The Microsoft Zune Party Train Takes a Spill in Vancouver

Yesterday, the Dot Com Pho Crew went out to toast the launch of the Microsoft Zune in Canada. The head of the launch took place in Vancouver and will travel across the country to five other locations including Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto and Halifax. Unfortunately, the Zune train derailed in Vancouver…

Microsoft tried to be “Edgy” and “Extreme” with their Zune launch by renting out a local indoor skatepark known as “The Sweatshop“. At first, I thought it’d be cool to have a live band and some skateboarding demos and that was what I was expecting. Turns out the place had a flood and the whole skatepark is now in ruins. Desperate for cash, Microsoft saved them by renting out the whole place. However, there seemed to be something peculiar about the whole arrangement as the venue didn’t seem too thankful throughout the night.

The invitations said to be there at 9PM, but while it sounded like people were already having a good time inside, we were left outside wondering if we’d ended up at the wrong place. This made Michael Kwan (above) very upset. He may look thin and FOB like, but he’ll whip you like a branch! We got in around 9:30PM only to find that no one was inside. WTF?

The first sign of trouble was when we went to grab our free drinks. The girls behind the counter started demanding tips from all the guests. Wait a sec? Why would you demand tips when you are getting paid? Turns out no one paid them and they kept harassing the guests for tips before they would hand over the booze. Classy. So where did Microsoft’s money go? Obviously not to Yahoo.

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The ZUNE Goes From Coming to Arriving in Canada

Microsoft has finally taken the wraps off the launch details for the Microsoft ZUNE Music Players. MegaTechNews reports that the Zune will be hitting most major Canadian retail outlets on June 13th, 2008. Futurelooks did a review of the ZUNE 80 GB player and had some positive things to say, but it’s still no iPod Killer. Microsoft agrees and says that they are really running a marathon here and taking their time.

As part of their Canadian launch efforts, Microsoft is touring the country with a 6 Band, 6 City and 6 Party tour. Starting with Vancouver this evening. Local media and VIP’s (yes, they invited me) will be able to witness some of the cool things the ZUNE can do, coming this June to the Great White North. Though ZUNE has been available to the US market for quite some time now, an official launch should help boost sales and help Microsoft gain badly needed market share in the media player market.

If you’re coming to the event, hope to see you there.  Rumour has it, there will be free drinks, and hopefully, FREE Zunes for everyone! I’ll be in full attendance with the Dot Com Pho Crew which means that John Chow, Ed Lau, Michael Kwan and Leo Chiang will be there. It’s like a Dot Com Whistler Tour…minus the spooning…hopefully…

I’m sure that we’ll have pictures and more after the show so stay tuned

The WOW Arrives At My Doorstep

After dealing with the ups and downs of the Futurelooks Server today, I was left totally bummed out about the massive traffic drop despite a great article on the new LG BH100 Super Blu Blue-ray / HD-DVD machine. The article was doing very well today, until our database server decided to quit on us. Apparently, some weird software on one of the Apache servers was overloading the DB connections. Hopefully it got sorted out.

So after making sure the sites were back up, I went down to the post office to see what goodies would cheer me up. Well, I certainly got a WOW experience. No, not this WoW, the other WOW…

In a FedEx bag arrived Microsoft’s Windows VISTA Ultimate Edition and Office 2007 Professional! Even better, they a full retail versions, not the upgrade or the academic. Damn!

Even though it was packaged in a foam protective shipping bag, the couriers always seem to find someway to give anything a good beating. My copy of VISTA Ultimate was pretty much all open for me before I even unsealed the bag as the contents were floating around inside the container. The Office Professional 2007 was safe, hiding behind Vista.

I always thought the reason they went to DVD Media was to allow Vista 32 bit and 64 bit to be able to reside on the same disc. Well, it looks like that’s not the case. The 32 bit and 64 bit versions come on seperate discs. Although this is the ULTIMATE edition, I found it funny that they still included a pamphlet that allowed you to request the media on CD? I really don’t think most people with a machine powerful enough to run Ultimate Edition use CD burners or readers anymore.

Although I’m probably not going to install Vista for a little bit, I’m definitely looking forward to checking out Office 2007 Professional. Looks like it wasn’t such a bad day after all. Thanks Microsoft! You’re my friend today