Hard to believe that Microsoft's been offering consumers the ability to customize their Zune purchases for the better part of four years now, but as they say, all unbelievable things must one day face reality. Er, something to that effect. Without so much as a heads-up, the designers in Redmond have apparently decided to shutter the Zune Originals storefront. As of this weekend, no new orders for highly personalized Zunes are being taken, with interested Earthlings encouraged to throw creativity to the wind and opt for a mass produced alternative within Best Buy or Walmart. So, you're looking at two tidbits of import: if you placed your Originals order at 5PM PT on July 1st, you likely have quite the coveted device headed your way, and if you ever needed evidence that Microsoft was making WP7 its next Zune, well... you're welcome.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/04/z...erage-and-unc/ ...

Core gamers game for on average 18 hours a week, according to US stat tracking company NPD.

They bought an average of 5.4 games over the last three months, NPD said in a new report.

The report claims digital gamers, which are different to core gamers, are catching core gamers up. Digital gamers spend 16 hours a week gaming, and bought an average of 5.9 games for any system or device over the past three months.

So, how did NPD come up with its numbers?

It collected data from February to March this year from 8214 respondents aged two and above. The data is weighted and representative of the US population ages two and older, NPD said.

But how does it define core gamers? And how does it define digital gamers? It doesn't say.

We do know core gamers represent the highest number of gamers (23 per cent), though, followed by family and kid gamers (22 per cent), then "avid PC gamers" and "light PC gamers, both of which claim 15 per cent.

Mobile gamers and digital Gamers bring up the rear.

"The name of the game in 2011 seems to be choice," NPD analyst Anita Frazier said.

"Gamers are increasingly branching out to methods of play other than those that the industry has traditionally expected them to use.

"Fuelled by the growth of smartphones and new tablet devices, mobile gaming continues to accelerate, and what a game is and what it means to be a gamer is evolving, reflecting the rapid nature of change within the industry."

Which type of gamer are you?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...urs-a-week-npd ...

Bill Gates doesn't give too many interviews, but the Daily Mail's Caroline Graham sure managed to get a lot out of him during their recent sitdown. Gates spent much of the time discussing his global health foundation, which, according to him, has become "full-time work for the rest of my life." And, while he acknowledged that he's still involved with Microsoft on a "part-time" basis, he reaffirmed that he has no desire to return to the throne. Does this mean he's finally ready to lift his household's notorious Apple embargo and allow his kids to own iPods? Not exactly:
"They have the Windows equivalent. They have a Zune music player, which is a great Windows portable player. They are not deprived children."
Hear that? Bill's kids aren't in need! In fact, they even earn allowances and "do chores," just like your kids. Sure, their pops may have billions of dollars stowed away under his mattress, but he says his offspring will only receive a "minuscule portion" of that fortune. Cue the violins.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/13/b...ey-have-zunes/ ...

Paul Thurrot called out the elephant in the room: there's no trace of Zune branding anywhere that we can see on the new Xbox 360 dashboard design. It's simply "music" and "video" now. Frankly, that makes sense - it's a bit of nonsense that we need to go into the Zune interface to watch videos...

It seems pretty clear that the Zune as a device is dead, and as a service, it's on the way out. Quite a shame really...

http://www.zunethoughts.com/news/sho...dashboard.html ...

XCM Multi-Charger Plus
Manufacturer: XCM
Site: Buy from Play-Asia / Buy from Amazon
Price: $64.95

Overview : Unlike another brand of multi-charger, XCM Multi-Charger Plus is compatible with PS3™ controllers, PlayStation Move controllers, Sony PSP™ Slim & Lite, PSP™, PSP™ Go, Xbox 360™ controllers, NDS™, NDS™ Lite, NDSi™, Nintendo 3DS™, iPad™, iPad 2™, iPhone™ 3G, iPhone™ 3GS, iPhone™ 4 and many other USB devices.

Features :

• PlayStation Move and Navigation controller charging ports
• 4 USB ports
• Supports any USB 5v input

XCM Multi-Charger Plus can be used on the following :

• PS3™ Move and Navigation controllers (2 sets)
• PS3™ DualShock and Sixaxis controllers
• PSP™ series (1000-3000 series and PSP™ Go)
• iPhone™ series (iPhone 2G, 3G, 3GS and 4)
• iPad™ series (iPad™ and iPad 2™)
• NDS™ series (DS, DS Lite, DSi and 3DS)
• Xbox 360™ controllers
• and all devices that supports a 5v USB input such as Android devices (phones/tablets), Blackberry™, iPod™, mobile devices, MP3 players and many more!

Includes :

• PSP Slim/Go USB cable
• DS Lite/DSi USB cable
• 3DS USB Cable
• iPod/iPad/iPhone USB Cable
• US/Mexico/Canada AC plug
• UK AC Plug
• Australia/New Zealand AC Plug
• Asia/Europe AC Plug

Quality/Usability : XCM Multi-Charger Plus is an update to XCM's popular Multi-Charger. I was a huge fan of the original multi-charger and used it everyday. Finding an available USB plug or without having to turn on a computer can be hard and cumbersome. Especially when you have other electronic devices that uses USB ports to charge.

The back has a port to plug in the AC 100-240v cable. The front contains four USB ports...the same amount found on its predecessor. But what makes this different from the original is that on the top of the charger, there are four round ports. These four ports allows you to insert two PlayStation Move controllers and two PlayStation Move Navigation controllers. Each port has its own LED. LED turns red when its charging and green when its completely charged. The base also lights up with a blue LED accent. What's also cool is that the rim around the PlayStation Move ports also light up blue.

Charging USB devices takes about the same if you were to charge them through the wall with a normal USB cable or its original AC adapter.

The Multi-Charger Plus measures 7.5" inches (L) x 1.75" inches (H) and about 4.5" inches (D). Just like the Multi-Charger, included are four AC plugs (Europe/Asia, USA/Mexico/Canda, Australia/New Zealand, UK). The plugs are short in length so you will not be able to place it on a table or next to your computer. Wires measure about 16 inches long from tip of plug that inserts into XCM Multi-Charger Plus to the base of AC plug (not the prongs). Also included are four USB charging cables (iPod/iPad/iPhone, PSP, NDS, 3DS). You do not have to use the included cables if you already have USB cables that came with the devices. I highly suggest using what you already have.

Conclusion : Overall, the XCM Multi-Charger Plus worked great! I was glad that XCM still included the four USB ports with the ability to charge PlayStation Move controllers. However, the length of the AC power cable is still short. If you want to use the XCM Multi-Charger Plus, you'll have to keep it on the ground and very very close to the wall outlet unless you have it connected to an extension cord. This was one of my pet-peeves and XCM has disappointed me. The price point is also about the same as the original and is a bit high. Two of the highly used USB ports, micro and mini USB is not included. It would of been nice if they included these since its used on cellphones and PS3/Xbox 360 controllers.

Images via comments ...

See that there? That's a hope and a dream, both of which are seemingly situated in a nondescript box six feet beneath the surface of reality. Thanks to a bit of digging by the folks at Techie Buzz, a Microsoft patent was unearthed containing pictures and descriptions of a bantam media player, not unlike the sketches here. Naturally, the first thing that comes to mind is an iPod nano competitor, and one has to wonder when exactly the plug was pulled from such an initiative. The application itself was originally filed in April of 2009, and was just made public within the USPTO database today -- the last Zune device to be produced was the HD (which landed in the fall of '09), and given Redmond's insistence on making Windows Phone 7 its next Zune, we're guessing this little guy won't ever see the light of day. Maybe in another life, though. For now, feel free to pour one out as you think of what could've been, and give that source link a poke if you're good at holding back tears.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/31/p...s-us-of-an-am/ ...

Well its been a busy few days since Martin upgraded not only the server but upgraded the forum to the latest version of Vbulletin and installed many new security features, hopefully this will stop the hacking that has done damage to the name of DCEmu.

The last few days i have been posting like crazy and now we are back up to date and what a month it has been, if you follow the PSP, DS and Wii scenes you have seen so many new releases, infact i havent seen so much activity in a long time and some genuine great releases, the weeks away has really renewed my passion for homebrew.

One thing i am going to do is bring back the old sites for archive purposes so that releases especially older ones can be found easy, there are thousands of pages on those sites that form a major history of the site and whilst the new CMS is great theres a need to be able to relive those releases, that is my next task and an ongoing one until they are all online.

Over the last 4 days i have posted literally hundreds of news items and a couple of hundred Homebrew releases, so if you havent yet then check the forums to catch up on releases you may not have seen before.

The Homebrew scene seems to be coming out of a dark period where homebrew was just linked to piracy and its good to remember that Homebrew is and never wil be the same as piracy.

Long Live DCEmu and The Homebrew Scene,

thanks for your time

wraggster ...

News via http://www.zuneboards.com/forums/dow...r-zune-hd.html

zuNESter is a port of PocketNester 0.7a. It is highly optimized and should be able to run any NES ROM at a full 60 frames per second. It supports 9 save states per ROM. Unfortunately, the sound currently does not work at all. Hopefully that will change in the future. The controls are obvious from the overlay, except that to access the menu while playing a game in portrait mode, you have to touch where the game is displaying (upper part of the screen).

Also, be sure to add your own NES ROMs to the ROMs folder before deploying.

Note: Nothing has yet changed since the latest release candidate. The source code will be added soon.

Update:
-Landscape mode (Thanks to Nick for the theme.)
-ROMs are now searched for in /flash2/zuNESter/ROMs as well. (Put them there with Liberate or the zuNESter File Deployer.)
-Moved saves to /flash2/zuNESter/Saves and now saves according to the entire file name.
-Invisible quick load button in top-left corner and invisible quick save button in top-right corner. ...

News via http://www.zunethoughts.com/news/sho...p-a-notch.html

"It appears the leaks were true. Zune on Windows Phone Mango has received a nice update. Using the Mango emulator provided with the Windows Phone Developer Tools, we were able to access certain hidden features like Bing Vision, Bing Audio, Local Scout, and more."

In addition to some beautiful cosmetic changes, it appears that we'll also be seeing some key functionality improvements to bring it on par with the Zune HD device. My favorite improvement would be the visibility of the music playing controls on the lock screen. Sure, it's not that hard to press "power" and then "volume" to get to the controls right now, but this is a slight bit of streamlining that I surely will appreciate. The ability to have the artist's imagery on the lock screen when their music is playing is also a pretty nifty feature.Click the link to find out more about some other functionality and podcast support. ...