It’s a move that’s been on the cards for some time now, but Microsoft has finally confirmed the death of the Zune HD, with the company instead set to focus entirely on Windows Phone as their sole mobile and video strategy.

The first user-friendly Windows Phone 7 jailbreak has been released. Its called ChevronWP7 and it has been developed by well known and respected Microsoft community enthusiasts Rafael Rivera, Long Zheng and Chris Walsh.

Zune HD can’t be compared to the iPod touch in terms of apps, but having a few apps is better than nothing on the Zune HD. Here is a quick look at the three new apps, which has been released today by Microsoft on the Zune Marketplace.

Microsoft promised that the Zune HD 64GB would go on sale on April 12th, but it looks like they have instead made it available on their website earlier. Now that cuts down our wait time to get our hands on one!

Alright folks, pick up your Zune HD player, connect it to your PC and hit the update button. Yes, the most awaited update for the Zune HD has arrived.

The update brings a lot of cool and exciting new features, such as Smart DJ mix, personalized recommendations, Marketplace support for TV, expanded video codec support and so on.

Microsoft today has announced the availability of Facebook app for the Zune HD portable media player. Zune HD 4.3 firmware was released in November last year which added support for running 3D games and apps on the Tegra-powered Zune HD. The first batch of these games and apps finally arrived in late November as a free download via the Zune Marketplace followed by the Twitter app in December 2009.

John Starkweather from Microsoft surely couldn’t keep his words when he said: “Microsoft is not building a Zune-specific phone”. A number of speculations took our attention in the last one year or so when Microsoft was rumored to release ‘Pink phones’ with Zune services and an App store.

Microsoft today has announced the availability of Twitter app for the Zune HD portable media player. Zune HD 4.3 firmware was released last month which added support for running 3D games and apps on the Tegra-powered Zune HD. The first batch of these games and apps finally arrived last month as a free download via the Zune Marketplace.

The 2009 holiday season is almost here. Many retailers have started offering specials offers and discount on popular product items. Whether you are planning to purchase items for yourself or for your loved ones as gifts, now is the right time to do it. Microsoft has come up with amazing Black Friday deals for this holiday season that you simply can’t ignore.

Microsoft today has released six brand new apps (games) on Zune Marketplace which are specifically designed for Zune HD platform. Zune HD 4.3 firmware was released last week which added support for upcoming 3D games and apps on Zune HD. Well it looks like first batch of these games have finally arrived on the Zune Marketplace. And best of all, they are all free to download. The six free 3D games for Zune HD are as follows.

Microsoft Zune Team today has rolled out a new firmware update, version 4.3 for Zune HD players. This update is the third revision since the Zune HD launch in September of this year. The latest firmware update brings support for upcoming 3D games and apps, along with other performance upgrades and bug fixes. Some of the changes that we have noticed in this new firmware update are listed below.

Wow! Its only been a few days since the launch of Zune HD and we already have an iPhone-based app running on it! The folks over at Foundation42 have managed to port their upcoming iPhone App called WordMonger to Zune HD in just about 12 hours! WordMonger is written in C# using OpenGL and it runs on both the iPhone with MonoTouch and on Zune HD with .NET. Zune HD version is built using XNA Game Studio 3.1 which supports Zune HD extensions and Visual Studio 2008.

Microsoft today has unveiled the new updated Zune 4.0 software for Windows along with retail availability of Zune HD. The latest Zune software takes full advantage of the new Windows 7 taskbar features – enabling Jump Lists, minimization to taskbar mode, video/album art previews with full playback control and support for Aero Snap.

The first pictures from the Web Browser of Zune HD has been surfaced via Ben Patterson of The Gadget Hound. The web browser on the Zune HD is basically a special version of Internet Explorer 6 for Mobile which has been overhauled to make it faster and more suitable for more finger friendly operations on the capacitive multi-touch screen.

It is being anticipated that the next-gen iPod Touch, releasing this fall by Apple will be integrated with a camera. Nothing will be left undone then! Internet availability, uploading videos on Youtube, hundreds of games to choose from the App Store, huge music library(iTunes), WiFi, built-in-speakers with high sound quality PLUS a camera (probably with video) – like a cherry on the top!

Here is a cool sneak peak of the upcoming portable media player from Microsoft. The video demonstrates some of the cool new multitouch of the Zune HD. The accelerometer on this thing is damn fast, much faster than it is on my iPhone 3G. Wish they have demonstrated the web browser on the Zune HD which is yet to be seen. Check out the video below to see Zune HD in action.

XNA Game Studio 3.1 is go! and it brings support for the new features in Xbox 360 NXE – Xbox LIVE Avatars, Xbox LIVE Party features, Video playback and more!

The Zune HD has been finally announced officially by Microsoft today and is set to release this fall in US only. No official word yet on price or capacity. Here is a quick head to head comparison between the new Zune HD v.s. iPod Touch 2G.

Sources close to Zune team have confirmed that these leaked images of Zune HD are indeed real and Microsoft’s 3rd generation media player is most likely to be out by September or October this year.

You can’t get Windows Mobile from a store and install it on any cell phone you want. Same goes for the iPhone OS, Symbian, Palm, Android and others. And as we all know, Apple exists due to its eco system. This is the same eco system that inspired Microsoft to develop Zune with the Zune Marketplace and desktop software. Even the Xbox 360 is like iPods, iPhones and the Zune.