Ars Technica is reporting that hundreds of Microsoft Zune devices have stopped working as of midnight December 30th. Users are flooding the Zune forums trying to figure out why their devices stopped working and there’s no easy answer. Apparently it affects 30GB Zunes and not others.

Why did they stop? At that specific time? One blog calls the event: Z2K or the Day Zune Music Died.

A Microsoft spokesperson wrote back to Ars saying:

“”We are aware that customers with the Zune 30GB are experiencing issues with their Zune device. We are actively working now to isolate the issue and develop a solution to address it. We will keep customers informed on next steps via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).”

Ever since it was released as an answer to Apple’s iPods, the Zune has been a second (or third) string music player. Perhaps this is a great time for Microsoft to admit that they screwed up with the Zune.

Perhaps it’s time for Microsfot to kill the Zune.

The most compelling thing Microsoft can do is kill the existing Zunes and release brand new music players. I mean, Apple has continued to evolve their players with different sizes, screens, and now even touch. Microsoft has been slow to innovate and release new features.

Just about the only thing I like about the Zune is the wireless synching in your home so that music and podcasts and videos are synched up without a cord of any kind. That’s a feature that Apple should steal for the iPods.

Other than that, can anyone seriously say that the Zune was a success for Microsoft? Does anyone believe that Zune is the best media player out right now? Does the Microsoft music store compare well to iTunes?

Seems like the Zune Apocalypse is here and it may be a good thing.

After fighting off the urge for a lone time, I finally got an iPhone about a month ago. And so far, it’s been a great adventure. I’ve been trying out new apps, playing with everything and annoying everyone because I can’t keep my hands off it. The first few days I had it, I even considered sleeping with it under my pillow.

Anyway, I decided to come up with my reasons why I switched from my old Sprint Mogul phone, to the iPhone. Here it goes:

1. The iPhone is Cool. Ok, that’s not really a reason. But when I called Sprint to ask them about early termination fees, they (naturally) tried to convince me to stay with them. However, the customer retention specialist told me: “Why do you want to get the iPhone? Because you want to be cool?” Uh, thanks Sprint. That’s one big reason why I made the switch. I don’t want a snarky customer service rep making fun of me–it’ll only lose you customers. When I told this story to the Apple store sales person selling me the iPhone, he seemed very shocked and amused.
2. A Great User Interface. Compared to the iPhone, my last phone was seriously clunky. For starters, the HTC Windows Mobile-based phone  I used had about 15 different buttons, in additional to a slide-out keyboard. The iPhone just has one main button, and uses just on-screen multi-touch navigation. After trying out both, I definitely prefer a simpler, easy to use interface that was designed well, over a complex interface with a Windows interface. Even the tiny on-screen iPhone keyboard doesn’t annoy me too much anymore.
3. I Wanted Another iPod. The time for a one-iPod family is over. Every family member needs their own. For a long time, me and my wife have shared an iPod classic (160GB), but it was clear early on that we needed separate ones. Our musical tastes are vastly different, and managing playlists was getting too cumbersome. So using my iPhone as my portable musical device seemed like a great way to avoid buying a second iPod and handing off the old iPod for my wife. I don’t mind the smaller hard drive on the iPhone, since I haven’t managed to fill it up yet after about a month of adding more music, podcasts, pictures and applications.
4. YouTube Support. I love having instant access to practically any video on my phone. I can quickly look up a music video, a news clip or just waste time YouTube surfing. Yes, the streaming is a bit slower than my PC, but it’s good enough if I’m on 3G. My biggest complaint is that the YouTube application that comes with the iPhone doesn’t allow me to sign in or see my favorites. I have to use the Safari browser to sign in with YouTbue, which is pretty annoying.
5. Applications. This is something that was a pleasant surprise. I had no idea how much fun iPhone applications could be. My current favorite is Ocarina, a flute like instrument that you have blow into the iPhone mic to play. It’s also a social application, because other iPhone users can favorite my songs or I can tune into other songs that people are playing around the world. It’s a great must-have application that could not exist without all the features included in the iPhone. Other favorites are some games I’ve downloaded (MotoChaser, Spore, BiiBallLite and Scramboni) and applications like Shazam, Facebook, and Google.
6. All-in-One Phone. I love having everything I need in one device. Yes, I wish I could record video. And I wish the iPhone camera took better quality pictures. But overall, the iPhone experience has been an eye opener because it does so much. My last phone, the HTC Mogul from Sprint, required me to download too many third party applications just to get the phone to work how I liked. The iPhone comes with everything and the applications only make the iPhone better.
7. Uh, It’s For Work!. I love new technology and trying out new devices or applications. So when the iPhone first came out last year, I resisted buying one because a) I was locked into my original cell provider, 2) it was expensive, 3) it was too new and untested and 4) it was pretty expensive. However, I’ve clearly overcome all of these obstacles and decided that’s it’s much more important to have an iPhone and learn everything about it.

Oh and did I mention that it’s cool? Oh OK, good.

Looking at comScore’s latest Video Metrix rankings of video sites, I came across an interesting bullet point: Users watched an average of 11.6 minutes of video on Hulu. Eleven minutes! Actually, almost 12 minutes. That’s a long time. That’s more than YouTube. And almost four time longer than the average online video clip (3 minutes).

For years, online measurement companies like comScore and Nielsen|NetRatings have told us that the average video clip was very short. A few months ago, I saw it was at 2.8 minutes. Now it’s creeping up to 3 minutes. That’s not a large jump, but it’s noticeable because Hulu is the one drawing people to watch longer videos.

Hulu is managing to do what has been impossible for years; make people watch TV on the Internet.  YouTube’s strategy is more about user-generated content, connecting with others and creating the next Internet celebrity. YouTube is only beginning to license Hollywood content, and open up to longer-form videos, along with live streaming in order to maintain competitive.

Hulu is more about generating revenue and actually has a business plan. They partner with their parent companies NBC and Fox to get content that people actually want to see. That means that Hulu can actually sell advertising, whereas YouTube is finding it difficult to monetize user-generated content and spends untold millions on video hosting. In fact, some analysts believe that Hulu is (almost) profitable (unless you ask Henry Blodget).

But the important part is that Hulu is already beating YouTube in terms of the average vieweing time. comScore didn’t release the average length of YouTube’s videos, however I’d be interested to know what it is. Are they really far behind Hulu? Are they close?

Despite Hulu’s almost 12 minute average viewing time, the truth is that most people still don’t prefer to watch long-form content on the web.

However, the Internet may be a great way of delivering content to the TV. Just look at services like the Roku NetFlix Player which delivers movies to my TV or Tivo, where I can access any YouTube video from the comfort of my couch.