Let’s all hope that this firmware opens up a bit more of the Android features on the ZiiEgg so we can play with more features. Maybe it will fix my wifi…

Enhancements/Fixes:

• Rear camera can now be used to take still pictures and videos
• Now supports USB mass storage mode for SD card access
• Enabled GPS function
• Added support for FLAC playback
• Improved video playback performance
• OGG files are now played more optimally
• Added Aspect Ratio support in ZiiPlayer
• Added Hot-Key volume widget (press both Home and Menu buttons to activate)
• Other minor system enhancements and bug fixes

Features:

The features listed below are optimized implementations of Android 1.6 on Zii EGG.

• Wi-Fi™
• Networking
• Touchscreen interface
• OpenGL ES acceleration
• Media playback acceleration
• ZiiLABS codecs
• Integrated audio
• Accelerometer (default orientation is portrait mode)
• Power management
• HD video output
• GPS
• Rear camera support

ZiiLounge.com

For those of you that are wondering about ZiiLounge.com and the progress of the site, the “Lounge” is nearing completion. The rest is just a matter of styles/theme changes and some interactivity changes. Feel free to start joining as you see fit as your accounts will remain from now on.

Who said no news is good news? Well, I don’t always think that that statement is quite accurate. No news means that the people aren’t being updated. Creative has no announcements. Not much has really spawned from the developers who are hard at work in their dark caves digging deeper into the inner workings of the Zii.

Other then the occassional resolution to some issues in the forums, you wouldn’t know if anything was going on at all.

The most interesting thing that has happened is the creation of an application to force audio to a headphone jack instead of the speaker. This solved an issue one developer was having, or at least helped him figure out if his headphone jack even worked.

Zii Egg No Wifi

Well, Sept 2nd was THE day… My Zii Egg arrived. Well, sort of. I was at work and since it was FedEx and noone was home, I had to go pick it up from the depot. Minor detail and well worth the 15 minute wait while they located the package. It was like Christmas in September. Eagerly opening the box to reveal the contents.  The white Zii box with it’s shrink wrap made me say “ooooooo.” Opening it ever so carefully awaiting the sounds and light to come from the skys above. Ok, so maybe it wasn’t THAT amazing. But you do have to admit it was a pretty cool feeling to get that box and open it up.

So as soon as I got it home I started to mess with it, played the Elephants Dream HD clip, played some of the interesting music it has on it, flipped through the pictures and explored most of what is on the device. After which I quickly went to update the firmware as I’ve heard it really does improve the responsiveness of the touch screen. Firmware loaded without a hiccup. Now comes the time to test the wifi and surf some pages for a bit. So after getting the mac address for the device (as I run mac address filtering on my network, as well as thanks goes out to Nicolas for assisting with informing me on looking up the mac address). I set my router to allow the Zii Egg to connect. I quickly head to the wifi section of the controls on the Egg and tap to turn it on. Woohoo I see my network! Tap the network to connect and….. “Unable to connect to Linksys” hmmm… maybe I missed something. After about 50 attempts later, 2 routers, and quite a few hours, I hadn’t gotten any further. My Egg is Broken!

So my next write up will be about the Warranty/RMA process for Creative and the Zii Egg.

“theBishop” has opened up the “Unofficial IRC Development Channel” located on FreeNode. There has been much confusion with the name of the channel due to FreeNodes policy on channel naming. Creative Labs would get the “Official” channel name of #zii and the  outside developers would get ##zii. So if you go to ##zii you will see more people. Although a few people are in #zii to usually forward people onto the correct channel.

Thanks theBishop