“MP3” Icon Sometimes Misleading in the Zune Marketplace
December 30th, 2008I have a Zune Pass, and I like to use my 10 free monthly song credits to “remove” the DRM from my favorite subscription (and therefore DRM’d) music by purchasing MP3 versions of the songs. I right-click on a song that I like, and then click “More about this album” to go to the album’s page on the Marketplace. If I saw the “MP3” icon next to the album cover art, I would buy my desired songs from that album. From there I select the songs that I want, right-click on them, and click “buy”. It was a quick process that I really didn’t think much of, until I just downloaded a DRM’d song from an album marked as MP3.
Here’s the deal: The MP3 icon doesn’t necessarily mean that ALL of the songs are available in MP3, but rather it means that at least one is. Take a look:
Here this album is clearly marked as “MP3”: 
Zune Reminds You to Use Your Free Credits
December 30th, 2008Since Microsoft updated the terms of the Zune Pass, users have received 10 free song credits per month to go toward owning music from the store. This is a great deal for Zune users, because $15 per month not only pays for unlimited music downloads from the Zune Marketplace on a subscription basis, but also provides 10 songs to own. (I see this now as committing to buy 10 songs per month and getting a $5 per month subscription, but either way…) (Personally I make a point to only purchase DRM-free tracks.)
I was impressed to discover that recently when I went to click the “download” button next to a song, which downloads the song under the subscription, I got a popup reminding me to use my song credits. I am very impressed that Microsoft would remind its users to get things from it for free. Of course, if the user sees this as a nag rather than a reminder, there’s always that convenient option to disable the popup. Microsoft, hooray! 
DVD Cover Art Finder version 1.0.0.0
December 29th, 2008As promised, here is the first release of DVD Cover Art Finder (version 1.0.0.0), along with the source code. Read on for download links and a usage tutorial. 
DVD Cover Art Finder: Coming Soon
December 28th, 2008
I hopped to get it out today, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.
“Good” Music
December 26th, 2008One of my friends got a lot of money in iTunes credit for Christmas, so he asked me for a bunch of good songs. I went through my media library looking for songs, picking out ones that appealed enough to me for me to send the title and artist to him. I decided to not let the list go to waste, so I went through the chat logs and pulled out he proper messages. I could go through the list and refine it, but that’s now worth the trouble. 
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