Switched to Dell DJ30

Tired of waiting for Creative to fix the Zen Touch playback problems and update the firmware to support PlaysForSure, I got a Dell DJ30 for my birthday. So far, it’s passed the first test: after a quick firmware upgrade, I was able to download my entire Yahoo Music Engine library (most of which is from the $5/month subscription service) and it worked! Overall the feel and controls are pretty nice. Dell uses a scroll thumb wheel rather than the ‘touch’ pad on the Zen. The wheel is better because it has feedback for each click. Also the overall unit is…

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Yahoo! Podcasts

Today Yahoo! unveiled support for podcasts — finding, downloading, and listening. I’m just starting to play with it, but it appears to support both Yahoo Music Engine (YME) and iTunes. (If you’re already using YME, be sure to get the podcast plugin.) The site seems to focus on finding podcast series and individual episodes, with decent search and tagging capabilities. I thought it would keep track of podcast subscriptions for you, but instead it’s basically a searchable directory. You can listen online with a lightweight player, or download a “.pcast” file into YME or iTunes for subscribing and downloading the…

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