Windows only: Microsoft’s Zune HD was released yesterday and it looks great, but whether you’ve got the latest Zune, an older model, or just like the Zune desktop player, Zune 4.0 brings new features and an improved look to desktop music players.

The Zune player sets itself apart from iTunes in one important way (not including the whole iPod vs. Zune support). As the Zune marketing folks put it: “Browse music, not spreadsheets.” That is to say, the Zune player doesn’t have the all-business text columns like iTunes, focusing instead on a rich graphical interface. (Though iTunes album views have headed in this direction, too.) It’s a refreshing way to look at music, even though after playing with it, I’m not sure I really like it better. It seems better suited for a television and remote than monitor and mouse, and the way the new Quickplay page reacts to my mouse movements takes some getting used to. That said, it does look very nice. The update has also added:

• A new Quickplay page gives you “instant access to the stuff you care about most with shortcuts to favorites, recently downloaded or played music, and more.”
• The Smart DJ feature can generate related playlists starting from any song on your computer and some music from the Zune Marketplace. (Think of it like Genius in iTunes.)
• An expanded Zune Marketplace includes more HD movies and TV shows.

Zune 4.0 is a free download, Windows only. If you’re a die-hard Zune user (for better or worse, no one at Lifehacker HQ is, even though the Zune HD looks really nice), give us your thoughts on the 4.0 update in the comments.

Go to Original Source

Firefox with Greasemonkey: The YouTube Auto Buffer Greasemonkey script tweaks the popular video sharing site to fix some of its most common annoyances. Specifically, it stops videos from automatically playing, turns on HD/HQ playback for all videos, and hides in-video advertisements.

All three of the tweaks YouTube Auto Buffer makes can be toggled, so if you’d really like to get rid of in-video ads but don’t want to always watch videos in HD or prefer that videos play automatically, you can just disable the two unwanted features. Or at least they can be toggled in theory. I had trouble getting my preferences to stick, so your mileage may vary.

Either way, it’s a nice little script that aims to fix some users’ common YouTube annoyances. For some other YouTube-specific tweaks, check out our very own Better YouTube Firefox extension. (With any luck, maybe we can convince Gina to incorporate some of the YouTube Auto Buffer features into said add-on.)

YouTube Auto Buffer is a free download, works with Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension.

Go to Original Source