I read some very insightful stuff on Roughly Drafted today, mostly about the Zune. The artwork alone practically had me crying with laughter. Witness….

That pretty much shows the whole story… Monkey-dancing Ballmer chucking a chair, while the Zune goes down in flames, and gets squirted. Come on, did anything get left out there? Yes, I said “squirt”. That’s right. The marketing brain trust over at Microsoft thought it was a good idea to call the process of beaming songs from one Zune to another “squirting”. I haven’t spent 5 minutes in a marketing job. Never. Ever. Even I know that trying to graft a term used as slang for bodily functions onto tech processes is generally a bad idea. What if TiVo decided that Home Media Option’s video sharing should be renamed “sneezing”? I can hear it now… “Honey, can you sneeze that episode of E.R. up to me?” Or how about we rename text messaging as “farting”? “Hey! Fart me later!” Ridiculous, right? Well, you get the idea. Squiring is just plain dumb.

Speaking of more utter stupidity from the boys who brought you the Blue Screen of Death, what’s up with this stupid “point” system for the Zune Marketplace?? Songs from the Zune Marketplace cost 79 points a piece. Cleverly, a point costs roughly $0.01253. So, you guessed it. 79 points = $0.99. Hey, that’s a familiar price point. Why create a needless layer of complexity here? Just say what you’re charging for the song already.

Another fine article over on RD was about Microsoft’s astroturfing campaign. These guys know no shame. Every Zune site sounds like a copy of the one before it. FM Radio, squirt your pals, rubberized case, bigger screen than the iPod, blah blah blah. It’s old, kids. Find some new material, please.

And again, poop-brown. More Roughly Drafted art… Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.

Currently playing in iTunes: How to Save a Life by The Fray