Audio book files as Podcasts

StewedMonkeyBrains asks:

...has anyone got an easy way to get your MP3s to register as podcasts in the desktop software? Upon initial install one of my books was selected as a podcast, but 30 others weren't... I've tried dozens of things to get another book to register as a podcast with no joy.

I pinged Josh on the product team about this, and he replied...

...anything of genre=podcast will get added to the podcast section. If you want to use the podcast capabilities for audio books, then you should be sure to also set the album title = book title on each section/chapter so that all the sections/chapters get coalated under the same “series”.

Let me know how this works; I'll be trying it out myself tonight!

What I learned this year shipping Zune 2

I owe you guys some more posts, but I'll start with my lessons learned from Year 2 of Zune:

• Shipping is good.  Shipping is learning. 
• We really can execute on an innovative end to end experience.
• The Zune software is amazingly nice.  It's also taught me that Burl Ives did some of the tracks on AC/DC's back in black album.  See here if this is a mystery to you.
• The team can really rock n roll and get updates out rapidly.
• It takes a whole lot of usability testing to get a Zune pad juuuuuust riiiiiiight.
• Interaction designers look really funny with false long fingernails on so they can test the Zune Pad.
• Ditto me re the long fingernails.
• You can eat too much Yummi Teriyaki. 
• Strategy is nice, but it's possible to overdo it.  But it's ok as long as it doesn't get in the way of executing.  Sort of like Yummi Teriyaki, come to think of it...
• Zune cards are much cooler than I would have thought.
• Accessories can be fun.
• Shipping the new features and clients to our best/early adopter customers through their v1 devices was the right thing to do.
• Three managers in a year?  No problem.
• The cake is a lie.  There is no cake.

Congrats to the whole team.  And thanks to everyone in the community that's enjoying the new features and/or products!

Zune Card - as promised!

I've added my zune card to the template for this blog. Enjoy! Worshop before the awesome outdatedness of my music collection!