This weekend I spent some time assembling new playlists with Zune 3.0 for an upcoming trip.  I was visiting a # of websites to look at playlists (e.g. XMFans.com) and an annoyance was the number of steps required to copy/paste between the browser and Zune.  So I wrote an Internet Explorer 8 Accelerator to help simplify and reduce the amount of copy/paste actions.  According to the IE8 website, "Accelerators let you efficiently complete your everyday browsing activities like mapping directions, translating words, emailing your friends, and more in just a few mouse clicks."  In building the accelerator, I discovered a wealth of detail available in Zune Marketplace on the web - you can sample music, read artists bios, browse charts, comments, similar artists and more.  

Install Zune Accelerator for IE8 (Beta 2)

To activate the accelerator, highlight the text on a page (Left Click+Drag).  You'll see the new accelerator icon (in blue in image to right).  When you click on this, it will launch the accelerator window.

I'm sure there are better ways to do this, but it was fun and useful enough for my needs.  Other Zune accelerators tend to break out accelerators by Artist, Song, etc. instead of aggregating into one.  Maybe I'll try and build an IE8 Web Slice for Zune Social next.   More details on writing IE8 Accelerators is available here.

For more accelerators, check out the IE8 Accelerator Gallery