Zune Accessories After Christmas Sale
I was at my local Target store this morning picking up a pair of jeans and some badly needed socks, and I noticed the end aisle shelf containing the no-brainer men’s gifts (items such as nail clippers, wallets, key chains, flashlights, etc). Usually, these items are fairly inexpensive (and of low quality) and only appear during the Christmas shopping season. What caught my eye, were a few items that fell under the category of generic MP3 player accessories. There was a small “dock” that was basically a speaker with a small amplifier and a slot to hold a generic Mp3 player device. There was also a white colored pair of ear buds, and a small FM Transmitter for sending MP3 audio signals to a FM radio. All of these items were priced at $10 US, which were now selling for $5.00 (50% discount). I’ve always thought about playing my Zune music through the speakers in my car, so I decided to pry open my wallet and spend the five bucks for the FM Transmitter. Below is the packaging for this item:
This small, white transmitter runs on two AAA batteries or uses power from a cigarette lighter power cord (included). The unit also has 4 defined FM Channels to choose from for the signal transmission. So to use this device, you simply insert the mini plug into the head phone jack on your Zune, turn on the device, and select one of the preset FM channels. Read the rest of this entry »
RIAA Changing their tactics against music downloaders
Every once in a while, I’ll come across an article describing how the RIAA is sueing private individuals for sharing copyrighted music files on the Internet. From what I’ve read, the RIAA has never successfully won a suit in court. Instead, they usually settle out of court accepting a few thousand dollars from the defendant. Here’s an online article that describes a change in tactics for the RIAA: Instead of sueing individuals (which apparently is very costly), they are asking ISP (Internet Service Providers) to shutdown the Peer-to-Peer file transfer of music files. So if you get your music via these P2P networks, your days may be numbered!
Free MP3 Music From Amazon.com
Amazon’s MP3 site has several music files available for free download. Go to this page and click the link labeled “Free Songs and Special Deals” to access the no-cost, free MP3 music files. They state they have over 1000 songs available for free, so it is worth checking out.
More Free Videos and Music for Download
I came across some more sites offering free videos and music downloads. The first is ROFL – Funny Video Clips which offers downloadable videos in MP4 format (suitable for the Zune). They have a lot of YouTube-like videos available, which are mainly commericals, funny home videos, TV clips, etc.
For music, check out music.download.com, which offers free music in streaming format. For the most part you can listen to music from their site, but you can’t download it. They do have a few locations where you can download MP3 files for free, such as on the iPod Starter Kit link (on the main page). Most of these musicians are Indie, so you won’t get the big name artists here.
Also on music.download.com, you can click on the Indie Rock link, and then click on any of the Artists that appear under “Indie to Go Vol. 12″ to find more downloadable MP3 files.
Free Music and Video Downloads Page
I just added a new page that has a set of links for free music and video downloads. I’ll try to update this page with new links whenever I come across them. Note, that these links should be legal downloads, so don’t be expecting the lastest box office hits here!
Also, a good place for lots of downloadable videos is video.google.com (similar to the YouTube.com site). What’s unique about Google’s video site is the presence of a “download” button that allows you to download the displayed video to a file on your PC.
Use the “Video iPod/Sony PSP” format and the downloaded file will be in MP4 format for your Zune. I’ve downloaded old episodes of Tour of Duty on my PC (which appear to be full episodes) and they actually look pretty good on my Zune (no transcoding during syncing). Note, that I couldn’t successfully download a Google video completely using FireFox (Internet Explorer worked fine).
The Google Videos aren’t of the greatest quality, but they do download relatively quickly and best of all are free!
Free Music and Video Downloads Please!
I was looking through the zunescene.com forums, and there are numerous postings with the general title, “Where can I download free music and videos?”. Let’s assume that these posters are all honest people and aren’t asking for illegal downloads. In that case, you have to realize that you probably won’t find a legitimate web site that has the top music hits available for free download (the same goes for mainstream movies). So, is there anything available for free download? Luckily, the answer is yes. If you simply do a Google search for “free mp3 downloads” you’ll get lots of hits, some good and some junky advertisement sites. Below are a few of the good ones that you might want to check out:
Free Music Download Sites
- ArtistDirect.com – This site actually has music from several well known artists (Barenaked Ladies, Moby, Brian Eno, etc.) available for download for the Zune. There’s not a lot of song choices, but enough to wet your whistle.
- GarageBand.com – This site offers lots of music by Independent Musicians for download on your Zune. Lots of different music genre.
- Epitonic.com -Quite a few free mp3 downloads available from Independent Artists.
Free Video Download Sites
- YouTube.com – This is the famous site that contains hundred of thousands (or possibly millions) of user uploaded videos. The trick, is to save the displayed video in WMV format downloaded to your PC. There’s lots of browser-based utilities to do this, such as 1-Click YouTube Batch Downloader.
- PublicDomainFlicks.com – Here’s a really cool site where you can download full-length movies that are public domain. These movies include documentaries, old classics, and independent films. Format is MPEG4,MPEG2, and MPEG1.
- Emol.org - An excellent site that contains old classic movies, TV Shows, and cartoons. And when I say classic, I mean 1960s and older. I’m currently downloading The Last Man On Earth with Vincent Price (the original movie that was remade later as Omega Man with Charlton Heston and I Am Legend with Will Smith).
- AtomFilms.com – Some interesting (and strange) short movies you can download (use the iPod link to get MP4 files).
- Video.Google.com – Amazing, there’s lots of videos you can download just by searching for them and clicking the “Download” button (for the Video-iPod).
