Remember this hilarious video called “A Brief History of the Web” I blogged about in March? The video has won the Best Online Video (standalone) at the OMMA Awards. Very cool! You can see the full list of winners here. If you haven’t seen the “History of the Web” video already, you should ;-)

Today, Zune 4.0 hits. Zune 4.0 comes with awesome new devices (the Zune HD), new software, and new online services. For the complete announcement for today’s release, see this press release [Link coming soon] or see this post by my Zune pal Brian Seitz over on Zune Insider.

There’s been a lot of talk about the amazing Zune HD. Having the honor of using one for the last few weeks, I can say it truly is one great device. However, I want to talk about what’s in new Zune software update. The Zune Team has put a lot of work into the software update – including optimizing it for Windows 7! More on that in a bit…

 

The Zune 4.0 Software Update brings in several key new features designed to make discovering new music and playing music in your collection even better.

Quickplay is a new screen in the Zune software that gives you quick access to your content.

Here, you can pin your favorite content (up to 6 items), see new music and videos added to your collection, and view your history of recently played music, podcasts, and videos. Quickplay also showcases 5 Smart DJ mixes of your favorite artists or bands you pick.

Speaking of Smart DJ…

A Smart DJ “mix” automatically creates a playlist of music from your collection - but goes the extra mile by ALSO mixing in music from Zune Marketplace. These Smart DJ mixes are available by right-clicking on an artist, a song, or an album in your collection. When a Smart DJ mix is created, it pulls in music from your own collection and also the Zune Marketplace. If you have a Zune Pass, all songs including those from Zune Marketplace will play for you. If you don’t have a Zune Pass, “suggested” songs in the Smart DJ mix will be grayed-out.

If you prefer not to see “suggested” music from Zune Marketplace in your Smart DJ mixes, you can unselect a radio button and only your personal collection will be listed.

You can also choose to save the Smart DJ queue as a playlist, with finite control in the “edit playlist” setting, for listening at a later date.

The below screenshot of the Smart DJ mix for Weezer playing shows what playing a Smart DJ mix looks like with the options to save as a playlist and the ability to choose not to play songs from the Zune Marketplace.

But wait, there’s more!

The Zune software now comes with Mini Player Mode. This allows you to keep the player always on top of other applications while browsing the Web, checking email, or whatever else you might be doing on your PC.

And if Mini Player Mode doesn’t do it for you, you can also add playback controls to the Windows Taskbar (right-click on taskbar, choose Toolbars, and then choose Zune).

As I mentioned above, the new Zune software is optimized for Windows 7. That means it takes advantage of key Windows 7 features!

Using Jump Lists in Windows 7, you can access albums you’ve “pinned” under Quickplay as well as your preconfigured Smart DJ mixes of 5 of your favorite artists or bands. It also lets you shuffle all music and resume playing music if on pause.

With Taskbar Previews (just hover your mouse over the Zune button on the Windows Taskbar in Windows 7), you can move to the next song, go back to the previous song, and pause your music and rate songs!

And with Aero Snap, you can resize the Zune software to the top or bottom, left or right of your screen.

Zune now also features for the first time download-to-own, or rent full movies in combination of their growing TV show library. These movies and TV shows can be downloaded in standard definition (SD) or high definition (HD). A remember, Zune Pass is only $14.99 and now comes with unlimited access to streaming music online! Oh and you also get 10 MP3 song credits a month to redeem too.

Give the new Zune software a try for free by clicking here.

Disclaimer: My music tastes do not represent that of Microsoft ;-)

A few days ago you may have heard about a new webcam from Microsoft Hardware that does 720p High Definition widescreen video. Well… meet the new LifeCam Cinema!

 

The LifeCam Cinema records video at 720p HD in 16:9 widescreen up to 30 frames per second (fps). It uses ClearFrame Technology for smooth, detailed video and has an improved de-noiser. The improved de-noiser reduces image graininess - especially in low light. It also has a faster image-processing technology that keeps video smooth at any resolution. The LifeCam Cinema also has a high-precision glass element lens for much clearer video quality. You know how some webcams have blurry corners in videos? Yeah – not here! Other features include taking 5.0 megapixel stills, a digital noise-canceling microphone, and a flexible attachment base bends to fit on most surfaces (like the top of LCD monitors and notebook screens, or simply on your desk desk).

Through the LifeCam 3.0 software (which can be downloaded here), LifeCam Cinema users will enjoy integration with both Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Movie Maker which was released yesterday. To record video and take still photos with the LifeCam Cinema, you will need the LifeCam software installed. After recording a video, you can quickly launch Windows Live Movie Maker to edit that video and share with friends and family online. Using Windows Live Movie Maker, you can add transitions and other animations to videos recorded with the LifeCam Cinema as well as music, captions and more. When taking still photos, you can view those photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery and edit and add tags.

The LifeCam Cinema will be available starting in September 2009 for an estimated retail price of $79.95 (U.S.).

For more information on the LifeCam Cinema, click here for the press release.

I am currently giving the LifeCam Cinema a spin myself – courtesy of Microsoft Hardware. Expect to see some movies created with the LifeCam Cinema and edited with Windows Live Movie Maker in the very near future.

Brian Hall, General Manager for Windows Live, just has announced via the Windows Live Team Blog that the new Windows Live Movie Maker is now available. The new version of Windows Live Movie Maker is part of an update to Windows Live Essentials – available for download here. I’m currently running the new version of Windows Live Movie Maker on Windows 7 RTM and it will also run on Windows Vista too.

For more information on the new Windows Live Movie Maker, see Brian’s blog post or this awesome resource website which includes demo, HD samples and deep product info.

Sorry for such a short post, but I’m off to make me some movies!

Today the Expression Encoder Team has announced Expression Encoder 3. Expression Encoder 3 is part of the upcoming Expression Studio 3 suite and comes packed with new features such as support for H.264 and the new Smooth Streaming technology.

And it also brings another super cool feature: Screen Capture.

Today, screen-casting has become quite popular with bloggers. Screen-casting allows bloggers to share what they are looking at on their PC screen with readers of their blog. It’s a great way to show off really neat software experiences that people should see for themselves.

With Expression Encoder 3, they are introducing the Expression Encoder Screen Capture feature. This feature can be launched right from the Start Menu (I’ve pinned it to my Taskbar in Windows 7). People can choose a specific region of their screen they want to record (or the whole screen) and choose to record audio from their microphone and video from their webcam too. It records in a special light weight codec developed by Microsoft Research that when recording video, it doesn’t use up so much system resources during the capture process. That means the actual recording process doesn’t steal so much system resources on your PC that what you’re recording doesn’t look so hot. After recording, you can import the capture into Expression Encoder for final encoding and publishing (including some awesome new Silverlight templates).

I’ve been trying this feature out for the last couple days and it is fantastic. I am definitely planning to do a lot more screen-capture videos with Windows 7 features.

Speaking of Windows 7 features, Expression Encoder utilizes the new Windows Taskbar in Windows 7 with encoding progress being displayed. The first encoding pass appears in yellow, and the second pass appears as green. Pretty slick!

Encoding First Pass:

Encoding Second Pass:
 

(Screenshots from Expression Encoder Team Blog)

For availability of Expression Encoder 3, keep your eyes on the Silverlight Team Blog for the official Expression Studio 3 announcement. Oh, and you should also check out…

For more information on Expression Encoder 3 and the Expression Encoder Screen Capture feature, click here to read the Expression Encoder Team’s blog post.