New features include:

• Dynamic Backgrounds
• Voice Clip
• New Sign-In UI
• New Connectivity Troubleshooter
• Improved Voice Conversation
• Vodafone support* 
   
  * you need to be located in a Vodafone market (IT-IT, ES-ES, NL-NL) to experience.

Get it at http://Messenger.msn.com

You gotta hand it to MSN. Between MSN Spaces, Messenger, Desktop Toolbar, and Start.com, there's a lot of interesting and good stuff being churned out at a rapid rate. Others are taking notice.

You just have to love our friends at the FCC. The FCC requires that new devices registered in the US are available for public inspection prior to certification. Such is the situation with Moto's iTunes phone including photos, manuals, and test details.  According to PhoneArena, new details gleamed include:

* Bar form factor, stereo speakers on the side
* VGA built-in camera; Video Record supported
* Trans-Flash (micro SD) card memory expansion
* Bluetooth
* iTunes support
* Music key

Apple has stated that an iTunes-compatible phone will ship this summer.

News.com has a roundup of new PC designs and processors coming from Intel including one low-voltage-enabled CPU that purports to use less power than a current PC put into sleep/standby while still remaining on.

Sorry but the first PC looks like a Tandy from the early 1990's. I'm sure we can do better.  Also note to Intel- please put an object such as a ruler next to these super-small devices?  Otherwise we have no concept of scale on "first read".

But it's good to have a sense of  humor :)

I have a neighbor who is on her 3rd iPod.  Why? "The hard drive keeps dying".  Yes, she should sign up for the AppleCare progra, but the real culprit is how she uses it- she runs. A lot.  Truth be told, HD-based Portable Music Players just don't handle the g-shock of running very well. 

Enter Sony's new Walkman "Beans", three new flash-based players that look super-slick.  No mention of PlaysforSure support which has me wanting though- if they don't work with Yahoo's music service, MSN or Napster, count me out.  I hope Sony woke up and snuck a few podcasting features in like bookmarking.

Here's a quick roundup of digital media items from this week:

• Here's a new episode of The Media Center Show with an interview with Matt Goyer from the MCE team. Lots of interesting things here.
• mNewsCenter RSS for MCE is now available
• Everyone seems to be opening up their API's these days - Orb is the latest
• In-stat report says Digital Terrestrial and Free To Air Sat will give PC Tuner market a boost - $3.7B in 2009, 42.6% CAGR.  Credits MCE's traction.
• Barb Bowman writes about Windows Connect Now technology.
• Parks' report says 4M US HH's now engaging in digital video editing every month.

Three new PowerToys for MSN Spaces.  Get em over on the official MSN Spaces blog: http://spaces.msn.com/members/thespacecraft/  

Tweak UI
The Tweak UI Power Toy is designed to allow you to customize the look of your Space. Once you add the Tweak UI Power Toy to your Space you can use it to control colors, module borders and transparency, and the background image’s placement and presence. Granular control combined with existing Spaces layout and module configuration allows for almost endless customizability and personalization.

Custom HTML
The Custom HTML Power Toy is designed to allow you to add a sandbox module to your Space in which you can enter text, link to images, and use other HTML features. The Custom HTML Power Toy supports all of the same HTML that you can enter into a Blog entry and can be moved around your Space as a separate module, just like a list or any other Spaces module. Additionally you can control the Title of this module and whether the borders for this module are displayed or not.

Windows Media Player Powertoy
The Media Player Power Toy is designed to allow you to play audio and video files within your Space. While editing your Space specify the URL of a Media file located on the web in the Media Power Toy and hit Save. This will allow the people viewing your Space to watch or listen to the media file you have linked. You can customize the experience even more by altering the player settings (like auto start, times to play, and player mode) while editing your Space.

Usual disclaimers apply- beta blah blah US-only blah blah (hey- I'm just the messenger).

That stands for, "Yet another Steve Ballmer Video".  It's so 1990's, but the remix is kinda catchy...

Well, they’re still not forthcoming with an actual date, but the Creative Zen Sleek has made an official appearance on Creative’s US website, which means it probably won’t be long now. Here are the Sleek's stats:

Still no mention of podcasting or podcasting features. Someday they'll get it...

via Engadget

An interesting story regarding how easily iTunes Music Store's Podcast Directory ratings can be easily manipulated.

Ed Note: Fixed download URL below and updated to reflect HKey_Current_User as the appropriate regkey setting.

Okay, here's my first unofficial Windows Vista "Enhancement Pack" and early feedback is that it's a good one- add 32 search providers to Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 in 32 seconds ;)

New in Internet Explorer 7 is a simple searchbox with the ability to search many different providers (e.g. MSN, AOL, Ebay, WSJ, Fandango) all from one place- just select the search provider (aka Scope) of your search by clicking the Magnifier glass icon and you're ready to go. The only problem is that the ability to add search providers is not in IE7 in Windows Vista Beta 1 (which I'm sure will be remedied). With this kit, you get over thirty of the top search and service providers on the Internet, including:

-Amazon.com
-AOL
-AskJeeves
-C|Net (Product search)
-C|Net News.com
-Costco
-eBay
-Encarta
-Fandango
-FedEx
-Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/groups/mediacenter)
-Google
-IMDb
-LA Times
-Lycos
-The Mercury News
-Microsoft.com
-Microsoft Help & Support Knowledgebase
-Microsoft Office Clip Art Gallery Live (Note: May require MS Office license)
-Microsoft PressPass (for the Journalists and Newshounds)
-MSDN (Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!)
-MSN Images
-MSN Music
-MSN News
-The New York Times
-The Seattle Times
-Technorati (Blog it!)
-UPS (United Parcel Service)
-The Wall Street Journal
-The weather Channel
-Yahoo!

Download: IE7_Search_Providers.zip (4.31 KB)

How to Install:
-Select the entry you wish to add to IE and double-click it.  Accept when prompted.
-To add all 32 entries at once, choose "Add All.reg"

How to Use:
-Once installed, restart IE7 (any instance will do)
-Click the Magnifier Glass icon next to Search in upper-right corner of IE7
-Choose your Search Provider

How to Change your Default Provider:
-Click the Magnifier Glass icon next to Search in upper-right corner of IE7
-Choose last option, "Search Settings"
-Change Settings

How to Remove Search Providers:
-Click the Magnifier Glass icon next to Search in upper-right corner of IE7
-Choose last option, "Search Settings"
-Change Settings

How this works:
IE7 in Windows Vista Beta 1 stores search provider information in the registry under:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\

If you run RegEdit.exe and do a "Find" (F3) for SearchScopes, you'll find em.  Each entry has four pieces of information starting with the full Key name, for example:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes\CNet]
"DisplayName"="C|Net News.com"
"URL"="http://cnet.search.com/search?chkpt=astg.cnet.fd.search.cnet&q=%s&tag=srch"
"SortIndex"=dword:00000005

It's pretty easy to figure out. "%s" is the wildcard for the search string the user enters.

If you like it, feel free to leave feedback at my blog at http://blog.seanalexander.com/PermaLink,guid,04a7843f-bbdd-460b-8d49-8c7848bad52f.aspx
Ugly URL isn't it? ;)

^ No Washington State Marmots were hurt in the creation of this kit. One Furrygoat (www.furrygoat.com) was sighted.

Here's an idea a long time in coming: sidewalk caricature artist replaces pen and paper with a Tablet PC in London's fashionable Leicester Square.

This could be the coolest multi-format media player on market.  Picture this: You're on a family summer road trip vacation and you've filled up that CF card with pictures- dump them to the Vision and you're ready to go. The kids can take their favorite TV programs to watch in the back seat. You stop at Aunt Ethel's house and she wants to see pictures from your kid's b/d party, you can connect it to her TV easily or show her over dinner.

What's more this little gem works with it all- WMV, DivX, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, XVid, and even TiVotoGo. No mention of Media Center support but I'm hazarding a guess it sync's just fine. 120 hours of video, 4.5 hour battery life.  Organizer syncs with Outlook, Photos, and hot donkey, it even works with PlaysforSure subscription stores like Napster and MSN. Holy cow it even supports subscription stores for music and movies too. 

Finally, finally a new device pops to the top of my "Most Wanted" list. More on Creative's site.

via eHomeUpgrade

I'm not at all a fan of the uninspired design of the Zen Neeon (mono LCDs with 7 backlight shades and side rocker controls are so 2002), buy hey, with a $199 price tag and 5GB of storage in a 1.8 x 3.1 x 0.6-inch package (that's smaller than a iPod Mini).  This could be an interesting competition.  It's skinnable as you can see here and has specs that should shame the competition:

• MP3, WMA, PlaysforSure support, and WAV
• USB 2.0 (includes charging support yea!)
• Voice Recording
• FM radio

I'm willing to bet it has a bookmarking feature as well to pick up your Podcasts where you left off- a feature I LOVE in my Zen Micro. If anyone has one, would love to hear your take on this little gem.

<Note to Creative>Someone over at Creative should really think about putting another item- a hand, an Apple (heh) next to this device to show its scale- it looked bulky to me! Also how about getting into bed with an accessories manufacturer like Belkin for some inspired accessories?</Note to Creative>

By the way, where's the Zen Micro Photo?  We're still hoping to get our hands on that one.

Charlie and I were in a meeting yesterday and he was mock-offended he wasn't on my blogroll anymore.  "I link to you..." well, given, you're the #1 Charlie Owen on the Internet, I'll link to you once again - a small oversight on my part Charlie.  And since I also know the #1 Matt Goyer on the Internet, I'll add him back into my blogroll as well.

Want to be on my blogroll?  Just ask and explain why you're addicted to digital media.

As Thomas Hawk likes to say, "Hot Donkey!". There's a new Microsoft Sync Powertoy now available from Microsoft for Windows XP customers and it's free!*  This should work great for backing up your files and folders across multiple PCs or syncing recorded TV between multiple MCE PCs. From the download page: 

Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store and retrieve files. There are new sources of files coming from every direction: digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to move files from one place to another; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping a mental card catalog in their heads. Others use one or more applications of one sort or another to provide this functionality for them.

Now there is an easier way. SyncToy is a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows XP that provides an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without adding complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of directories at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another. Unlike other applications, SyncToy keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

HowTo Whitepaper: "Synchronizing Images and Files in Windows XP using Microsoft SyncToy"

This is what I call value-add!  Rest assured however that resources were not taken off of Windows Vista to do this.

*Windows validation required blah blah

What's made in China and looks like an iPod Shuffle? Well, other than the iPod Shuttle (Designed in Cupertino, Made in China), the Morestar  MP270 is the latest rip-off to reportedly improve on the shuffle experience with the addition of a 7 color LCD screen, MP3 and WMA support, FM radio and recorder, voice recorder and still maintains a 12-hour battery life. USB 2.0 transfer is also supported.

This brings to mind the Luxpro EZ Tangent (aka SuperShuffle). I had an opportunity to play with one of these a little while ago and it was ok. The addition of an LCD and WMA support were very welcome additions, however I'm generally not a big fan of solid-state devices unless I'm at the gym. And you can forget devices with out a display for listening to Podcasts- I'm not memorizing the show # of  Adam Curry's The Daily Source Code (which he announces at the beginning of each). Hey Adam- how about giving us the date of the Podcast so we can scan through? Same goes for all of you Podcast providers out there.

via Engadget.