Category: Marketplace

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Bing Bing Rewards blog Firefox Internet Internet Explorer Marketplace Microsoft Mozilla Xbox Xbox Live Zune

Musings about Bing rewards program

The other day I saw a Google ad that said the following.

“Get 400 Free Xbox Points
Get 400 Free Xbox Points. Join Bing Rewards!
www.Bing.com/Rewards”

I was intrigued as I’d like to get some Microsoft points so I can buy some arcade games on my Xbox 360. The only issue I have with this ad is it sounds like you can get 400 Microsoft points just for joining the Bing rewards program. To get the 400 Microsoft points you need to have 400 search rewards points. Apparently from what I’ve read when they first launched the program you could redeem 100 search rewards points for 100 Microsoft points. I guess Microsoft realized this was to low of a number because they give you 250 search rewards points just for signing up for the program.

If you do the daily search items first they will also count towards the total number of searches that will earn you points as well. At the moment I’m writing this they seem to have two daily searches worth 3 points each & until January 29th 2011 you can earn one point per search up to a max of 10. So the current maximum you can earn a day is 16 points, which would take you 25 days at that rate to earn 400 search rewards points. But if you want to earn the first 400 search rewards points you can get that done in 10 days with your bonus 250 search rewards points that you start with.

One more thing before I rant about the installation process of the Bing bar. According to the Bing Rewards Preview Frequently Asked Questions “The Bing Rewards Preview ends on September 30, 2011. Credits accumulated expire December 31, 2011.”. So you have a limit amount of time to earn the points. Also remember that the Microsoft points rewarded from this method are only good for a limited time after you receive them from the program, so spend them shortly after you get them.

Now on to some of the issues I have with this program. First it installs three add-ons Mozilla Firefox Which if you are running the current version of Firefox they will be disabled right after they are installed, I haven’t tested with older versions as I refuse to run old versions of Firefox. They disabled the items because Microsoft said in Bing Bar support for Mozilla Firefox to disable them to prevent a security issue. While I applaud Mozilla for disabling them I’m irritated at Microsoft for installing software that they know will be disabled on install. When I last read the article it said “Article ID: 2430460 – Last Review: October 5, 2010 – Revision: 3.0”, meaning that they have known about this issue for several months at the point when I installed the Bing bar on my computer, & yet they insisted on installing the software they knew would be disabled.

You can see a complete list of what add-ons the current version of Firefox will disable on install at Add-ons Blocklist | Mozilla. At the time I wrote this post the first three in the list are the add-ons that the Bing bar installs. They are Bing Bar for Firefox, Default Manager v2.2, & Search Helper Extension.

I will admit I haven’t found a way yet to remove it from just Firefox. I have done some basic searches, but I have found nothing yet that will remove it only from Firefox. I have found ways to remove it from Firefox & Internet Explorer at Removing the Search Helper Extension and Bing Bar though.

Also during the install of the Bing bar it insisted that I close both Firefox as well as Internet Explorer. I closed Firefox on my own so that I would be sure to not lose the tabs that I had opened. It did reopen Internet Explorer after it finished & I was given my bonus 250 search rewards points.

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Marketplace Microsoft Zune

Zune 4.2 update

Well this morning at about 7 AM MST I got the following message on zune.net. “zune is unavailable

As part of continuing efforts to improve our service, Zune is undergoing scheduled maintenance that will prohibit customers from renting and purchasing content for up to 24 hours starting Jan 25 at 10 P.M. (PST) / Jan 26 at 6 A.M. (GMT). Your local video library will continue to be available during this time.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience.” (I only included the English, it looks like they said it in five languages total.)

I then launched the Zune software & after I tried to sign in to zune.net it told me that there was an upgrade, so I had it update to the 4.2 version. It told me to disconnect my Zune, which I did & the upgrade went without any new issues. I was told I had to reboot at the end which I did.

After all of that I plugged in my Zune 120 & was told about the firmware update. So I let it upgrade from 3.2 to 3.3 for the firmware on it.

It looks like the new version didn’t fix the issue I want fixed the most on the desktop software. That is it still tries to download episodes from podcasts that I’ve told it to delete & I also deleted manually to free up disk space.

They did a better job on dealing with the upgrade this time then last time. I remember with the 4.0 update it took me several hours to figure out that the service was down & I couldn’t get the update until after it was back up.

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blog Free Marketplace Microsoft Zune

Errors downloading purchased content

For songs the error is “You’ve reached the maximum number of downloads for this item. Error code: C00D135C” which is kind of sad when the solution as I mentioned earlier is to close the Zune software & open it again. The other thing that makes me think that I might be wrong is that three of the four music files I downloaded didn’t give the error, I wonder if this issues requires more troubleshooting then I have done with it.

Now just waiting for one of The Guild videos to download in HD which takes what feels like forever, so I can get the error from a video. I understand HD videos are large so they will take longer to download then the “free” music. (See my last post for more on that.)

Dang it both episodes of The Guild that were released today downloaded without any issues, so I still don’t know what exactly the other error is. I just remember it mentioned something about a firewall, which is funny as the only firewall I have is the hardware firewall in my router.

I’ve found over the years that software firewalls released for consumers are nothing but a headache. I say that because the maker will release an update that will cause all sorts of issues for the end-user, causing them to call technical support of any company other than who made the firewall. I learned early on that those calls needed to be told in no uncertainty that they needed to talk to the company that actually wrote the program that is causing the issue.

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blog Free Marketplace Microsoft Zune

Free isn’t always free on the Zune Marketplace

One of the songs on the “free playlist: nov. 24-30” costs 79 Microsoft points or almost one dollar, It is titled “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” the Artist is “Sinai Rose” & it was from the “Kidz Bop Christmas” album. I did try to let Microsoft know before making this post, here & here.

On the bright side this does give me the opportunity to get the errors I was getting trying to download files with a failed download. That can wait until after I post this. I guess another post is in order for that after I get the errors. I say errors because I remember getting at least two different errors.

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blog Marketplace Microsoft Zune

Zune 4.0 issues downloading purchased items

From what I’ve seen so far it looks like if you have one or more failed downloads you can not successfully start a download of something you purchased through the Zune market place. The current work around, that I have found, is to close the Zune software, then after you are sure it is no longer running by checking task manager or rebooting the computer open it again & immediately before any downloads can fail go to your purchase history & start the downloads. You can find the “Purchase History” if you go to Settings in the top right, then go to “account” under that you should see “Purchase History” where it should list your purchases, & you should be able to download stuff again that you have bought but didn’t get downloaded for whatever reason.

This makes me hate that they keep the list of failed downloads even more. I figured this out after several times of being told that a firewall was blocking it from getting access to something from their side. (Sorry I can’t remember the exact error. When I get the error in the future I’ll note it in another post.)