Six days ago Microsoft, Dell, Google, Hewlett Packard, Intel and Philips answered many questions and submitted an application for a device that’s been referred to as anything from an extension of the Zune media player to a new standard for wireless transmitting in the Zune blogosphere.

This picture indicates an arcane mesh of a new product or way of transmitting data or both:

However, there has yet to be any real proof that what we’re seeing is, in fact, an actual phone. If however, it is, and is a joint coalition effort between these monsters of the Silicon Valley then Apple Corp. really does have a true challenger when the iPhone actually hits the market in June.

It was a busy day in Zunedom today as earlier it was announced that the leader of the Zune team, Bryan Lee, will retire in a few weeks to “Start the next chapter in his life”. I’ll admit I have no idea if he actually got the boot or what but I don’t necessarily care, because I don’t see this as a bad thing.

You see, I like J Allard, in fact, he headed the development team for the Xbox and now he takes over the Zune day to day operations which is a good thing as far as I see it. Oh yeah there was also a little announcement over at CrunchGear about their tipsters giving them some insight on the start of the development for a Zune branded phone.

I know what you’re thinking “Boy that’s original”, well, maybe. At least it won’t cost $500.00 like the iPhone, I mean who the heck does Apple think they’re fooling? Five hundred dollars for a phone is simply as ridiculous as it gets. But, I guess they can get away with it, because they’re the cool kids on the block. I mean just watch those Mac and PC commercials of theirs and you know at least what they think of themselves.

We saw Windows Vista go on sale at midnight across the US and in 70 other countries this morning, and of course, it was no reminder of the near “Cabbage Patch” insanity the last major update spurred back in 1995. However, the media world is still alight with stories from those who have now switched from Apple’s Mac toe those who have tried to upgrade their OS on a UMPC.

It’s difficult to say whether or not there will be a rapid relocation from XP users but sure enough we know we’re going to see the migration taking place over the next couple of years and pretty soon it will be on the majority of PC users’ computers.

Today Ruckus, the legal music downloading service announced Free Music for All College Students in the US. This offer had previously been offered only to schools under contract with them, however, this offer is opened to any student with an .edu email address.

The virus free music downloading service sports music from all genres and virtually every major record label has restricted some with .edu emails from downloading music, do to the fact that many Alumni and staff choose to use their .edu email addresses as well.

This all comes in an effort to decrease the downloading of illegal copyrighted music from file sharing networks such as Kazaa, bit torrent sites and other P2P networks. Disapointed by all this are Apple users who will not be able to use the songs downloaded nor will iPod users. But Apple is not the only bigwig being left behind as Microsoft’s portable Zune media player will also not be able to play the music. You can read their press release here: http://www.ruckusnetwork.com/pressrelease.php?id=62

It’s a rarity that I pay too much attention to reviews, I’m always a little suspicious of them online; mostly do to affiliate marketing. Many website owners have the intention of creating great reviews for their affiliates that pay them the highest commission; it’s atypical for a review to post better reviews for any product or service that pays them less to advertise it.

And, that’s simply the truth, however, there are rare exceptions but those are few and far between. So, when do I take reviews seriously? When the reviewer is respected or has nothing to gain from their critique; hence the reason I found this information so interesting. What information you ask? eBay members reviews of Microsoft’s Zune .

Out of 18 reviews we have an average of 4/5 stars, not too bad. However, if we look at the more active reviewers (those who are listed as the top 10,000 reviewers), we see that they too liked it and had some very promising things to say. This comment is from: peanuts154

Microsoft has openly admitted in recent statements that Zune has had its share of difficulties which appear to be mounting of late. With the latest news that Sony Entertainment Corporation and Universal Arts have both reneged on a deal to allow owners of Zune to share music through “The Social” what Microsoft calls the Wi-Fi aspects of the Zune player which allows the sharing for up to three plays for up to three days for every song “Squirted” to another player.