Management and Strategy

Good CNET article on XBox Music.

Getting started with Xbox Music on Windows 8

Xbox Music is the new streaming music service from Microsoft. We’ll show you how to get started with Xbox Music on Windows 8.

by Ed Rhee

October 31, 2012 12:06 PM PDT

(Credit: Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET)

Xbox Music was initially announced in June of this year and released toXbox 360 users first. When Windows 8 reached general availability on October 26, Xbox Music became available to all Windows 8 users as well. Like Spotify, Microsoft’s new music service can stream full songs on demand, as well as play taste-based radio like Pandora. Here’s what you need to know to get started with Xbox Music on Windows 8:

To begin using Xbox Music, click on the orange Music tile on your Windows 8 Start screen and sign in with a Microsoft account.

Streaming songs on demand
To start listening to music right away, click on "Play an artist" and enter the name of an artist you want to listen to. A random selection of songs by that artist will begin playing immediately.

To play specific songs or albums, you can browse music from the All Music and Top Music sections. You can also use the Win+Q shortcut to perform a quick search.

Click to enlarge.

(Credit: Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET)

Once you’ve found music that you like, you can add it to a playlist by right-clicking on the track/album details. The control bar will appear at the bottom of the screen with the option to add the song or album to a playlist. In addition to playlists, you can also add songs or albums to My Music. When looking at track/album details, you’ll see the option to "Add to my music."

Click to enlarge.

(Credit: Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET)

Smart DJ
Smart DJ is a taste-based radio feature, similar to Pandora and Spotify Radio. Just click on "New Smart DJ" and enter an artist. It will begin playing music right away and add the new Smart DJ station to My Music. Unfortunately, Smart DJ doesn’t have a rating system, so you can’t customize the station as you go along.

Adding your own music
To add your own music to My Music, open Windows Explorer (Win+E) and copy your music files to the My Music library. When you go back into Xbox Music, you’ll see your music in the My Music section.

(Credit: Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET)

Managing My Music
You can manage the music in My Music by clicking on the heading. You’ll be able edit playlists, delete Smart DJ stations, and remove albums and songs.

Click to enlarge.

(Credit: Screenshot by Ed Rhee/CNET)

That’s it. Don’t forget that you can also look at your account details and set other preferences from within the Xbox Music app by using the Win+I shortcut

Getting started with Xbox Music on Windows 8 | How To – CNET

5 lessons in social media from Home Depot executive. Pretty good article.

1. You can’t control the conversation
2. Be authentic
3. It’s about people
4. Your people need hands-on expertise in what customers care about
5. Be patient and flexible

At Home Depot (HD), we first realized we needed to have a real conversation with our customers back in 2007. A blogger flamed us about customer service in a post that drew thousands of comments. In the past we might have responded in a corporate voice, but our chief executive officer took a different tack. He wrote a personal response in the comments, acknowledging that the blogger was right and that we had to work to improve.

Social media has since become a way for us to improve our customer service—not merely a vehicle for us to talk about it. In 2008 we started on Twitter, but many of the solutions our customers were looking for needed more than 140 characters. In 2009 we launched our Facebook page and a year later started a DIY (do it yourself) community online.

One of our more important decisions was to use store associates in much of our social interaction. They are the ones with the project and product expertise customers need. It was the right choice.

Here are five lessons we’ve learned about social media from our own still-evolving experience.

Five Social Media Lessons for Business – BusinessWeek

I always believed Android was the other one… People who could not get IPhone went for Android. This survey just confirms that. IPhone is just going to take over the phone market.

For Blackberry users it’s 66%, and nearly a quarter are willing to stand in line to get one

Source: uSamp

We’re not familiar with the work of uSamp, a high-tech online research firm based in Los Angeles, but if the results of the survey (PDF) they released last week are accurate, Research in Motion (RIMM) is in trouble and the run on Google (GOOG) Android phones is about to hit a wall.

Drawing from a pool of 4.7 million panelists, uSamp asked a sample of 727 AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) smartphone owners how likely they were to switch to Verizon’s version of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone next Thursday, Feb. 10, the first day it goes on sale.

The results are posted in full below the fold. The key findings:

• Among Android owners, 44% are either very likely (19%) or somewhat likely (25%) to buy an iPhone on Feb. 10.
• Among RIM owners, 66% are very likely (32%) or somewhat likely (34%) to switch on Day One.
• Nearly a quarter (24%) of the Android and RIM switchers say they’d be willing to stand in line to get one of the first Verizon iPhones.
• Owners of AT&T (T) iPhones are less likely to switch (8% very likely, 18% somewhat) but the switchers are more likely (29%) than RIM or Android owners to stand in line that first day. Perhaps they have more practice queuing up for an iPhone.

Survey: 44% of Verizon Android users likely to switch to iPhone on Day One – Apple 2.0 – Fortune Tech

Awesome article questioning if Google is new Microsoft. Google has not been able to build new businesses outside of search. It has tried but failed again and again… Actually on that front Microsoft has many Billion+ dollar businesses other than Windows and Office, there is SQL Server, SharePoint, XBox… Good article.

Investors are starting to ask such questions as how the search engine will cope with the social-networking onslaught

ByMathew Ingram

One of the justifications that Google (GOOG) provided for former Chief Executive Eric Schmidt’s move into the chairman role and the reemergence of co-founder Larry Page as CEO was the need to become more flexible by speeding up decision-making at the search giant.

Bloomberg Businessweek magazine looks at that issue in a new cover story on the company, which describes how Google is trying to save itself from "the ossification that can paralyze large corporations." But what if Google’s biggest problem isn’t a lack of flexibility or the speed of its decision-making, but a fundamental cultural inability to create new lines of business that can keep the company growing? What if it’s just a gargantuan one-trick pony?

What If Google Is Just a One-Trick Pony? – BusinessWeek

This is great…