tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-325654882009-10-13T21:43:07.541-07:00David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.comBlogger164125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-33216154970539349762007-11-27T13:24:00.001-08:002007-11-27T13:24:38.335-08:00

StewedMonkeyBrains asks: ...has anyone got an easy way to get your MP3s to register as podcasts in the desktop software? Upon initial install one of my books was selected as a podcast, but 30 others weren't... I've tried dozens of things to get another book to register as a podcast with no joy. I pinged Josh on the product team about this, and he replied... ...anything of genre=podcast

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-23700607788393125752007-11-18T16:52:00.001-08:002007-11-18T16:52:58.859-08:00

I owe you guys some more posts, but I'll start with my lessons learned from Year 2 of Zune: Shipping is good.  Shipping is learning.  We really can execute on an innovative end to end experience. The Zune software is amazingly nice.  It's also taught me that Burl Ives did some of the tracks on AC/DC's back in black album.  See here if this is a mystery to you. The team can really

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-61861426781505793662007-11-14T20:42:00.000-08:002007-11-14T20:43:23.143-08:00

I've added my zune card to the template for this blog. Enjoy! Worshop before the awesome outdatedness of my music collection!

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-35037897989158499502007-10-10T11:51:00.001-07:002007-10-10T11:51:24.290-07:00

I will put a Zunetag on this site when they go external, so you'll be able to see what I'm listening to.  But for now, here's my painfully created manual list: Podcasts:  Lots of NPR, Lots of Network News TV, TWiT, Windows Weekly, Lots of Queen.  Every now and then I rediscover them, and go on a 24 hour jag. Lots of WWII era stuff.  Ken Burns made me do it. Franz Ferdinand on a

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-5093358381983691672007-10-10T11:38:00.001-07:002007-10-10T11:38:49.460-07:00

Fake Steve Jobs on the Microsoft Campus.  I'm so totally going to be there.

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-14164986397201633702007-10-08T17:28:00.001-07:002007-10-08T17:28:35.067-07:00

Some folks have asked me about what the future of subscriptions might be (as opposed to simply listing the challenges).  This is a great point.  There are several situations where subscription music can work well. First, music subscription can support another business.  My comments have referred to standalone music subscriptions. Music subscriptions are a huge opportunity for Zune and love

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-77556920848980863102007-10-08T11:29:00.001-07:002007-10-08T11:29:42.965-07:00

IANAL, but interesting thread about the file sharing/piracy trial verdict at digital media thoughts.  Bottom line; woman shares 1700 songs online, gets sued for sharing 24 @ $9250 = $222,000!  IMO the key quote: Either file sharing is legal or this lady was guilty. I tend to agree.  Surprising that the EFF and other libertarianarchists put this woman up as a defendant (assuming they did);

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-72378459737345071002007-10-07T17:34:00.001-07:002007-10-07T19:33:09.681-07:00

in my earlier post, I said I hadn't tried out the iPod Nano yet.  Well now I have, and have some thoughts.  As usual, I'm going to say this is my opinion and you should take it as such.  I also am going to not get into any big flame wars on this - if you disagree, please post respectfully. I think they made a strange tradeoff.  I think that for most people, the Nano has always been about music.

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-34193966119767667662007-10-06T19:08:00.001-07:002007-10-06T19:11:03.481-07:00

This is astonishingly good.  Local editing/publishing into this blog, and it even figured out to go back to blogger for the source publishing.  Really amazing. Wow, great job to the windows live team!  And really good on em for embracing a competitive service this way...

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-83398713289128366882007-10-06T19:04:00.001-07:002007-10-06T19:04:09.787-07:00

Will this really work on a blogger blog redirected from blogger.com to a custom url via ftp?  If so, I'll fall over backwards...

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-80417009378584082732007-10-04T15:20:00.001-07:002007-10-04T15:44:38.765-07:00

Thanks all for the kind words. I'm really proud of the new offering end-to-end.That said, I also realize there's work yet to be done. Please keep up a running line of comments as you find out more so I can feed them back into the dev teams. Top Questions so far:Do the new zunes play 640x480 without transcoding?Yes, if you’ve got such content the new zunes will play them, and will show them at

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-65717066144147110802007-10-04T15:20:00.000-07:002007-10-04T15:25:26.187-07:00

A couple of folks have commented on my point that the price ($14.99) might be inhibiting adoption of subscription services. Some have mentioned that it is/isn't a "fair" price. I tend to see it differently. Whether it's "fair" or not isn't really my concern; the real issue is that these aren't interesting services unless they get mass adoption by dozens of millions of users. Whether the fee

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-48920777205594769962007-10-02T21:31:00.000-07:002007-10-02T21:33:28.730-07:00

Now you can see some of what's been keeping us busy....http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/holiday2007.htmhttp://zuneinsider.com/http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/zune2_preview.aspenjoy!

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-28344360817542484862007-10-01T08:47:00.000-07:002007-10-01T09:03:19.959-07:00

..."consolidation" being perhaps a kind word...other candidates would be "collapse" and "culling".Longer term readers will remember that I've previously posted how surprisingly difficult it is to make a music subscription offering work. This has been the summer of long knives for subscriptions. Virgin, AOL, URGE, and now Yahoo! are all leaving the business. Napster is burning cash and will run

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-44702875456931554072007-09-29T17:11:00.003-07:002007-10-09T11:01:49.670-07:00

My reading list from my week in the woods.The Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New ConsumerGreat book; would be most applicable were we a retailer but still very interesting. Basic thesis is that consumers are rapidly swapping into a mode of “trading down” on most items, e.g. looking for bargain, cheap, but still quality products. They then select a few categories that are meaningful to them

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-77028922575346082152007-09-29T17:06:00.000-07:002007-09-29T17:10:35.308-07:00

For those who might be interested, I was on a solo week at the cabin my grandfather built in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan last week. It's one of my favorite places on Earth (having been there nearly every summer from 1 year old to 30 yrs). You can see a selection of pictures here. This was the latest in the year I've been there, thus my fascination with the changing tree colors.

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-73193283141623318922007-09-17T10:36:00.001-07:002007-09-17T10:36:34.965-07:00

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-84368273202001145402007-09-10T14:09:00.000-07:002007-09-10T14:40:13.495-07:00

Having spoken about the emotional impact of a disneyland vacation, I had a lot of thoughts about Disneyland from a business standpoint. Some of my favorites:I've never seen a better example of how valuable brands can be or of brand management. Disney has a bunch of very strong brands/characters that they've jealously guarded over the years, and they use them supremely well in Disneyland. I can

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-26640800165108147752007-09-10T12:43:00.000-07:002007-09-10T13:03:50.338-07:00

My family and I went to Disneyland for the first time this summer, and we were pleasantly surprised how much fun we had. My wife and I were braced for it to be a lot of fun for the kids but not so much for us. Turns out, it was great for everyone. The Disney folks really know how to create an amazing experience for the whole family. The main adult highlight was watching our kids having an

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-85724327763391275052007-09-07T13:50:00.000-07:002007-09-07T14:04:42.463-07:00

A number of comments have asked me for my take on the iPod announcements. Important to stress that I’m presenting my impressions/opinions only; nothing official from Zune here! Also, they’re just my opinions and I could be wrong, so I’m going to sit on my hands and let the comments fly without much response lest I spend the next week arguing with passionate Apple fans!I thought the new iPods

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-10947394356938744902007-09-07T07:45:00.000-07:002007-09-07T07:54:15.193-07:00

Lots of work.Really really crappy northwest summer. Stopped raining late, never really got our 2 months of sunshine, never really got warm. No global warming here... ;)Home landscaping gardening/lawn madness. It's supposed to get dry and stunt growth here, and instead it kept watering the damned plants.Really really exciting (in the negative way) family health care issue. All is ok now.First

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-89812213644863015372007-09-07T07:42:00.000-07:002007-09-07T07:44:55.699-07:00

this summer I sort of got out of the habit of posting, and so Zunester has been pretty quiet. Some recent comments slapped me around and I'm going to make a real effort to start posting regularly again. It's going to be a little while before I can really start talking about upcoming events, so for now I'll stick to responding to comments, industry news, and posting less zune-centric

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-51352227123182758822007-07-09T20:58:00.000-07:002007-07-09T21:16:24.746-07:00

I'm a history buff. I recently finished reading Charles Mann's excellent history of the Americas prior to Columbus' arrival, 1491. This book lays out the information we've currently got about precolumbian civilizations, and it's both eye opening and very well-written. Like most Americans, I got my assumptions about this period when I was seven years old in elementary school around Thanksgiving.

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-43754549382475328402007-07-09T20:56:00.000-07:002007-07-09T20:58:04.330-07:00

from Cool Hunting. Insightful, too.http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2007/07/iphone_review_a.php

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32565488.post-79695977380179888112007-07-07T17:08:00.001-07:002007-07-07T17:33:52.229-07:00

Several folks have asked/written about my thoughts on the iPhone. Most of what I could say would be redundant with the zillions of gallons of digital ink already spilled. But here are a few thoughts, entirely my own and not my employer's....At this price, and with the service contract requirement, it's hard to see the iPhone itself impacting Zune this year. It's a completely different class of

David Caultonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12944280675324667909noreply@blogger.com3