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Today Zune realised the new Zune 4.0 software. Here are my initial impressions…. (this is by no means a full review)

I like:

• The new Zune mini player (Zune 1.0 had one and it was one of the best things about the program, but for some reason they got rid of it in Zune 2.o, I am happy that its back)

• The new Zune mini bar. (If you mouse over it you get a display a lot a lot like the mini player)
• The Smart DJ feature. (Its a feature that’s really neat and is original to Zune)

What I do not like:

• Movie rental. (The fact that some movies can only be rented. The fact that you can not rent them and play them on your Xbox + PC and the fact that older Zunes cannot play them.)
• The new app store. (Not clear how individuals can submit stuff and only new Zunes are supported.)

My overall impression:

The software got some much needed improvements and took some of the best things about Zune 1.0 and put them back into the software. But something that I think that Zune got really wrong is the fact that they got rid a lot of the support for older Zunes. Even thought the Zune HD is dramatically different I am sure that old Zunes would be able to play movies and certain apps just fine. The fact that older Zunes were so well supported was something that separated Zune from Apple and made them way better.

As part of my summer internship I was given a G1 phone for the summer. Also, I recently was invited to the google voice beta. Naturally I wanted to use google voice on my G1 and thankfully google recently released a G1 app for voice. This guide will walk you through the setup process for a normal google voice user and will also walk you through setting up your phone to use google voice for voicemail only.

1) Go to the android marketplace and search for “google voice”

2) After the app installs follow the on screen instructions until you reach this screen:

At this screen, pick the 1st option if you want to use your google voice number as your main number, and pick the other options if you want to keep your current number as your phone number.

3) If you picked the first option in the last step then congratulations, your google voice account is now setup and will act as your voicemail box (go to step 8). If you want to keep your current number as your main number read below.

4) Go to the home screen on your android phone.

5) Hit menu the settings, then go to call settings, the go to call forwarding.

Image from engadget.com

6) In call forwarding you are going to need to change the bottom 3 settings, when you click them you will see something like VM: +1##########, you want to change all of the #’s to your google voice number.

7) Go to the google voice website and then go to settings, then enable the “do not disturb” setting. 

8) Enjoy google voice.

PS: If you do not yet have google voice go to http://www.google.com/voice to request and invite.

I just made the source for the WebPage Downloader public, you can get it from http://naterocks.com/php-coding/webpage-downloader/.

Have you ever been online and wanted to download a webpage but didn’t want to use internet explorer’s or safari’s propritary formats? Well after about an hour of work I have created a solution… the WebPage Downloader.

The WebPage Downloader will let you save files to your computer as DOC files and HTML files with or without images.

Also, I will try to post the source for it in a few days.

Go to http://wpd.nate.co.il/ to see it.