Kudos to you, MacNN!
Zune leak reveals iPod nano killer?
iPod nano killer?
As pathetic as the original piece — which has all the smell of a Microsoft “viral marketing” effort — is, nowhere does it even mention the iPod by name.
Jackassery of the day
iPod killer?!
Ya know what would be shocking:
If MS wasn’t working on an “iPod Nano Killer”
Doesn’t mean they will be successful. I don’t think MS gets the concept of a moving target.
Shame on MacNN. They seem to be trolling for hits more and more frequently lately. This is proven to be the case when the original source is ZuneScene.com and they don’t even MENTION the iPod. I used to love MacNN, but if they continue to pull this garbage I might just stop reading them.
Already did…
Some one put a ban on the use of the “[insert popular product] killer” moniker.
Yawn… zzz…
Isn’t ANYTHING that’s flash-based worthy of being called an “iPod nano killer”? Like maybe that new Yahoo/Sansa co-venture thing I read about today?
So how come ZUNE and MICROSOFT get all the “iPod nano killer” press, and companies actually delivering product get, uh, yawns? Could it be that there’s a bias in the press towards Microsoft’s machinations?
Whew, that was tiring. Time for another nap.
Stopped reading MacNN months ago because of this type of behavior. The site stopped being a quick portal to news, as an annoyingly large portion of their links just linked back to older articles they had posted, not to the original source.
I have not missed them.
“… has all the smell of a Microsoft “viral marketing†effort …”
An unsanctioned leak to a “friendly” website is unlikely enough. Above and beyond that ZuneScene is suspiciously amateurish. How hard would it have been to use a little CSS to make the navigation on the left change color on rollover?
Look at the source and you see the Doctype is incomplete, and there’s no character encoding in the page. There are also long strings of repeated spacing-hacks. The W3C Validator finds forty (40) errors in the markup. That’s a hell of a lot for such a small page.
And it’s not just the markup. Look at the poor quality of the writing.
“I will attempt to preserve the identity …”
Annoyingly twee.
“stars were aligned … inside scoop … barrage of questions”
Cliched.
“… so I asked what he did, the answer was …”
Poorly punctuated.
“Both devices have completed the design phase, although some last minute minor tweaks to the hardware will occur.”
Semi-literate and jargon-ridden at the same time.
It probably took a team of web-designers and someone with a doctorate in Engish literature to come up with something that looks as much like a grassroots’ effort as that.
The comparison chart of the two (!) music players is super. Everybody please look out for the preloaded (!) RavMonE.exe virus now. I suggest everyone really spreads the word on this so Microsoft gets a load of hits on the site. So they think this clever guerilla operation of theirs is going strong. They will push harder and harder and deliver even brownier gems. From their butts.
The “iPod Killer” theme won’t quit until someone actually becomes “The iPod Killer.” You know – using an iPod to commit murder. Then it will no longer be acceptable to use the phrase.
(I’m not saying I hope someone comes along and starts killing people with iPods; I’m just saying, is all. Though I suppose the iPod killer doesn’t necessarily have to use an iPod to kill, it could also be a serial killer whose victims all use iPods. Tomato, toomahtoe.)
Looks like MacNN is using the question mark to be able to say whatever the hell they want for headlines. Reminds me of a John Stewart segment regarding news outlets doing the same thing.
Speaking of smelly “viral marketing” efforts and the tired “killer” cliche, look at the meta tag in the source of the zunescene.com home page:
That’s sure smelly.
D’oh… html got clobbered:
<meta name=”description” content=”Zune MP3 Player is the next gen iPod killer with Wi-Fi file sharing, FM radio, and oversized LCD display.”>
The funny thing about the Zune is that it’s not even a Creative Zen killer.
-jcr