First and foremost, I’d like to wish all of our readers a happy new year. Secondly, as some of you are surely aware, we’re big Zune fans here at TTB, so I was a little dismayed to read the reports of widespread Zune fail happening all over the globe today.

Being curious, I decided to see if mine was affected… And it is. So I gave fellow ‘bagger Vince (a bit like Bagger Vance but not) a call and asked him to check his out, and promptly broke his too. It’s the Zunepocalypse!

The moral of the story: If you have an original 30GB Zune, for the love of God don’t turn it on until Microsoft issue a fix. Otherwise you’ll either have to dismantle it or wait for the battery to drain.

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Update

Seems the Zunepocalypse wasn’t such a huge issue after all. In fact, unless you were relying on your Zune to do DJ duty at your New Year party, it’s pretty much a non-issue – the world’s first-gen Zunes are awakening on New Year’s day with maybe a bit of a hangover, but otherwise fully recovered.

Microsoft have issued a statement saying that, essentially, a piece of timing hardware unique to the first-gen Zunes was to blame, unable to handle the fact that this year was, in fact, a leap year. Incidentally, the hardware is only in there for DRM purposes, so make of that what you will.

I can’t believe that this isn’t actually Japanese, but it isn’t. In fact, it’s NY-based Mnemosyne who have released this hentai-inspired beverage which I’m sure will go down a treat with the ladies.

While I’d love to make some puns about tentacle rape, I think you should just visit the official site and pre-order your six pack of 12oz collector’s bottles right now. Yep, you heard me right, pre-order. A six pack will set you back a very reasonable $15.99 with orders shipping in January – that’s a price that even the Chojin can enjoy.

And if you really must read up on the subject, you’ll probably want to watch Urotsukidoji first (heavily edited and therefore pointless version here). It really is the Daddy of the hentai tentacle rape world.

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This week sees the return of one of my personal favorites to Rock Band, the legendary Deep Purple, who will be contributing another track from their classic 1972 album ‘Machine Head’ in the form of ‘Space Truckin’, a song most famous for clocking in at almost 20 mins on the album ‘Live in Japan’.  This is joined by another track from Ian Anderson and the boys from Jethro Tull, Snow Patrol and James Gang (famous for being the home of one Mr Joe Walsh prior to The Eagles).

Sadly no discounts this week, so each song is available for 160/$1.99 and will be available from today (30.12.08) on the Xbox 360 but PS3 users will have to wait a further week until 08.01.09 for these tracks.

Full tracklisting with video links after the break.

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So I find myself testing the new Windows 7 beta… Is it any good?

First, the details of my test setup:

• Intel 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo
• VirtualBox Virtual Machine running on Ubuntu 8.10 64-Bit Host
• 2GB RAM (512MB available to Windows 7)
• 128MB VRAM
• 10GB HDD Image

The installation is painless, fast, and also very pretty – in fact, it’s like a faster version of the Windows Vista installer, which certainly is no bad thing (I’m an operating system junkie and have tried pretty much everything out there – and Vista’s installer ranks among the shiniest). I have no doubt that with more RAM and a proper native hard disk it would fly even more than it did.

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The much-anticipated new Linux Kernel, known by the catchy name of 2.6.28, was released Christmas Eve. From Linus Torvald’s official announcement:

It doesn’t really matter what day it is, or what holiday (if any) you’re celebrating, because even if you sit at home, alone in your dank basement, without any holidays or friends, I bring you a tiding of great cheer: you can now download Linux-2.6.28, and compile it to your hearts content!

Listen to the cheerful grinding of your harddisk as you reboot into an all-new kernel – and I’m sure that if your computer could smile, it would have a big silly grin on its non-existent face. So as you sit there in
your basement, give your computer the holiday cheer too.

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I’m really looking forward to Windows 7. Vista got off to a shaky start, and while it’s a reasonably good OS now (after 2 years worth of updates, including one major service pack), its reputation took a knocking and Microsoft really need to shine with their next release.

Well, by all accounts “7″ is the shiner we’ve been waiting for, the next Windows 98 or 2000, hell, maybe even the next XP. In even better news, the impatient among us you can get their hands on it a full month early, as the beta which was due for release in January has “somehow” made its way onto the internet.

The 2.44GB ISO file is the 32-bit Ultimate Edition of the new OS, and is supposedly the real deal. I’m not going to recommend a specific torrent as I haven’t verified any of them yet, however, here are two links which should get you started. Look forward to our preview in the next few days!

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If you own Guitar Hero: World Tour, and the really awesome new guitar (it’s wireless and it actually works properly) you can go sign up to download five free tracks over on the website right now. You’ll need the serial numbers from your guitar and the game itself, of course.

Eligible players can have their pick of any five of these songs:

• Blind Melon “No Rain”
• Boston “Rock and Roll Band”
  
• Foreigner “Hot Blooded”
  
• The Killers “Human”
  
• Nirvana “Sliver”
  
• Oasis “The Shock of the Lightning”
  
• R.E.M. “Supernatural Superserious”
  
• Racontuers “Salute Your Solutions”
  
• Rick Springfield “Jesse’s Girl”
  
• Smashing Pumpkins “The Everlasting Gaze.”

Nice to see the truly under-appreciated Blind Melon getting some DLC love (consider this a hint, Mr. Badgerjam).

The promotion runs until December 31st, so hurry. Also, please note that this offer only applies to the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game.

I’m a bee!

Check out this gingerbread Mac, created by a festive fanboy known only as minorbug. It stands 7-8 inches tall and features chocolate icons, ports, and other lovely little iced details, as you can see in these pictures.

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I’m sure I’m not the only person that was disappointed by Nintendo’s Classic Controller for the Wii, the uncomfortable shape meaning the thumbsticks are in the wrong place for extended use and the general flimsiness of the pad leading to a pretty poor experience overall.  Thankfully Snakebyte have thrown their hat into the ring with the ‘Snakebyte Retro Controller’, and I have to say that it is a massive improvement over Nintendo’s effort.

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If there is one feature missing from the DS that could improve Nintendo’s handheld it’s an e-book reader, especially with Nintendo trying to corner the ‘casual’ market.  Well it seems the big N are making their first steps in that direction with the release of ’100 Classic Book Collection’ on boxing day.

Compiled by Harper-Collins, the ‘game’ (if we can really call it that) contains over 100 classic books from some of the greatest authors to have ever put quill to parchment, including Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Jane Austen.  Featuring 2 text sizes and a virtual bookmark system, 100CBC is the ideal way to read classic novels on the move.

Full list of all the titles included on the cartridge after the break.

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