You are all familiar with Microsoft’s Zune Music Pass, right? No? Well actually, you aren’t the only one who may not be that au fait with the Redmond offering, but that shouldn’t really cause you much concern as the subscription service that allows unlimited music streaming/downloading is being cast into the wilderness – at least in some regions. The time of Zune has been and gone and with the Xbox Music service on the horizon, it seems a little strange that the Zune Music Pass is arriving in some new territories as we speak.

Now, this is a fairly spontaneous rumor with little proof, so this one must be taken with a grain of salt: Microsoft is reportedly in talks with record labels on creating a new music service that caters to the Xbox and “an upcoming Windows-based phone”.

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.

Microsoft has finally rolled out the much awaited Windows Phone 7 update, dubbed “NoDo”, for all Windows Phone 7 users, which among other improvements, brings copy/paste functionality to Windows Phone 7 devices.

Own an iPhone or iPod touch but always liked the look of Windows Phone 7’s Zune music interface? Now you can have the best of both worlds, thanks to a new app from Dr. Wilson Gaming, called Muzik.

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.

Although Microsoft never released synchronization software for their Zune players on OS X, they have officially announced that Macs will get a tool which will allow users to sync some content with WP7 phones.

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.

Some Photoshop magic on the Windows Phone logo posters hanging across the streets in Barcelona has unveiled the name “7 Series” underneath the main logo. This hidden name probably refers to the upcoming Windows phone handsets, which will be powered by Windows Mobile 7.

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.