In this week's podcast, we're going to be interviewing our buddy Jessica from the Zune team. Jessica is a program manager on the Zune Social, so here's your chance to ask questions about Zune software dev and the process by which we design, develop and release features. What would you like to know? Drop a comment! Edit: Ok! The podcast is recorded! Thanks for your questions, and stay tuned tomorrow for the release!

Lots of folks have asked me “hey, what happened to the double-shot ?” Short answer: we still have a double-shot, but this year’s implementation is different from last year’s. For the long answer, I checked with our design team - here’s what I heard back from Steve Kaneko , our design director. Here’s what he told me: We have maintained the double-shot plastic for this year’s devices. The surprise this year is that we used a light inside color and a tinted outside shot that carries the hue. The effect...

Industrial Design reports on something that Zune owners have known for a long time: brown is the new black. Saying, "When Microsoft revealed last fall that its new iPod challenger, the Zune, would come in brown, there was a chorus of snickers on the blogosphere. . . But what if Microsoft was right?" An interesting article. As well as anybody, I'm no stranger to the 'chorus of snickers' the article mentions. Often makes me think of the quote , "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they...

For those looking for yet another way to talk back to Zune (in addition to commenting here, emailing me directly, or commenting on another Zune staffer's site. Look at the bottom of each page on Zune.net - and click 'feedback.' Or, here's the Direct Feedback link