Prizes, cookies, and Zune Pass or Xbox Live, this June will rock. For the month of June, post photos, to our Facebook page, that show off your Zune Nom. That is, Zunes doing some nom nom noming or Zune being nom nom nomed in funny ways. If you do not know what a nom nom nom is, feel free to check this out. To make things interesting and give some thanks for your Microsoft Paint editing troubles, there will be one big and small prize awarded each week for certain Zune Noms that nom above the rest. The big prizes come in two forms. The smaller prizes come in one of three varieties:

• Zune Nom Prize Pack (Zune HD t-shirt, Oreos, and month of Zune Pass)
• Xbox Nom Prize Pack (Kinectimal plush toy, animal crackers, and three months of Xbox Live)
• Smaller Cookie Nom giveaways (Oreos, Chips Ahoy, and Teddy Grahams)

Nomtastically awesome right?

The winners of each week will be selected by a different Inside the Circle writer namely Kevin, Joseph, Julio, and Alfa. Yes, we have two new writers here at Inside the Circle. Please welcome Joseph Kuuire (@Joseph_Phoenix) and Kevin Skocik (@kevinskocik) to the table! As always, remember Zune is more than just a device. You can do your Zune noming on Windows Phone, the PC, Windows Media Center, Xbox Live, Zune.net, and (of course) with your Zune devices. Be creative with your Zune Noms!

Contest Details,
The contest starts officially Wednesday, June 1st and goes until Friday, June 24th. Please try not to post anything before Wednesday; I’ll be unhappy and have to delete your photo. Each week a winner will be chosen from all of the Zune Nom photos submitted to the Inside the Circle Facebook page. For the duration of the contest, a winner will be announced on the Friday following the start of the contest. So the dates the eight Zune Nom winners are announced (two each week) will be Friday June 3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th. You can only win once. As always, we reserve the right to remove inappropriate noms. Keep it PG-13. In the same vein, because of Facebook’s age restriction you need to be aged 13 or older by the start of the contest to post a picture on our Facebook page for a chance to win. Yes, this was inspired by Om Nom Nom Nom. Stop reading the fine print and get noming!

[Image Source: The Mac Security Blog]

OS X Zune Nation members (you do exist), take note. Users of Apple’s OS X operating system are unknowingly letting malware onto their system. From the articles I am reading, this looks like it goes by a few names, Mac Protector, Mac Defender, Mac Security and Apple Web Security. It appears you can unintentionally install the malware by clicking on links while visiting websites and using Apple’s OS X operating system. From there the malware displays lewd popups and proceeds to ask you to to purchase an antivirus program. Do not purchase the program or give the app your credit card number.

Fellow MVP and ZDNet writer Ed Bott, has found a number of OS X users are talking about Mac Defender on Apple’s Forums. In the event you installed Mac Defender click here for removal steps to clean your Apple computer. A major thanks to Ed Bott for bringing this to my attention.

Being one who spent a number of his high school days removing unwanted programs from friends Windows XP computers, malware is no fun. If you have a Windows PC that you believe is infected with malware, run Windows Update and specifically look for the Malicious Software Removal Tool. Another option Ed pointed out today, if you have a PC, you can call 1-866-PCSAFETY (727-2338). With a Mac and this brand of malware, it appears your only options are these Mac Defender removal steps. We now return you to your regularly scheduled #ZuneTune.

San Diego Comic-Con International is almost upon us! As of the time of posting, SDCC is but two and a half (or so) months away.
And if you didn't know, The Con is staying in San Diego until, at least, 2015.

According to Comic-Con's website, all passes have been sold out for a few months now. Four-day passes with Preview Night sold out almost a year ago. So the chances of you scoring a pass of any kind is rather not happening. If you do happen to purchase a pass/passes other than from the official website, you might have bought fakes. So be careful!
Also, if they're not all booked, hotel rooms are very close to being at max capacity for the duration of the event.


One month before The Con, on 20 June 2011, I will post the updated terms and conditions of service you need to know in order to be able to win a one-of-a-kind, six to seven pound, SDCC geek fest package from us.
So please, stay tuned for that if you'd like a chance at winning one of the five boxes.

Until then, may the force be with you.

Los Links:

• The official intellectual bad ass site 
• The bird's the word with #SDCC 
• Official BookFace  
• Tube you, you tubing you'er! 

If you don't think entering the raffle is something cool kids do, ask @DilPickle1 and/or @harlemS about their packages. They both won last year.

Today, at their Google I/O developer's conference, Google finally announced their Google Music service. The service is designed to let users upload their music collection and have it anywhere they can access a browser or use an Android application. I'm not surprised that the announcement was met with lackluster response since people had been anticipating (read: knowing about this) for months. The question really became how was it going to function.

Or, if you're a Zune user, the question becomes now that Amazon and Google have discussed their cloud music offerings (with Apple apparently waiting in the wings for what they're going to do) where does that leave Zune -- especially considering, as we all know, Zune has some of the best pieces in place to offer a compelling entertainment-anywhere experience.





Zune would have you understand that currently your entertainment *is* everywhere. Yet the part that's missing is access to songs you have in your local collection, that aren't available in the Zune Marketplace. How, for example, can I tell my Windows Phone to let me play an unavailable album by proving to it that I own said album? How can I tell the Smart DJ on XBOX 360 to include songs that I have in my local collection sitting on a PC just a few feet away? If there was a way to set all my music in the cloud (or at the very least a cloud-based list of all of the songs I own) then these services would become that much more viable.

At present, if you own a song that is at least displayed in the Zune Marketplace, then your song gets mapped so that when you went to that song in the Marketplace listing, it would show as (in collection). I wonder how we can take that aspect and get it to transcend other tuners. If the Marketplace can see that song as (in collection) how can we get other tuners to see that same thing?

With the combination of Zune Pass + Skydrive + Purchase History + Collection scanning, everything is in place to start having my collection talk to all of these tuners. If, and when, Zune pulls that trigger it will surely be a day about 'entertainment, everywhere'.

I applied for a beta invite to Google's service and I hope to give it a spin. What do you guys think of Google Music as a formidable competitor to Amazon, Apple and Microsoft?