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30GB Zunes Freeze on StartupDecember 31 2008

It sounds almost surreal to actually happen, but many Zune owners are waking up this morning to find that their 30 GB Zunes aren’t working. Upon first reading the headline over at Gizmodo, we were thinking that it was just a few isolated cases, but after further investigation, it’s happening to many, many people.

If you visit a Zune forum, you’ll see topics like “Z30 Frozen” or “Zune won’t do anything” or “Unresponsive Software.” Microsoft has yet to make any comment on the issue, likely because it is so early in the morning and they haven’t had the chance to determine what the issue is.

While it may be New Years Eve, it looks like Zune team members who thought they were going to get the next day or two off, will be working frantically to come up with a way to solve the problem. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how Microsoft releases a fix. Since the devices are freezing

Giveaway: Daniusoft Media Converter (Works with DRM’d Media)December 10 2008

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It’s quite possible that you’ve helped contribute to the success of various music and video stores like iTunes, and what you’ve gotten in return is DRM-plagued media. That means trying to transfer your purchases from one device to another isn’t going to be a simple task, but the Daniusoft Media Converter wants to take that burden off your shoulders.

Once you launch the program the first thing you’ll probably notice is that there aren’t a lot of different things you can configure. Don’t worry, you can still dig in and change things like the sample rate, but the program is designed in a way to minimize the amount of interface clutter. This is great news for people who just want to get in and get the job done without being bombarded with various options.

If you’re converting videos you’ll be happy to know that there are dozens of pre-defined profiles included. In a few clicks you can have your movie converted and opt

Giveaway: Edraw Max Diagram CreatorDecember 10 2008

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Can you remember the last time you wanted to create some sort of chart or diagram? I’m sure one of the first thoughts that flows through your head is what tool can you use to get the job done. One of the best programs you’ll find to create the various charts you desire is Edraw Max.

I love when an application makes good use of the Office 2007-style ribbon interface, and Edraw Max does just that. It will even show you live previews of most actions (changing the font, adjust the style, etc…) when you hover over them with the mouse without actually committing to the action first. After using Edraw Max for a short period of time I found that I could create amazing looking charts and diagrams simply by dragging and dropping from the built-in library of over 2,000 items. It’s really a no-brainer once you get the hang of it.

If creating these charts still sounds complicated you can rest easy knowing that Edraw Max ships with dozens of pre-defined charts and diagrams. Just

Giveaway: USB Docking Station with VGA SupportDecember 10 2008

Important Note: This giveaway is only available for residents of the United States.

This is the one and only hardware item that we have up for grabs in our birthday giveaway, and we’ve been able to play around with it for about a month now. It’s a USB Docking Station by StarTech that also happens to support a VGA input. How does it work? You can basically plug in several USB devices, a VGA monitor, ethernet cable, and more into this slim little dock. The dock then plugs into your Windows computer via a single USB cable.

Now I bet you’re wondering the same thing that I was in regards to the monitor support. With this dock you can essentially plug in an external monitor into your machine without needing an extra VGA port on your graphics card. How well can the single USB cable manage the monitor and other devices/cables plugged into it?

Not surprisingly it has some troubles playing videos or games that require a constantly refreshing screen. The USB cable just can’t provide the same bandwidth

Giveaway: MediaMonkey Media ManagerDecember 10 2008

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Last year MediaMonkey was among the most requested software package that we gave away, and so they were more than happy to help out with a giveaway once again this year. Over the last year they have made a lot of improvements to MediaMonkey 3.0 to make it both more stable and also add support for even more devices.

Just one month ago the MediaMonkey team announced that version 3.0.6 now supports syncing with the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch v2. This news is huge considering how many people have expressed frustrations with not being able to manage the iPhone and iPod Touch outside of iTunes. The icing on the cake would have to be the fact that you can backup/copy media from your iPhone or iPod, which is something iTunes doesn’t allow.

The free version of MediaMonkey will let you do all of the great things that you would expect from a media manager, such as organizing and renaming media in your library. The Gold versio