The fight between Microsoft and Apple has reached new heights as even the president-elect, Barack Obama, is now choosing sides. However, the latest show-down was not between a Mac or a PC, but between the most popular MP3 player at the moment, Apple’s iPod, and Microsoft’s less known and less sold player, the Zune.

The website of a Philadelphia-based newspaper crashed temporarily after it had covered the news about Barack Obama using a Microsoft Zune MP3 player instead of his usual music player choice, namely Apple’s iPod. Drew Lazor, who is the online editor for citypaper.net, said that the comment regarding the president-elects choice of MP3-player was merely an “innocuous comment” in the article about Barack Obama’s visit to Philadelphia. It seems that the comment about Barack Obama sporting a Microsoft Zune instead of the usual Apple iPod was short and inserted somewhere in the fourth paragraph of the story covered by citypaper.net. However, fate decided that of all people, a tech blogger had to see the comment in the story, and, according to the words of Drew Lazor himself, “it kind of exploded from there.”

The Internet is known for the amazing speed with which it can send and receive information. Thus, once the tech blogger learned about the new MP3 player choice of the president-elect, he made sure everyone was aware of it. Soon, hoards of Internet users flooded the web site of citypaper.net. The sudden traffic boost was too much to handle, and consequently, the web site crashed.

Because of the unexpected attention the story got, one of Barack Obama’s spokespeople actually had to come out and say that indeed, the president-elect usually uses an iPod, and that she does not know where the Zune seen on Obama at the gym came from.