“Microsoft’s ambitious multimillion-dollar Zune digital music recipe oddly lacks a key online marketing ingredient: dot-com domains,” Red Herring reports.
Red Herring reports, “The Redmond-based software behemoth last week announced a $249.99 price tag and November 14 as the date the device and its accompanying Zune Marketplace online music site will become available.”
“Zune.com is registered to one Antonio Nogales of London. Mr. Nogales was unable to be reached for comment at the out-of-service phone number found in Network Solutions’ Whois record on the domain, created in June of 1998,” Red Herring reports. “For Microsoft, this is just par for the course in its Zune strategy, though.”
“How else can you explain a black under-construction page at Zune.com? Right now Zune.com brings up a black page in a web browser that says ‘Welcome to zune.com’ and ‘UNDER CONSTRUCTION.’ Microsoft confirmed that the company does not own Zune.com. Microsoft did register Zune.net, but not until June 26, 2006, according to the Whois database record,” Red Herring reports. “‘Someone else owns Zune.com and that’s the deal,’ a Microsoft representative said. ‘It’s Zune.net and it’s not launched yet.'”
“Meanwhile, Microsoft keeps Comingzune.com as their placeholder for all communications on the Zune launch,” Red Herring reports. “But the official site will be at Zune.net—if you can remember it’s a dot-net.”
Full article here.
Brown is the color of dried blood.
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That guy who owns the domain should sue MS for ruining the value of Zune.com
Most of the google ads at zuneytunes.com are actually adds for Apple iPods or iTunes. Funny.
Back when Zune was just a rumor, I registered http://ThereisnoZune.com and http://NoZune.com and put up some junk.
Now I guess I should get http://ThereisaZuneanditsucks.com
And .com’s are better, because to the non-technical folks (80-90% of the population), dotcoms are the first thing they try.
WindozeKiller and DB
BTW: I’m a Mac user and I HATE everything M$…
Yes, I agree that it’s too easy for us Mac users, we only have to type the domain itself (without the subdomain (if present) and the TLD if it’s .com) and press enter and Boom! (Jobs style!).
But before you bash, please get your facts straight… Control-return on MSIE does the same thing. True, you have to hold Control at the same time but hey! Why make something simple!
Same thing with those up and down arrows. Use the Home and End (I can hear you say : Ahhh! That’s what those do!). I’m pretty sure that those 2 keys are the less used keys on a Mac!
“But the official site will be at Zune.net—if you can remember it’s a dot-net.”
That’d be too easy, too unlike MS. This would be something more their style:
http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft/portable/zune/media/HSPHRMH525112/services/hardware/online/music/consumer/RWHPPGQWF.html
Of course there’d be no direct link off MS’s home page. You’d have to navigate their Byzantine web site, or just know the URL.
Here’s my vote for Zune.NOT.
GmanMac–all on the eave of a huge new product launch.
Would that be the eave of the roof? Nudge-nudge-wink-wink.
MW-language–Don’t you just love it? I wish more people knew how to use it.
i really like the intro to comingzune.com.. i however will not buy this product..
The Zune.com page counter displays 106982. I wish my page had that many hits. (for the record, it’s only 12797)
I wonder how many page hits Zune.net will get?
“brown is the color of dried blood” LOL! That’s perhaps the funniest line ever from an MDN Take. I love it!
The retard that want’s to “zune his tunes” needs to find somehting better to do with his time. That’s just plain stupid. I’m sure you asked Virgin, apple and Microslut for permission to use those logos and ads…
First of all, comingzune.com takes forever to load – I would hate to be on dialup and want to see it. Second, why is it hosted on a ‘secure’ server (https)? Thirdly, what the hell is the burning bird thing supposed to be? It makes no sense. Artistic, but WTF? Is it indicative of how it will work (does Sony provide the batteries for this thing?)
Zune seems to be mismatched and senseless.
…. and the color of my true love’s hair
If I owned zune.com I’d gladly sell it to MicroSoft for a hefty price of course, and full of crappy HTML tags that were tested in Netscape years ago and worked fine then.
comingzune.com crashed Safari. BTW the word Microsoft sounds like a type of toilet paper
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> could be hand to wipe up the brown zune stain baby!
Comming Zune didn’t load in Firefox, just a white screen – which still took a long time doing nothing.
Loading in IE7 I thought there was an artifact in the centre of the screen until another joined it several minutes later and I realized it was a progress circle. It’s still not loaded while I write this, so I’ve closed IE. I have a 2mb connection which is fine for every other web site. Why did Microsuck have to make such a poorly thought through web page?
The site eventually loads on our 10mb line anyway. Still takes a while but the little movies are actually really nice and guess what, they are .mov files!!!
iGoNow: they are .mov files because you are on a Mac. If you use Windows, they are .wmv files.
Coming Zune – Nicely drawn insane Sony battery advert for sure – but my site shows them as flash not .mov?
WindozeKiller: “I think that only applies if a company had a copyright BEFORE the domain was registered. I remember Apple having problems trying to secure iTunes.co.uk of something like that because some guy had registered it long ago.”
Zune.com was registered in June 1998, so this guy is on safe ground. Apple won the iTunes.co.uk domain in court because it was ruled to be an abusive registration. One of the things that swung it in Apple’s favour was that the defendant was reported to have tried to sell the domain to Napster “for a price”.
gee and i was just going to register
http://whoop-de-freakin-zune.com
CTRL-ENTER Enter does a Search because it’s not sure which top-level domain you want. FAR more intuitive than click-and-hope…
In any case, you can sue Firefox if you want to just press Enter.
Here’s a question. Go TO a list on a Mac, hold down shift and scroll down the list with Arrow keys. You’ll see it selects files, right? Well, if you go to far, how do you deselect? logic suggests by going up on the arrow keys…. just like if you were using your mouse. BUT NO! Once selected you have to MANUALLY deselect on the Mac, how FREAKIN’ ANNOYING!
^^^ TYPO Correction. CTRL-ENTER goes directly to the site. Enter does a search…
Maybe http://www.POS.com is available for the Zune?
The implications of this is that:
1. Microsoft cannot register “Zune” as a trademark. A domain name is emperical proof that it is not unique. Microsft would have to have documented evidence that they conceived of the name (trademark) before this individual bought the domain name.
2. Just because Microsoft has a legitimate product does not give it carte blanche rights to everything “Zune”.
It is just standard business practice to do a domain search for any company or product name to see if it can be registered or copyrighted.
Someone in Microsoft’s research department screwed up big time!