This isn’t exactly a crazy amount of radiation, and it’s probably not worth getting worked up about. I know this intellectually, and I’m sure my body can and does easily absorb that much radiation without complications. All kinds of radiation hits us all the time, and whether it’s harmful or not depends on the strength and length of exposure. EM radiation bombards us from radio towers (FM, AM, TV, etc.), power lines and outlets and stuff, cell phone towers, Wi-Fi, and a whole bunch from the freakin’ Sun itself. Of course, we do constantly talk about protecting yourself from all that solar radiation with sunscreen and such.

Even knowing that it’s almost certainly not harmful, it’s still a little troubling that my iPhone 3G, which I always keep in front pocket when I’m out of the house, is 0.24 - 1.39 W/kg. I mean, how often is it way down at the .24 range? When is it way up at 1.39? I suspect this range has to do with things like whether or not Wi-Fi is enabled. Annie’s G1 comes in at 1.11 W/kg, which is somewhere in the middle of the list. 3G smartphones, unsurprisingly, fare worse than…uh…dumbphones I guess you’d call them.

(By the way – I was going to name this post “I’m nuking by nuts!” but I chickened out.)

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…