scott d. feldstein

I saw a headline go by in the netosphere recently about how Microsoft might abandon the Zune.  Apparently  they aren’t planning this after all, but it got me thinking about the Zune and about how it was initially greeted with such scorn back in 2006.  I recalled that Andy Ihnatko wrote a really insighful (if somewhat vicious) piece detailing exactly where Microsoft went wrong.

Hadn’t I blogged it, even?  Yes, I had.  But the link to the article at the Chicago Sun-Times was now broken.

A few googles later I realized that half the internet had read that article and linked to it on their blogs–and all of their links were broken, too.  Searching the Sun-Times site yielded no article.  And I could not find the full text republished anywhere else on the internet.

Then a friend reminded me about archive.org.  Bingo.

My immediate thought was to splash the full text on my blog, but then I thought maybe I’d better email the author first.  Copyright and all that.  So I found the link to Andy’s email address on the page where  his article should have been, and I emailed:

Dear Andy:

I hope it’s okay if I call you Andy.  We met once at the 2001 Macworld in San Francisco.  I’m positive you remember me.  I was the 30-something nerd wearing an Apple t-shirt.

Anyway, I was reading a news story the other day about how Microsoft might (finally) bail on the whole Zune thing.  Naturally I started thinking about your review of the Zune from back in November of 2006 in the Chicago Sun-Times.  It was such an insightful article that I blogged it and included a link to it on the Sun-Times site.  Problem is, the article is no longer there.  All I get is an error.

I googled around only to find that a lot of other people had discussed your article on their blogs–and all of their links were broken, too.  I saw something on the Sun-Times site that made me think they had no interest in fixing this–something to the effect that content over a year old was not maintained in any kind of archive in the first place.  Here’s the broken link:

http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/147048,CST-FIN-Andy23.article

I didn’t see a google cache, and nobody seemed to have the full text anywhere.  I finally found it by going to archive.org.

I thought about posting the full text on my blog, but then I thought you very well might sue me into next week or at least hate me forever if I did that without permission.  

But listen, Andy.  A seminal review such as this should not be lost from the history of digital music players.  Surely there are other people out there who are frustrated that it has all but disappeared.  Can you help?

Scott

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Anyone remember that blistering review of Microsoft’s Zune music player by Andy Ihnatko in the Chicago Sun-Times? I sort of do. But i’d like to read it again. 

Unfortunately, the Sun-Times web site is broken and you can’t find the text anymore.