If you can’t develop for the ZiiEgg and you’re an upset developer, you can come up with some pretty creative ways to put your $399 device to use.

1. A Paperweight
2. A chew toy for the dog

And last but not least, a gutting project as developer Justin Richards chose to do.

Quoted from his flickr profile with the dismantling of his ZiiEgg, you’ll see this.

Well, After it sitting in my drawer for over a month now with no decent firmware update, I decided to take apart a $400 paperweight and see what makes it tick… Now it’s even more useless as I managed to accidentally crack the digitizer glass, so it no longer registers finger taps…

Oh Well :/

If you want to see the full set, here’s the link for that.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41915467@N00/sets/72157623285898310/

We hope that this won’t be a trend with these devices as that just means that there are some more unhappy developers out there, but at least we get some great internal shots of the device where we can break down chip for chip what’s inside of it.

Thanks Justin.

In what will prove to be a tremendous milestone for the developers community, ZiiLabs has opened up root access to the ZiiEgg devices in the latest firmware release. This has been a long standing debate with developers and ZiiLabs, so that developers could write certain applications. However, this releases feature set is only root access. What is really going on at ZiiLabs that in a month, the only thing that is in the firmwares is root access? Where’s the bluetooth? Where’s the love?

Enhancements:

Adds an option to enable root access for developers.
Requirements:

Microsoft® Windows Vista®, Windows® XP Professional 64-bit Edition, Windows XP Service Pack 3 or later, Windows 7
Zii EGG device installed with Plaszma firmware 0.94.03 or above

Well, in what seems to be a trend for a while now. ZiiLabs hasn’t released or announced anything of REAL importance for the ZiiEgg. The developers are becoming quite restless due to the lack of movement from the ZiiLabs side of the effort. It seems ZiiLabs is focusing on their marketing of the Zii brand by launching other Zii based products before completing their first physical device to aid the overall effort. ZiiLife, Zii Trinity, D3, Zii MicroMP (SiVO) etc. But what about the ZiiEgg?

How will the ZiiEgg compete in the PMP market against Apples iPod Touch loaded with iTunes music and applications. “There’s an app for that” rings out for Touch users so clearly as a focus point on a versatile device. The ZiiEgg however (Despite being in “development” stages), has the hardware that could beat the Touch and Zune, but lacks the application base to launch it into true competition. Why is this? Developers aren’t writing applications yet, due to firmware updates rendering access to the ZiiEgg inaccessible. Or developers would have to rebuild their app for a new firmware version as soon as it comes out. Stunting any growth there would have been for the application base yet again.

ZiiLabs response to all of this has been that of a protective overbearing parent keeping the world from their child. They aren’t showing developers any sort of roadmap, there is no idea of what’s in store for the device today, tomorrow, next week or next year for that matter.

Between you and me, I think ZiiLabs / Creative was hoping that in this process of “development” the developers would be building application after application. Useful applications, games, media apps and turning the forums inside and out sharing information. But since the number of applications that have been created could be counted using the fingers in your hands practically, ZiiLabs has moved to other alternatives to promote activity for the Zii realm.

But I guarantee, the main thing that needs to happen is better communication from ZiiLabs to the developers to keep them updated on what is to come and what to expect.

ZiiLabs has no problem showing off the capabilities of their “Zii” platform and all the wonderful things it can do. This time they’re boasting their product at CES 2010 with SiVO.

“The SiVO platform enables OEMs and ODMs to quickly and efficiently bring easy-to-use products to market that enable users to enjoy and share their multi-format media content in stunning 1080p high-definition at Blu-ray quality with bit-rates of up to 40MBPS,” said Hock Leow, President, ZiiLABS. “SiVO is a proven media-rich platform that offers our partners a complete market-ready solution with the built-in flexibility for customisation.”

“The availability of the SiVO Platform from ZiiLABS, is a further demonstration of the growing momentum behind ARM Cortex processors and the key differentiators they offer for home devices,” said Ian Drew, EVP Marketing, ARM. “The Cortex-A8 processor enables high-performance, energy-efficient connected home products to become a reality.”

The ZMS-08 flexible StemCell Computing Array features 64 fully programmable floating- point processing elements that deliver exceptional multimedia capabilities coupled with improved application performance. The flexible array architecture enables users to experience the widest range of community and commercial generated content including H.264, Microsoft® WMV9, MPEG2, MPEG4, OpenGL ES and Adobe Flash.

The tightly coupled high performance 1 GHz Cortex-A8 superscalar processor features NEON™ technology for multimedia and signal processing, TrustZone® security technology enabling Web 2.0 commercial transactions such as the capability to pay for, download and view the latest Hollywood blockbuster for a specific time period, 256K L2 cache for enhanced Web 2.0 browsing performance and a 1 GByte addressable RAM. This, together with the StemCell Computing Array, provides the high performance required for next-generation connected consumer multimedia experiences – while operating within the tight cost constraints and power envelopes needed for compact high density, thermally constrained home devices.

The SiVO Digital Home Platform provides support for a rich software portfolio, including Linux, Android and a wide range of media codecs and libraries. The platform provides support for 1080p Blu-ray quality video and can support Adobe Flash Player 10 and OpenGL ES 2.0 utilising ZiiLABS’ proprietary media processing array to provide the video, graphics features and low-power performance. ZiiLABS, together with ARM, work with an extensive range of third parties and open source communities to leverage the Cortex-A8 processor and NEON extensions.
The SiVo will be demonstrated by ZiiLABS at their private Suite and ARM in the ARM Home room (#35551MP South Hall) for customers at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Las Vegas, January, 7-10, 2010.

This was posted on their site as a announcement yesterday regarding the product.

Specifications listed for the Zii SiVo board include:

Processor — ZiiLabs ZMS-08 @ 1GHz
Memory — 512MB DDR2 memory with firmware Boot ROM
Flash expansion — External SD/MMC card slot
USB — 2 x USB 2.0 type A host ports
Other I/O:
HDMI 1.3a mini port
Composite video (via 4 pole 3.5mm plug)
Infrared input
JTAG debug port
Audio — High-quality audio DAC; 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack
Video formats — H.264 High-Profile, MPEG-1/2, MPEG-4 (XVid & DivX), WMV9/VC1 (SP/MP), Motion JPEG, H.263
Image formats — JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
Audio formats — MP3, WMA8 Std & Lossless, AAC-LC / LTP / HE v1&2, WAV, FLAC, ADPCM, MIDI, G726/722/711
Web software — Web 2.0 browser, Internet streaming, video-conferencing, Adobe Flash Lite 3.1/Flash Player 10, AIR
Power — DC 5V input board supply; power management unit
Dimensions — 2.8 x 2.0 x 0.5 inches (71 x 50 x 12mm)
Operating system — Android and Plaszma (Linux) OS

Looks like Christmas came a day early for the developers this year. Plaszma firmware 98.16 has been released with some long standing requests.

Enhancements:

• Adds the Clock application.
• Adds a scene-selection feature for the Camera application.
• Adds a landscape view for the Music Player.
• Adds SDK APIs for Network Manager and Open Sound System (OSS).

The clock application was one of the first things actually talked about when people received their ZiiEgg devices. Landscape media player has been a request since about 92.07.

ZiiLife.com has officially opened up for developers to check out. We can currently access two sections of it. ZiiDisk which is the 1GB storage feature, and the ZiiJournal which is the file sharing section. You’ll also notice that there seems to be a plan for charging $19.99 for 3 months of service. Currently, developers get 3 months for FREE after which point either pay for service, or let it expire. ZiiLife hasn’t been greeted with a lot of respect from the developer community, mostly because it’s more of a marketing gimmick whereas the developers wish more focus was on getting the OS and platform working properly before working on marketing this out.

One thing is for certain, it’s at least progression towards whatever direction ZiiLabs seems to be heading. Although, it would appear as though the ZiiTrinity is their choice in devices as it’s starting to show up more then the ZiiEgg.

ZiiLife, the community driven site for the ZiiEgg and distribution of Zii Applications, as well as extra Zii info and features, has been launched in it’s typical Zii style. Green grass and the Zii logo to give this a “Green” device feeling that’s free and clean. The site boasts a login and a video that plays a little preview of the sites features. “Connect with friends” is one of the primary features pushed by the video. The video also shows the ZiiTrinity, Zii Conference phone, and the Zii Mobile Laptop designs. “Share Files with your friends using ZiiMeet” which is their way of sharing music, movies, documents over the website. However, a new feature that is quite intriguing that wasn’t announced earlier is “ZiiDisk” which apparently allows you to store files online for access anywhere. A photo organizer called “ZiiJournal” which of course would be similar to features boasted by Apple, allowing you to comment and share photos with your friends.

Hopefully, developers will be the first to really get in and test the website to put it through some testing, but apparently some people have already gotten an inside sneak peak. (Maybe I missed that email in my inbox…)

ZiiLabs Error

This morning, ZiiLabs developers home page has been down for an unannounced reason as of yet. Don’t worry, if you want to go to the forums though, those are still up and running. So have no fear, your Zii community is still here!

Just click here. https://secure.ziilabs.com/forum/default.aspx

Finally some new features or news to announce. Here’s a little info that some of you developers may have overlooked while coding away.

ZiiLabs has released two new pages in the developer downloads section. One page is a Sample Apps page that has has 5 simple applications as well as 1 game.

Multi Touch Demo

Widget Demo

Window Demo

HDTV Hotplug Demo

Accelerometer Demo

RiDE Demo Game – (pictured on the right)

RiDE is a sample game from Ideaworks. This shows the ease of porting cutting edge content to ZiiLABS Plaszma Platforms.

Airplay SDK is an advanced cross-platform development tool for mobile and embedded devices. You write your application once in C++, compile fast and small native code, then click one button to deploy to all native smartphone platforms.

www.airplaysdk.com

The release of the GPL Source Code comes with a huge welcoming though. The offering gives developers the Linux Kernel, GDB, pwdutils and udev.  There are also claims that more will be coming soon. The developer community is already showing signs of being pleased with todays release and will prove to assist in their needs greatly.

ZiiSound D5

Another “Zii” announcement at the Summit, is the ZiiSound D5 and D3. A speaker dock which allows you to plug your ipod or ZiiEgg device into to playback music on. The D5 dock is slated for a price range of $299 upon release and no statement yet as to the price for the D3 but will probably be at the same price point, unless Creative/ZiiLabs wants to put their devices at a lower price point to encourage consumers to move towards the ZiiEgg. There are a few different methods to connect your ipod or Egg to the dock, but the default method is to transmit your music via Bluetooth.

But wait… it’s a “ZiiSound” device?!? Is it running a ZMS-05 chip inside?  Not at all. The ZiiSound is only borrowing the Zii name for what we can assume as a marketing technique to start getting the Zii name out at the consumer level for the ZiiEgg public release in the future. Of course, it’s just a speaker with some communication processing.

Here’s a picture that was captured of the D5 with an ipod connected to it at the Summit.