Creative Technology Ltd. today announced ZenCast, the new application for accessing, creating and transferring thousands of audio and video blogs for select Creative Zen MP3 players. ZenCast will be demonstrated from Thursday, January 5 through Sunday, January 8 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV in the Creative exhibit #30742 in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
ZenCast provides quick and easy access to a wide range of interesting and entertaining audio and video content on the Internet. The experience begins at http://www.zencast.com. The ZenCast home page reveals different channels with subjects ranging from world affairs to tech gadgets to entertainment. In addition to providing categories of specific interest, ZenCast also offers a “What’s New” list of audio and video blog broadcasts, and a “Today’s Top 10” of popular downloads.
“ZenCast provides your one-stop destination for breaking news, entertainment, sports – all available free for download to your Zen player,” said Sim Wong Hoo, chairman and CEO of Creative in the press release. “You can even host your own show. ZenCast is like having a personal Internet TV broadcasting station, where anyone can create their own program and broadcast it to the world.”
ZenCast Organizer, specifically designed by Creative, seamlessly integrates podcasts and video blogs with select Zen players or a PC. The application enables viewing and listening to content and can be set up to manually or automatically download content to select MP3 players such as the Creative Zen Vision:M. Users can subscribe to top name broadcasts from companies such as CNET, ESPN, RocketBoom and the Singapore Straits Times through the ZenCast Organizer, and they can specify how often fresh content is downloaded. ZenCast Organizer also enables users to browse and subscribe to channels from other online broadcast providers. A convenient Auto Sync feature can be set to immediately download content to the player or the PC.
Features of ZENcast Organizer
• Manage your downloads, subscriptions, playback, and transfers with ease
• Recommended channel guide in ZENcast Directory
• Auto-Sync to update your subscriptions
• Optimized for multi-format video support
• Browser Requirement
• Internet Explorer 6.0 and above
OS Requirements:
• Microsoft Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 or Windows XP (Service Pack 1 or higher)
• Microsoft DirectX® 9.0 and above
• Windows Media Player 10
A beta version of the Creative ZenCast Organizer is available free today for all Zen Vision and Zen Vision:M users. The Creative ZenCast Organizer will begin shipping with the Zen Vision and the Zen Vision:M in the first half of 2006. Download of the ZenCast Organizer will enable users to experience any content from http://www.zencast.com
There are leaders and then, there are followers. The most hilarious thing about this – beside that “Creative” has to be the most ironic company name in history (we’re convinced that someone made a translation error during incorporation; it was supposed to be “Derivative”) – is that they’re forced to use the word “Podcast” all throughout, since almost all of the content is a podcast and many of them contain “podcast” in their titles because they are designed for iPod users first and foremost.
Who besides Hoo do they think is going to use a fake iTunes mess and an iPod also-ran player to listen to Podcasts?
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Related articles:
Microsoft employees squeamish about ‘podcast’ term, try using ‘blogcast’ instead – July 11, 2005
FIRST POST/FIRST TIME
Anyway , Creative is pathetic, I´m not sure if I should laugh or cry…
I think I might have to break down and buy a pc so I can finally try to figure out what this whole zencast phenomenon is all about!!
God, they are REALLY pathetic…
creative zencast…M$ blogcast…when will it end? Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
MW=terms, come to terms with reality, Apple won in this space
But how do I listen to my Podcasts then ?
Whooehah!
when, oh when will this nasty little troll go away? his nasty little company is as bad as little billy’s: if they didn’t have Apple to copy, they’d be out of business.
Number of podcasts available > number of Creative players sold … Akamai won’t need to help out.
Geez, I don’t love them either, but what are they supposed to do, roll over and die? They are working and strategizing and doing what they can. Will it pay off, probably not…
It wasn’t long ago when I bought some “insanely great” stuff that may not have been as insane or great as Apple wanted me to believe. Marketing is marketing. No need to kick anything when it’s down. Let the market play out.
<steps down from soap box>
<mutters something self-righteous under breath>
<trips>
<falls down>
These guys are in some kind of dream world.
{off topic}
Nice to see McAfee got slapped with a $US 50,000,000 fine by the SEC for faking earnings among other things. Sounds like the kind of company I want to trust my I.T. security with.
Their whole business is a scam.
…that said; Apple really should have made a on-click way in GarageBand to make a podcast, and a similar button in quicktime(free) or iMovie, huh ?
iLife 06´I guess !
Actually, there already is an excellent podcast entitled “Zencast”. It has excellent talks on Buddism, mediation and Zen. I highly recommend it.
What’s a zencast?
Sounds like group meditation to me.
What??? No Mac version? LOL!!
ROFLAO. If I did not see it with my own eyes, I would not believe a company could have no shame and copy another one so much….. Oh that’s right, there is Microsoft out there too…
Official Best Post of the Day is awarded to:
R
“Geez, I don’t love them either, but what are they supposed to do, roll over and die? They are working and strategizing and doing what they can. Will it pay off, probably not…
It wasn’t long ago when I bought some “insanely great” stuff that may not have been as insane or great as Apple wanted me to believe. Marketing is marketing. No need to kick anything when it’s down. Let the market play out.
<steps down from soap box>
<mutters something self-righteous under breath>
<trips>
<falls down>”
The biggest drawback to using Windows XP at work is the lack of a universal spell checker.
they called it ZenCast
because CopyCast was already taken
this feedback posted by SprattCast(r) 1.0
I Agree with R
Can Apple sue them for copying the hierarchical browsing and subscriptions?
Is the iPod 0 Soundblaster compatible?
Podcast is already too widely used for them to change the name. I have no doubt they will try but it will be without success. If you don’t think the term is going to stick check various television stations that already have Podcasts such as nbc5.com in chicago (http://www.nbc5.com/podcast/index.html).
The iPod marketing is too far ingrained into our culture for it to change. For once Apple has done an excellent job at marketing its products. Now, if we could just get those mac commercials out there. We can always hope for something on tuesday.
BTW, The rumors have been pretty quiet this year. I miss the wild rumors from last year. It was much more fun
“The biggest drawback to using Windows XP at work is the lack of a universal spell checker.” – Big Al
…and the built in dictionary….
Oh man. My sides hurt from laughing so hard. I hope the Buddhist site sues them. http://amberstar.libsyn.com/ Any Buddist lawyers out there?
Reincarnation after bankruptcy would be Creative’s best bet.
Zencast?… Windows-only??… well heck, it’s already dead coming out of the gate!
Podcasts are everywhere for everyone. BePodder for BeOS was just released this past week, making it tough for the Windows-only crowd to push proprietary Zencasts!!
Zencast – Windows-only
Podcast – Multi-platform
Hilarious!!
Next comes Dellcast, then thesonywalkmancast, then the irveroutofbusinessnowcast etc etc.
…and they will all account for a scrappy 12% of the market.
Now we need the next name -from Apple- for the integral home entertainment system. I’d like that to be just a plain… Macintosh!