The noble ipod killer strikes fear into the hearts of few

The picture above shows a Creative Zen Vision M stabbing an lowly ipod touch in the face.Time for a (slight) history lesson.

What is a Creative Zen Vision M you ask? It was the Ipod killer of 2006! I got mine that year after I was looking to upgrade from my 5 gb zen micro. It had won the CES design of the year award and had a scroll bar which is something I really like about most of Creative's mp3 players because lets face it, I will be caught dead before I submit to the almighty click wheel. In comparison to the ipod, it shows 200,000 more colors, accepts almost any video format you want to throw at it like avi, mpg, divx, xvid, etc..., it acts like a drag and drop device so that if you don't want to use Creative's software then you can use windows media player, real player or any other windows song organizer to add or TAKE OFF songs or you can simply drag and drop things into the different media folders like a flash drive, it has a video out function that works with any standard a/v cable, it has an fm tuner and microphone built in, 4 hour battery life while watching movies, it is made by the company famous for speakers so the music quality is much better, there is no DRM and it does not have a silly "click wheel".

What does the ipod have over it? oh yeah, its a little skinnier. Woooooo

But really, there have been ipod killers for several years now ever since the rise of the hip and trendy ipod. I would like to credit Apple for really popularizing the digital audio player market even if they stole some of their ideas from Creative in the first place Apple pays 100 Million in Creative patent lawsuit settlement.

So why has this mp3 player not become the great ipod killer many people thought it was going to be and was actually discontinued? Apple was the first and only one to over-saturate the the mp3 player market and so their market share is 72%. They have so much share that only if every other maker out there (Archos, Creative, Sandisk, Microsoft, etc.) pulled all their resources together in a coordinated effort, then maybe, just maybe, ... no. Its not going to happen. They would need a player with three times the features (which would be impossible with a new ipod coming out every 3 months) a quarter of the price and the biggest ad campaign the world has ever seen.

So maybe my picture at the top is but the fevered dream of a madman. But I'm going to keep on dreamin' of a world where the hip and trendy aren't the majority and open source is more common place.

Fat chance.

how to earn FREE wii points, gift cards, ipods and other free stuff

No doubt you have been all around the google search results looking for different ways to get free things like ipods, video games, and of course, wii points. Many people will say that you cannot get free things. It was not long ago that I was in your shoes my friend, out in the cold, cruel world, no money to buy any video games or music. And then a shining star came into view across the desert that is the wasteland we call the "internet." A friend of mine jumped out of the dark abyss and cried out "FOOOL! you do not need MONEY to get those things you desire!" I said "do what now?" he said "a little time here and there is all you need if you really want to get things for the charge of free!"

He went on to explain that he has gotten itunes, best buy, and target gift cards, a few video games for his xbox and some wii points to buy virtual console games. All for doing nothing but filling out surveys.

I didnt believe him at first even though he showed me each of the things he received and his online receipts from prizerebel.com to prove it so I joined the website and sure enough within a few days I was able to get my first prize, a wii zapper with links crossbow training. I even received it within two days of ordering it. I have since turned several other people on to the website and they have gotten things like itunes gift cards, xbox games, and another one of my friends is working on a xbox elite right now. If you get people to sign up with your referral code then you get a percentage of their points as well as the ones you earn yourself.

Here are the things you need to know in order to cash in on this website.

1. You MUST to create a new spam email address. My personal favorite is gmail but you can use hotmail or any other free email site. You will give this email address to prizerebel and you will get spam from every offer you sign up for so you dont want to use your normal email address. Sometimes the offer will require you to click on a validation link in the email in order to acquire points. After that then you can clear out the inbox and work on other surveys.

2. Create an alias. This will be your name for filling out surveys.

3. Many times, the surveys will ask you for an address and phone number, I picked an address that I knew no one lived at so that if they ever sent out spam snail mail then it wouldnt bother anyone.

4. the completely free surveys are going to be the least amount of points. anywhere from .2 points to 6 points last time i checked. This is not a bad thing, you just need to remember that it will take a few more to get the items of your choice while doing the free surveys. I only did the free surveys and it wasn't too long before I got my wii zapper, 2000 wii points and a 4 gigabyte sd card.

5. Once you get set up and get going, then you can start to turn your friends on to it because you get 20% of the points that they receive on the website. Please use my referral code to join. my referral code