new box set?")
We sure do talk weird here in the future.
4 comments:
Well, they certainly didn't ask me but I think they need to come up with some other term besides "squirt"! That just sounds icky.
I fully confess to being a Mac Geek, so I'm prejudiced.
But, quite frankly, given the MS propensity for viruses I can't think of anything more dangerous to the life of your MP3 player (and PC) than this file-squirting business.
the idea of sharing songs is cool on the surface until you learn the fine print. when you are "squirting" someone a song, neither you nor them can listen to any music, its in transfer mode. being wifi this make take a few minutes depending on the size of the mp3.
when you view photos and movies, you have to rotate the zune sideways, it will not show vertical. the navigation isn't bad but you do not have the seamless scrolling that you have with an ipod. unless you hack the zune, it cannot be used as a portable hard drive and does not work on a mac.
if you have bought music thru itunes, napster, yahoo, raphsody etc they will not play on the new zune. microsoft has locked their player down to only play purchased drm music thru its urge music store. if you buy music thru emusic you are fine since these are unrestricted mp3s.
finally, the zune is big and clunky like the 1st gen ipod. just give apple a couple months and the ipod will have all these features plus more.
i do like the idea of browsing other people's ipods i am always curious as to what people are listening to.
I guess I'm in the minority. I don't like the "snoop on your neighbor" feature.
I've never walked by someone clad in headphones and wondered what they were listening to and I can't imagine why anyone would care what I was listening to.
Plus, there is indeed a much better way to get to know your neighbor, in regards to what's piping through their headphones -- ask them.
There's something kinda creepy and sad, in my estimation, about going through life snooping on people to "get to know them" instead of actually walking up, striking up a conversation and getting to know them.
Then there's the fact that I probably don't want to be approached by the people who'd mistake me for a kindred spirit based on my musical tastes... partly because of how weird an assumption that is and partly because of my own current musical tastes and that I'm not the expected demographic for it.
But... I have no intention of purchasing or using any such device, so my opinion on the matter is moot. :)
Post a Comment