We’ve all heard the countless Zune Mobile rumours floating around the internet (and to a lesser extent, Touch screen Zune’s, though there’s little actual evidence to that one). So lets feed the fire shall we?

While browsing through Microsoft’s Job Listings’ for Zune, I stumbled across this very interesting one for a User Experience Designer. Take the following requirements for example:

• Experience with human interface and navigation models requiring engineering prototypes of dpads, switches, accelerometers, touch screen input variables.
• Sensibility for mobile communications and entertainment applications.

Well, obvious question, why do they need someone with experience with “Touch Screen Input variables”? Well there’s two ways to look at this. Firstly, they want someone who can help with the Mobile/Windows Mobile version of the Zune software. As we all, know mobile phone manufacturers, and more specifically those of Windows Mobile phones, are more and more integrating touch screens into their devices, and any Zune software client to be developed for these devices is going to have to leverage these capabilities.

Or, a cooler option: there’s a touch screen Zune coming. To be honest, I much prefer that conclusion. Also good to note that the Zune team seem to be considering how to leverage an accelerometer in upcoming devices, though that’s pretty much a given in this day and age.

On a far more presumptuous point, the listing also says:

Knowledge of new technologies, authoring environments and computer graphics tools is preferred.

Now, the only real new set of technologies I can think of is WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), which if you’ve seen anything of, you’d know allows developers to create truly stunning and animated user interfaces without large performance costs. Hopefully this means we’ll be seeing the Zune Software shell re-written in WPF sometime soon!

[source: Microsoft Carrers Job Listing]