Most people with a iPod don't know you can use it as a external hard drive, but you can. Windows sees the iPod as a USB mass storage device and mounts it with a drive letter. Your music file are in a hidden directory structure can easily be accessed.

The Microsoft Zune can't be accessed in the same way. It is it's own device and not accessible. Well, so we all thought.. Some industrial folks have found a way to enable pseudo hard drive support. It doesn't get assigned a drive letter, but does allow you to drag and drop files from it.

Turns out it's just a registry value to enable visibility in the shell. 

Here are the instructions:

1. Make sure your Zune is not plugged in and your Zune software isn't running
2. Open up regedit by going to the start menu and selecting "run". Type regedt32 and hit "OK"
3. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\
4. Search for "PortableDeviceNameSpace". This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above ...\USB\ The ##'s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune
5. Change the following values: * EnableLegacySupport to 1 * PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0 * ShowInShell to 1
6. Plug in your Zune, and make sure the Zune Software starts up.
7. Hopefully at this point you can open up "My Computer" and browse your device, though it does NOT show up as a drive letter.

This has be the best offline blog writing tool I have seen to date, and it is free. Live Writer  lets you create and edit your weblog entries just like a word document, without the need to be constantly tweaking the html. It is compatible with DasBlog, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, and of course Windows Live Space as well as others. 

One of the problems I had with some of the other tools was a quick way to link my images to thumbnails. Live Writer has a very cool feature to help you do this. You simply "Insert Picture" and edit the properties to link to the original image at full size.

The WYSIWYG support is as good as anyone could want. You can switch between Normal, Web Layout, Web Preview, and of course HTML. It is smart enough to collect all relevant information such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, margins and block quotes and show you a true view of what to expect.

Another excellent feature is it's rich plugin support. It is still in beta, but already has a vast array of available plugins including Code Formatter, Inserting Maps from Windows Live, Inserting video, and pictures from Flickr.

Download Windows Live Writer.

The company I work for got me two of these monitors for my desk recently.

Yes, I am one of those programmers that like a dual monitor setup.

Anyway, this lower priced deal was just announced at TigerDirect.com and

seems like an excellent deal at $184.99.

Specifications
	Display Type	TFT LCD
	Viewable Screen Size	19 inches
	Display Area	410.4mm(H) x 256.5mm(V)
	Contrast Ratio	500:1
	Response Time	8 ms
	Horizontal Viewing Angle	150 degrees
	Vertical Viewing Angle	130 degrees
	Maximum Resolution	1440 x 900