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.

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.

Today in a major breakthrough, Microsoft’s Eric Rudder, while speaking at Tech-Ed Middle East, gave a fantastic demonstration of a game developed in the new Visual Studio 2010 as a singular project, that runs on multiple platforms. It can be played on Windows 7 based PC with a keyboard, on a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device with accelerometer and touch controls, and on the Xbox 360 with gamepad. Amazing, isn’t it? One same game, running on three different screens, on three different platforms. There is also no reason why Zune wont chip-in to these sometime in near future.

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.

The highly respectable blogger Eldar Murtazin of Mobile-review.com in a twitter conversation has revealed that he got his hands on one of the earlier production builds of Windows Mobile 7. According to him, the OS has been built from scratch, the UI is simpler than Zune HD and that none of the existing Windows Mobile apps worked on it. It has got these horizontal navigational movements which seems to have been heavily inspired from Android 3.1/3.2 (?) and iPhone OS.

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.

Its Cyber Monday today when all the major online retailers are offering great promotions on all types of computer items. Like Black Friday coverage, we have been covering Cyber Monday sales extensively from Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon, Apple and Kmart online stores. And now Microsoft Store joins them too with amazing Cyber Monday online deals for this holiday season that you simply can’t ignore. They are offering sale of upto 50% off on selected computer hardware and software items.

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.