Places like YouTube and Yahoo Video provide more than just the ability to show off home video bloopers and people getting immortalized by doing silly things. They are also provide a rich set of instructional videos for the weekend home improvement warrior.

Yesterday I was forced to replace our mail box and was looking for instructions on how to complete the task on the web, however, every time I found a to do list my eyes glazed over and I could not concentrate :P It was then that I stumbled across this step-by-step video that saved my postal life.

To be sure they took a non to subtle opportunity to advertise the company they worked for, but it seemed like a small price to pay to actually watch someone complete the task that I was completely clueless on. I could then decide, based on what I saw, whether to continue or pay someone to help.

I think a video search of instruction videos will now precede all my DIY tasks!

The Zune device is a little bigger than its iPod Video equivalent and I am told this is due to the fact that it has 'The Social' element, someone thought that wireless file sharing was a cool way to share music in a legal and limited way (3 plays for 3 Days). I love the concept but I would like to see it expanded to a much more public forum (I have had my Zune for a month and not shared anything).

For example if I am in my local Best Buy or Circuit City and a new artist has music samples they want me to here this seems to be a convenient forum for getting the music out to devices in the store. These stores have headphones littered all over where I can listen to new music in store. Surely this is the next logical step. There seems to be a lot of untapped potential here.

Also, why oh why does the Zune software not have any notion of RSS! I am forced to go get an unrelated aggregator to gather my podcast's and then go back to the Zune device to detect changes in my library and then sync the device ... too many steps! Help me out here! Allow the Zune software to be RSS aware.

ASIDE: I tried using Rss Bandit and the thing crashed constantly. After uninstalling it left artifacts in the right click menu! I was not happy. Needless to say I have gone back to FeedReader, I will also make a donation to that cause at my earliest convenience.

The Zune Marketplace is nothing compared to the iTunes, however, I have been able to download free music files from new artist, with little or no DRM restrictions from Zune Marketplace. This seems to be a trend that Microsoft is officially supporting. They are insisting on more specific content than the artist would provide to MTV, but that appears to be a reasonable exchange.

I like the idea of musicians making there music available for free via the web. If I like what I hear I will buy the album! Some people seem to believe that doing this kind of things is equivalent to killing the cash cow. I simply do not agree giving away digital music is like giving the cash cow ample reason to come in to the barn and the decide to stay!

"You only live once." - James Brown

I noticed now that most free software is note quite as free as the label suggests. Whether you are installing Adobe products or (what I am installing now) Live Writer, applications are trying to install toolbars or change my default search engine.

I guess free software really means free like a puppy!

"The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions." - Mike Krzyzewski

Loving the new Windows Live Writer here are some of the latest features:

New Authoring Capabilities

• Inline spell checking
• Table editing
• Ability to add categories
• Page authoring for WordPress and TypePad
• Support for excerpts and extended entries
• Improved hyperlinking and image insertion
• Paste Special

My favorite is definitely the inline spelling! I am awful at spelling and waiting until the end to see my mistakes is depressing. I also like being able to create categories on the fly!

I did notice that I tried to select a future publish date for my blog entry and it suggested that Live.Spaces does not support it, that is a shame that would have been a nice feature. I will probably have to move to DasBlog or something.

Cool!

"Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win." - Bobby Knight

After several days of using the Zune these have become my main points of annoyance!

• Be able to use excess space as storage for whatever I want: which leads me to ... Why can I not see the Zune as an additional USB storage device on my PC?
• Zune MarketPlace:  Why does it use the Microsoft Points system? What is wrong with US currency ($). The dollar has done a great job of serving both national and international markets for years.
• Manage Playlists on the Zune device: You can basically add to a quick playlist. It seems it would be pretty easy to create playlists as you see fit without using the Zune software on a PC (n.b. Don tells me this is a feature of iPods too).

... I still love my Zune!

"I treat others exactly the way I want to be treated." - Dionne Warwick