For some reason, Press Pause, the weekly video game web show I co-host with Carlos Rodela, is not listed in the Zune Marketplace. You can get it on iTunes here. You can subscribe to it in the Zune software by adding the RSS feed. But we want to be listed in the excellent Zune Marketplace, and for some reason it’s not there.

So, I need your help to submit it. If they get enough submissions, they’ll add it. Just follow these three steps.

1. Go to the Zune podcast page on the web. Any browser should work fine.

2. Click the bright “Submit a Podcast” button on the left-hand side.

3. In the dialog box that pops up, enter the following URL and click “Submit”: http://mevio.com/feeds/presspause.xml

That’s it! Thanks for all your help! And to show you that this wasn’t just a complete waste of your time…hey, you’re already at this neat Zune podcast directory thing on the web. Did you check it out a bit? You might want to. You can stream any podcast in the Zune marketplace (which is really big) right on the web page. Free. That includes audio and video podcasts. And you don’t need to have a Zune account, or to sign up for anything, or enter in some arcane RSS feed, or any of that stuff. It’s just a big, totally free podcast playback machine on the web. Neat, huh?

Update: Looks like we’re listed now. Thanks to everyone who submitted.

Maybe you’re not doing an upgrade. Maybe you’re shopping around for a new PC. Either way, the biggest pain in the butt with getting a new PC or wiping your drive and starting fresh with a new OS is re-downloading and installing all those indispensable apps you use every day. (Well, the biggest pain is actually backing up all your photos and music and stuff – but you really should be doing that anyway.)

Enter one of the greatest websites in all creation, Ninite.com (no, that’s not hyberbole). It’s an idea so brilliant, so simple, and so useful that I wonder why it hasn’t been done years ago.

Visit ninite.com and you’ll see, right there on the front page, a list of checkboxes for commonly used Windows applications and utilities. It’s all categorized, and most of the big “must haves” are there. Check the ones you want to install, and hit the little “Get Installer” button at the bottom. This will download a tiny (less than 200k) executable which, when run, will download all the apps you picked and install them. There are no prompts, no sites to visit, nothing to sign up for. It installs all the apps to their default locations with default settings.

Take, for example, the notebook I just upgraded to Windows 7. I head to ninite.com, and check the boxes for Chrome, Firefox, Skype, Pidgin, iTunes, VLC, Hulu Desktop, Picasa, Microsoft Security Essentials, Adobe Reader, Flash (both IE and non-IE), Silverlight, uTorrent, Dropbox, Steam, and WinRAR. Hit the button, run the exe (which downloads in two seconds because it’s so small), and walk away. I come back later and all those apps are installed and ready to roll.

Genius.

It’s even smart enough to recognize that I’m running 64-bit Windows and grab the 64-bit versions of apps like iTunes, Security Essentials, and WinRAR. All they need to do now is add the Zune software and Ventrilo to their list and it’ll have literally everything I need on a new PC install (outside of boxed products and games). Try it. You’ll love it.

Dear ninite.com people – work your magic on a site for drivers!

This, of course, means jack-all if the software is crap. Fortunately, it is not crap. In fact, it’s quite good. The fine folks at Ars Technica have a first-look that is favorable, but I’ve been using the beta myself for a couple months on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista PCs so I thought I would offer my two cents.

First, it’s reasonably lean. On my 64-bit system, it generally uses less than 100MB of RAM (usually more like 70MB). That’s not the leanest background app around, but it’s not the worst offender, either. Windows Defender gets disabled (MSE is a superset of the Windows Defender stuff) so those system resources get freed up, which offsets the “cost” of MSE.

Second, it stays out of the way of my other programs. I haven’t noticed any change in system performance. It doesn’t screw up any of my games. I get the same firewall permission prompt with new games I always get in Windows, but that’s it. It doesn’t seem to run scans while I’m doing other system-intensive stuff. After a couple months of running this thing, I really can’t tell the difference between it being there and not being there, unless it catches something. Which is good.

Third, it appears to work. New virus and other malware definitions are updated practically every day. Windows Update will deliver them, and of course you can update by hand. I purposely downloaded a couple keygens and other programs from torrent sites that people said were infected, and MSE did indeed detect the bad stuff and prompt me to clean it. Cleaning the infected file (usually deleting it, sometimes quarantining it) is generally a one-click affair.

For now, I see no reason not to choose Microsoft Security Essentials as a free anti-spyware alternative. Many of the pay antivirus packages offer all kinds of extra features, like rootkit removals and more advanced firewalls and anti-email phishing stuff and all. If you want that stuff, go get AVG or something. But compared to products like AVG Free, MSE seems to stack up just fine. Frankly, if you don’t go around clicking on things you know you have no business clicking on, and if you keep up to date with your Windows Updates, you probably don’t need more protection than the free packages offer.

Of course, the real security firms will test the software against hundreds or thousands of known threats and get a really detailed take on how well it protects you. Maybe against that sort of testing, it’ll turn out to be crap. But hey, it’s free and so far, I like it. So if you’re not running any sort of anti-malware other than the basic Windows Defender that comes in Vista or Windows 7, go ahead and give this a whirl.

Now, if Microsoft really wanted to secure Windows, they’d work a deal with Adobe to offer updates to Flash through Windows Update. Not to distribute it in the first place, but if someone has it installed, they’d get updates that way. Flash is on like 95% of all desktop and notebook computers and it’s just chock full of potential attack vectors for malware. Adobe keeps closing the holes, but nobody ever updates their Flash software. I know Microsoft is all about positioning Silverlight against Flash and Adobe Air, and that’s all well and good. But I don’t see how providing updates to people who already have the software will really change that, and it’ll make Windows a gazillion times more secure.

Seriously Microsoft, it’s time. The iron has never been hotter, so to speak. The stars are aligned. And other clichéd turns of phrase. You have the right device, the right momentum, and the right opening to establish to the Mac crowd that, yes, Microsoft is indeed capable of making great software and sexy devices that have great features and are easy to use.

First, the Zune HD is hot. It has the gadget and tech community excited. Gizmodo loves it, calls it the best PMP on the market, and says “It’s got the most unique vision, the most impressive hardware and the most stylish software.” The new iPod announcements from Apple are nice, but they didn’t “wow” the press. That’s not going to last, so Microsoft should do something dramatic while the tide is in its favor.

Second, the Zune 4.0 desktop software is at a place where it’s honestly a better way to organize, find, and listen to/watch your media than iTunes is. I mean, go to the main music landing page in iTunes 9 and it looks like this:

The iTunes 9 music landing page is a bit cluttered

Compare that to the main music landing page in Zune 4.0:

The Zune 4.0 music landing page is clean and organized

By comparison, iTunes is cluttered and full of interface no-nos like mixing vertical and horizontal scroll bars, unaligned major elements, and so on. Main artist pages are even worse, compared the the Zune stuff.

When you’re listening to music, iTunes doesn’t really show you anything. The best you can do is enable the visualizer, which is certainly quite pretty. It’s not every useful, though.

iTunes gives you a visualizer that is slick, but not useful

Compare that to the Zune now playing, which pans beautiful hi-res artist artwork, nifty scrolling stats, and gives you access to the list of stuff you’re currently playing (it fades away when you stop interacting with the software for a few seconds).

The Zune 4.0 Now Playing screen combines attractive art/animation with useful controls.

Zune 4.0’s “Smart DJ” feature is about as useful as the Genius stuff on iTunes. I prefer Smart DJ because, if you have a Zune Pass, it can optionally stream in songs from the marketplace, while Genius is limited to stuff in your collection. In fact, you can Smart DJ any artist you’re browsing in the marketplace without even having any of their music.  But even if you don’t have the $15-a-month Zune Pass, the Smart DJ gives you the option of turning the software’s mix into a playlist, and even auto-refresh the playlist every X days (you can adjust it per-playlist).

Apple has continued to avoid giving iTunes users a subscription option like Zune or Rhapsody. Of course this isn’t for everyone, but there are those that really like it, and I constantly see comments from Mac users that they’d love the option.

Importantly, compatibility with users’ existing iTunes stuff isn’t the barrier it used to be. Both iTunes and Zune have moved most of its “purchased” content to DRM-free MP3, or at least AAC (which the Zune software and hardware plays just fine). The Zune software and hardware plays MP4 video, too.

So I’m making a list, out of curiosity. After the jump you’ll find some of the albums they don’t have on the Zune marketplace, but do have on iTunes. Sometimes the album and tracks are in the database, just unavailable for purchase/download.

Help me make my list, won’t you? Post in the comments some of the songs or albums you can’t find available in the Zune marketplace. (If you’d like to play along but don’t have the Zune software, just go download it. It’s free.) I just started. What follows is a partial list, by no means complete, just some of the first things I found. But I figured I’d solicit some help before I got too far along.

Not in the Zune Marketplace, but in iTunes:

Halo 1, 2, or 3 soundtracks. (seriously…Halo)

Miley Cyrus – Party in the U.S.A. (uh, barf…but it’s #3 on the Billboard Hot 100)

Nothing from Blizzard’s game soundtracks – no World of Warcraft or Starcraft

Assassin’s Creed soundtrack ( they have The Chosen hip-hop single, but not the full soundtrack)

Street Fighter 4 soundtrack

King of Kong  movie soundtrack

Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack (not Vladivostok FM, which they do have)

Update:

I kind of gave up on this. I spent several hours looking for things, and I found a few (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers self-titled 1976 debut album, The Raconteurs – Broken Boy Soldiers), but for the most part I found that if it appeared iTunes has something that Zune Marketplace did not, it was because Zune has the re-release a year or two later.

iTunes definitely has considerably more tracks, but given the propensity of the music industry to re-release and re-master and issue compilations and stuff, you don’t actually miss out on that much stuff on Zune. I wish they’d shore up their video game soundtrack selection, especially given how buddy-buddy Zune and Xbox are. And the Halo thing is still terribly embarrassing.

Of course, Apple announced some stuff beyond iTunes 9 and a new iPhone firmware update, like a major upgrade to the iPod nano, and new iPod touch models and pricing. There was no huge, drop-everything-and-run-down-to-the-Apple-Store announcement, but overall a decent day of releases.

(A side note: On the bus one day, I heard a group of inner city teens talk about going to the “iPod Store” downtown, referring to the San Francisco Apple Store location. That’s what Apple is to them – the iPod company. Take that to mean what you will.)

Now that I’ve had time to use this stuff and let the other announcements sink in, here are some thoughts.

The New iPod nano

This is a pretty good upgrade for an aging, some would say out-of-date product. It’s disappointing that the camera doesn’t shoot stills (even just VGA stills), and the resolution is limited compared to those cheap HD video devices out there, but who cares? It’s basically a “gimme.” The best addition is the one Apple cribbed from Zune, the FM radio. I know a lot of people say “who the hell wants to use FM radio anymore?” I’m feel that way, too. The Zune folks have excellent data on this (based on anonymous opt-in data collection from the Zune software) that something like half of Zune owners use the FM radio at least once a week. I guess this makes sense. Places like gyms will often broadcast the audio from TV sets on FM stations so you can listen while you sweat, and there are tons of people who love their talk radio. Plus the ability to see RDS data and tag a song for future download, also cribbed from Zune, is a nice little music discovery feature.

Apple even one-upped the Zune team by letting you pause radio for up to 15 minutes. That’s a good “bathroom break” buffer, and the inability to save that buffer probably steers Apple clear of any legal troubles.

iPhone 3.1 Update

A minor update if ever there was one. You can now buy ringtones from a giant ringtone store for the “breakthrough price” of $1.29. That’s right, you can now buy a lower-quality short snippet of a song to annoy everyone around you with for only 30% more than the full song! Ringtone prices are a total ripoff across the whole industry, and it sucks to see Apple encourage this bullshit with a whole ringtone store. I don’t even think this is available yet. I can’t find it on my phone nor iTunes.

3.1 also introduces Genius recommendations for Apps in the App Store. Nifty. But why is it only on the phone, and not in iTunes? I do most of my App shopping through iTunes.

iPod touch

The price drops seem to be clearly a reaction to the announced prices of the Zune HD. Apple’s dropping the 16GB model, interestingly, and selling a new 8GB model for $20 less than the 16GB Zune HD, hitting that magic $199 price point. The 32GB version drops to $299 ($10 more than the 32GB Zune HD), and a new 64GB version sits on top at $399. Yes, Microsoft, that is your cue to announce a $379 64GB Zune HD, if you were wondering.

The 32GB and 64GB models are getting the same CPU/GPU as the iPhone 3GS, which represents a nice speed bump, but it would appear that the 8GB model at that price point Apple emphasized as being so magical still uses the old platform. Lame. Also lame is that they gave the units a speaker (good for games without headphones) but no mic (bad for app developers that want to do nifty mic stuff). And they didn’t add a camera. So overall, sort of disappointing.

iPod Classic

Oh come on, Apple. You used to sell a 160GB iPod Classic, then you got rid of it. Don’t bring it back and pretend you’re giving people a capacity bump.

Next page, iTunes 9…