Jason Dunn
01-05-2007, 06:30 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.philiprichardson.org/blog/post.aspx?id=201' target='_blank'>http://www.philiprichardson.org/blog/post.aspx?id=201</a><br /><br /></div>Microsoft decided they didn't want to let the Zune sync with Outlook for you to get your contacts, like some other devices can (the Zen Vision:M for one, though not if you're using Exchange). The iPod can pull over contacts, and despite my father saying he didn't need that featured turned on when we got him an iPod Nano last Christmas (2005) a few months later he called to thank me for turning that feature on. He didn't have his Treo with him, but he did have his Nano, and he needed a phone number. So even if it's not a feature people think they'll use often, when they do need it and it's there, people are thrilled.<br /><br /><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/zt/2007/zune-CRM-screenshot.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br />Someone seems to have agreed with me, because they've written a <a href="http://www.philiprichardson.org/blog/post.aspx?id=201" target="_blank">basic contacts (CRM) program</a> that - get this - turns your contacts into JPEG files, then loads them onto your Zune! It's a very cool way to work around this limitation on the Zune, but unfortunately (and this is the important part) 99.9% of us won't be able to use this because it requires a <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/crm/product/overview.mspx" target="_blank">Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server</a> to work. So this is a great proof of concept, but not useful to more than a handful of people. Still, it's great to see solutions being created for the Zune, even if they only work for a small group of people. Perhaps Microsoft people will use this?<br /><br />What I want to see is a developer take this concept and create a solution to work with Outlook. Any takers out there?