By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

I have just finished reading a bunch of the posts from yesterday talking about how you can’t send some songs from one Zune to another via the Wifi. Microsoft had noted that “the Zune to Zune sharing feature may not be available for all audio files on your device”, but for some reason they won’t say which ones. In this interview of Matt Jubilier a reporter keeps asking him which songs, which music companies, but the only answers he has is we’re not discussing that and most of the content you can share. Most. Nothing is noted on the site on which songs can be shared wirelessly or not, and they don’t want to talk about it.

The wireless transfer took 5 minutes, 2 seconds to send the 29 songs - or about 10 seconds per song. Pretty respectable, for what amounts to two hours of music. But I don’t like having 50-50 odds that I’ll actually be able to share a given song wirelessly. This assumes, of course, that my Top 50 sampling is representative of Marketplace as a whole. Source: Wireless sharing - 58% of top songs are sharable?

A site named cliczune has noted on their site which songs out of the 50 were sharable or not.

Universal Music Group
Prohibited Zune Sharing: Gwen Stefani, Snow Patrol, Eminem, Blue October, JoJo, Jay-Z.
Accepted Zune Sharing: Nickelback, Nelly Furtado and Maria Careh.
Sony Music
Prohibited Zune Sharing: Beyonce, Weird Al Yankovic (not sure if song is from Sony) and Ciara.
Accepted Zune Sharing: Shakira, Wyclef Jean, The Fray, Christina Aguilera, John Mayer and Brad Paisley. Source: Cliczune

We Say: That sucks. It sucks not only because they won’t allow you to share them for the measly three days, but they won’t tell you which ones are not shareable. I’ve read that Microsoft is going to try to get the three day deal changed, but I have my doubts that will change. The good news is, this only affects songs downloaded from the marketplace, so if you can burn them to cd, and then rip them back, you should be able to share them, but who wants to do that? Where are all the Zune hackers I figured we would have by now, I figured we’d have software that would share everything without the limits by now.

By Martin Regtien
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Logitech’s latest notebook mouse, the VX Revolution would make a good statement on any desktop too, according to this contributor for DigitalReviews.net.
It’s fully featured, wireless of course, has even a tilting scroll wheel and enough buttons to handling gaming in a pinch too.

Check out the full review.

By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Loud commercials have always annoyed me. I put my television’s volume at a comfortable level to listen to a show, yet during commercial breaks I frequently find myself feeling the urge to turn the volume down a few notches. Up until now, this manual intervention was the only option available to most people who don’t like annoyingly loud commercials. Luckily for people like us, Dolby has heard our pleas and plans to introduce volume leveling technology for your television (the downside being that you’ll need a new television to use it).

Dolby says that the goal of Dolby Volume’s aim is to deliver consistent volume levels by modeling how “humans perceive audio” to eliminate variable loudness in the audio stream. Dolby claims that the system does this automatically without any type of user intervention (aside from the initial setup).

Automatic volume leveling is nothing new. It’s been a feature on most software media players (such as Windows Media Player) for years, but it hasn’t made many inroads onto home theater equipment. Dolby hopes to change all that and make Dolby Volume a standard feature for many new television sets.
Read more at ArsTechnica.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Now this could get me buying cigarettes again.

Actually, RF jamming is illegal in the United States, but a hacker/researcher at MIT Media Labs named “Lady Ada” has developed a RF jammer she calls the Wave Bubble based on this philosophy:

“In a high population density city, inhabitants must be prepared to defend their own personal space. Technologies that increase personal productivity are on the rise, even though they may intrude on others. The unavoidable reaction is to create technologies that counteract other people’s devices. Wave Bubble is a product that counters the all-too-familiar annoyance of loud ring tones and overt cell-phone conversations in public.”

We Say: Go Ada! Actually her concept of “Social Defense Mechanisms” is right on the money even if it a bit scary. People want to turn off loud airport TVs, and silence ear-splitting ringtones in movies and restaurants. The technology has actually been available for years, and is in use in Japan, but the US is especially sensitive to the fact that a jammer can mess up a pacemaker. And you know how Americans love to sue. To that we say - smoke em if you got em.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

I had a heck of a time with the title of this article, because in some ways I can see this as a great boon to malekind (and I mean malekind) … in others just another cool use of technology.

I mean, think about it, men. How many of you have been carted off with your significant others to give advice and commentary on clothes? Naturally you would much rather be home watching the NBA or NFL Playoffs. You might just get your wish.

A New York-based designer has come up with a mirror equipped with infrared technology that sends a live video feed to any cell phone, e-mail account or personal digital assistant device selected by a shopper. Using the interactive mirror, a shopper’s friends can then text message back with comments about the outfit. Shoppers can also use touch screens on the three-paneled mirror to choose matching shoes or accessories. Source: Reuters

We Say: According to the article, you can even select a different article of clothing from the database in the left-hand panel of the 3 panelled mirror and then see how it looks in the center panel (hmmm … not sure how that will work). BTW, to be fair to my wife, she rarely, if ever, takes me shopping with her. But that’s mostly because she has very little confidence in my fashion sense.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

How long have we been hearing about the digital wallet?

I know Bill gates was a mere millionaire back when I heard him spinning yarns, and yet here today is the iCache. Billed as the first biomertic digital wallet, this handy little device holds your credit card data, frequent flier numbers, and virtually anything with an magnetic strip on it for safe keeping. Your finger unlocks the card.

We Say: If you can brave the beyond-annoyong flash-based website, you’ll see a pretty cool idea coming to life at last. No word on pricing and the product is still in testing, but we’re intrigued. Too bad it looks like an iPod…you know some test user will demand music and photo capbility and we’ll all be waiting another three years for this.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Shouldn’t we be over “Web 2.0″ by now? The use of big fonts and colors and tags and all the other zoomy things that dressed up Web pages and made us feel better about the crash? That’s what I thought until I have to say I was taken by silly-sounding Zirr.us.

You basically create a mini ecosystem of tags based on how important the task is, and Zirr.us generates a tag cloud - visually reminding you that your 5:00POM deadline is far more important than that aspirational “Start a Band” to-do.

We Say: Silly and not very serious, Zirr.us is nice try, and I now have using it on my own to-do list.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

I have to admit that all the friend-making in cyberspace is a bit much, espeically when you know that many a troll lurks behind that friend-ladened profile. That’s why we found Snubster to be a breath of fresh air. The concept is easy to grasp - you post a gripe in either a “Dead to Me” list or the less severe “On Notice” section and set yourself free. Here is a sample:

sugarless soft drinks They are unreal and have a bitter aftertaste - like Starwars 1, 2, 3

Bottom Line: Great for people who have something to get off their chests every five minutes. Not so great for those who have more on their minds. And watch for the dark entries like, “Left me even though he only has one hand” and ” She killed my mom.”