I was asked today which arm band is best for running. If you've read this blog for any length of time you'd know I hate two products; silicon cases and arm bands. While this is not intended to offend any of my partners and their products (most of which are quite good) I find all HDD based players too big to run with. However, as sales data are starting to prove, I may be alone in that opinion. Given that arm bands seem to be fairly large sellers, I thought I'd chime in and give my opinion despite my reservations.

The best arm bands have three things. 1. A soft and absorbent material on the inside. Mesh or fleece work well. 2. It must have clear access to the controls. If you have to fumble with the player while running, it defeats the purpose. Lastly it should be snug fitting yet adjustable. As a bonus, if it has reflective material, it's a winner.

So which product meets all these criteria? The Speck arm band is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch. So there you have it, Bill's choice for arm bands.

I was really surprised today. One of our team members ordered a bunch of products from a reputable online store. None of them were Designed for Zune and none were licensed for connectors. There were at least 8 unauthorized products. Of those 8, four "worked" and 4 were not even the right connector. I took apart one of the "working" products and found that it was literally held together with masking tape. Considering that these were power adaptors that plug directly into a wall socket with 110 volts running into it, I thought it was pretty gutsy for someone to ship that let alone use it with their $250 Zune. So that begs a question, would you consider risking your Zune by using an unlicensed product?

Looks like I caught a nasty bug on my way back from Australia. It was so bad, I missed my own birthday. Bummer. The good news, though, is I now have lots of time to blog!

I've been travelling for the last (almost) two weeks. Imagine my surprise when on the Sydney ferries, I found a Zune in the wild. I tried to get a photo of the guy to prove that I really did see him, but it was a little too obvious. One thing I can say is that if I can find someone 7,500 miles from home, it can't be that hard to find someone in my hometown. :)

In conjunction with some of the new hires and new projects, I've been making partner visits. It is a bit of a dog's breakfast of partners (automotive, accessories, travel and hospitality, etc). As I'm able to post about some of these projects, I'll keep you updated.

If you've been reading the blog for awhile, you'll know that I'm hiring some folks to help the team out. Well, we have officially got the first one on-board. Yeah! Soon, he'll be blogging as well. Did you miss the job description? Want to know what he's working on? He'll be focused on getting Zune into the car at first. So, let him know your wish list. Oh yeah... I'm going to have another job posting soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

I've been reading several posts today speculating on a new color of Zune supposedly announced by Jason Reindorp. There are a lot of folks trying to read between the lines to ascertain what it might be. Before you get your hopes up, I'm not going to announce any new colors. However, I am going to share with you a little information about some of the cases I've received on my desk this week. I've had several (greater than 5) partners send me cases in a variety of colors asking me to confirm for them if those are the right colors. I'm not able to confirm for them anything, so they guess. The good news is that no matter what color you think would be a good Zune color, you are likely to get a case in that color if nothing else. This week alone I received pink, magenta, orange (with a stripe), fur, plaid and even a snake skin (which is my favorite, but has been co-opted by the marketing team). I'll see if these guys will let me post some photos for you. In the meantime, how about an informal poll. What color(s) do you guys think we should do?

For those of you who care, I've been spending a lot of time the past week playing Crackdown. I decided that I would enter the Old Spice contest to get 1500 gamer points before April 15th and thought that was a good game to get the points. It turns out, Crackdown is pretty fun. I never was a fan of GTA, but this one has legs. I'm 2/3 done now and just now starting to rack up achievements. Don't worry if you're on my friends list and want to play Gears... I'll be back to Gears soon. That is unless I get Guitar Hero II on Tuesday.

Well, it has been a couple of days so I thought I'd check in with everyone and see how the 1.3 upgrade went. So if you have upgraded (and I'll know if you've really done it), I want to hear from you. Did it work? Are you having troubles? Do you hate it? Do you love it?