Routine Order

Let me try this once:) You can get your own free Zune player at myzunefree.com. All you have to do is sign up for one or more of the offers on display after you login, and complete enough offers to get one credit. You could get the one credit for completing just one offer, or, if you choose to try the several free, no-cost offers, you may need to follow through on more than one of the offers to earn your credit.

I’ve long been curious about these schemes, but this Microsoft Zune offer has a great FAQ that addresses the questions I have had in the past. In fact, the first question in the FAQ links to a video from the BBC that explains how these schemes work. Then there’s more:

How can you afford to give away a Microsoft Zune for free?
Our sponsors pay us a commission for users to try out their products and services. That is then used to purchase your Zune MP3 player or other related product.

The basic reason I signed up is because I have been wanting to try Blockbuster’s online video renting scheme for some time now. So I will just cancel my Netflix subscription and give Blockbuster a chance to impress me. What’s really cool about Blockbuster is that you can exchange the movies you get in the mail at any BlockBuster store, and instantly get a new movie! So unlike Netflix, you don’t always have to wait for the next movie to arrive in the mail! So as far as I am concerned, this is a win-win situation. I get the $9.99 for the first month Blockbuster rentals, and if enough of you choose to sign up for the free Zune offer, I might get a free Zune as well. If the blockbuster deal doesn’t cut it for you, try some of the other free, or even $1 offers. You can’t lose, especially with the money-back offers. So sign up for your free Zune now!

Channel 9 got its name from the channel on airplanes where travellers can hear to the communications the pilots have over the radio.

For those not in the know, Channel 9 is a Microsoft discussion forum used to promote conversations among Microsoft’s customers targeted at Microsoft Windows users. Robert Scoble was a huge reason for the popularity of Channel 9 - he was behind many of the videos produced for Channel 9.

Microsoft can be creative too. What a surprise!

Via slashdot, I came across this article that describes an activex control that acer includes in all its laptops. The activex control offers a method for any webpage that uses it to execute programs, open and modify files etc on any laptop that has it.

The page includes the html code for a webpage to test if your acer notebook has this “feature” where any webpage can run arbitrary programs on your laptop when running Microsoft Windows. I tried it with my Acer and much to my surprise, it worked!!!

It is amazing how acer put this “feature” in and how I was kept in the dark about this. This is like handing over the keys to my kingdom without even knowing it.

Kind of makes me want to move to an Operating System without any backdoor, or hidden “features”. Maybe Ubuntu?