Microsoft got themselves in some hot water after a small PR account for Xbox told followers to remember the deceased musician Amy Winehouse by purchasing her last album on the company’s entertainment marketplace, Zune.

Maybe not the best of ideas. After about an hour of retweets with comments that showed that people did not appreciate the tweet, the account tweeted a follow up, apologizing.

Do you have some spare gadgets laying around? An old GPS, maybe an old Zune or camera? Why not trade them in for a gift card. Several stores offer this already, but now Amazon is joining them by adding electronics as their latest category for trade-ins.

All you need to do is choose from the 2,550 items currently recognized and describe the condition of the gadget and Amazon will let you know how much credit it can give you along with a prepaid shipping label. It beats throwing it away right?

President of Redbox, Mitch Lowe told analysts that its upcoming online movie service would be subscription-based like Netflix and Hulu Plus instead of charging for each movie like others including iTunes, Zune or Amazon.

Users would pay a monthly fee to stream to devices and access discs at kiosks. Redbox will have a partner in the service and the Seattle Times is thinking that it is Walmart Vudu and Amazon. So if you are a Redbox fan, this is good news.

We all know that Gorilla glass is unbreakable. It is used in products like the Zune HD and Galaxy Tab, as well as some HDTVs, because it is super strong. Well, now we have something even better thanks to a group of scientists who have created glass that is as tough as steel.

Developed by a team of scientists from the Berkeley Lab and the California Institute of Technology, this palladium-based glass “bends rather than crack – giving it a fracture toughness that goes beyond the limits of some of the strongest and toughest materials known.” That’s pretty darn tough.

Once again HTC is going the extra mile to ensure that the user experience on its mobile phones is everything it should be. The company has now released the first full YouTube client for Windows Phone 7. The most interesting feature is that it supports full HD playback over Wi-Fi.

The program works well and pretty fast and you get the typical features like Most Viewed, Most Discussed, Top Rated, Categories, and History. You can download the app right now from the Zune Marketplace.

Microsoft has opened up its Zune Originals customization for custom images. Zune HD buyers can now either upload a photo of their own or use their Xbox Live avatars in one of several poses. They are etched in grayscale and the photos allow four different etch styles.

Either of these options adds $25 to the price and can be combined with any color and is available for 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities. Microsoft sells players with the special engraving starting at $205 for a 16GB edition all the way up to $375 for a 64GB model. Each model comes with a free power adapter to charge from the PC.

So, what is the music service on Sony’s upcoming PlayStation Phone? PSP owners will soon have access to what may be signs of things to come. Sony has announced that a new software update, version 6.35, would prepare the PSP for Sony’s upcoming “Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity” service.

Like Zune, Rhapsody, Napster and other services, Music Unlimited will be a cloud-based product that allows subscribers to stream music on demand to their devices. It will launch soon. Maybe Sony can finally get one over on iOS with this ingrained unlimited music client.

Best Buy today has kicked off a post-Thanksgiving sale with a heavy emphasis on iPods. If you buy an 8GB fourth-generation iPod touch, you get a free GPS unit from the store’s in-house Insignia brand. Other iPods are also on sale, ranging from $5 for a fourth-generation iPod shuffle to $10 off new iPod nanos and $15 off the iPod classic.

It’s a good day to buy an iPod it seems. Zune too. If you want a Zune HD, you can also get a deal, as those who buy the 16GB or 32GB models can get a Zune HD AV Dock for free.

According to COO of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, Dennis Durkin, the Xbox360 is being used for gaming only 60% of the time, while the remaining 40% is used for other things aside from gaming.

Users are watching streaming movies with Netflix, using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, or listening to tunes using Zune etc. Microsoft says that Xbox 360 owners spend an average of three hours online per day.

Today Microsoft pushed out its fall Xbox 360 Dashboard update, which brings many of the features shown at E3, focusing mostly on Kinect controller support for games, video chat, and gesture and voice commands in the UI itself.

There’s also live and on-demand ESPN3 sports events, Zune Pass music streaming and a more streamlined interface with extra attention to the Marketplaces and a new parental control center. Some other minor improvements bring better voice chat quality, a new virtual keyboard, easier Netflix searching and simplified Wi-Fi network joins.

In an interview with the New York Times, Melinda Gates, wife of William Gates, says that Apple products are not allowed in their household. She is supporting her husband, who you may remember had banned all Apple products from his company’s campus back in 2005.

You can check out her Apple related answers from the interview below.

Along with all of the Windows Phone 7 announcements yesterday, Microsoft also released its latest version of the Zune media player and sync software, Zune 4.7. The big improvement in Zune 4.7 will be support for Windows Phone 7 devices while keeping support for the Zune HD and other Zune hardware.

HD video streaming is also part of the update and users will have access to things like Zune Pass Music, TV shows, movies, trailers, and podcasts. Zune services will be included as part of Windows Phone 7 devices that can be accessed through the Music+Video hub and it will be able to sync contact data and other non-media info.

Microsoft has given the Zune HD its first significant app catalog update in months and headlined it with Windows Live Messenger. The app is the Zune’s first instant messaging app. It supports most of the same features, like Facebook chat as well as social feeds from Facebook, Flickr and MySpace. It doesn’t really multitask but will change status to reflect currently playing music.

There are also three action and puzzle games, Castles & Cannons, Dr. Optics and WordMonger. Microsoft last gave the Zune HD a major non-game app through the Facebook client in March. It appears that they really are turning their attention more toward Windows Phone 7, which should have much broader app support.

A Microsoft job listing suggests that the company may be committing to the design of a Zune HD sequel. The Senior Mechanical Engineer is ostensibly under the phone division but would be working with the Portable Entertainment Group to build “cutting edge mobile devices.”

Details are scarce as to the nature of the hardware, but the team is the same that made the original Zune HD. There is also speculation of a Microsoft-influenced smartphone design or maybe even a portable Xbox gaming console.

Apparently Zune HD head Dave McLauchlan has been making deals with studios to get tons of movies ready for viewing so that you can do more than stare out your window on flights. 500 Zunes are being provided for long-haul flights to Hong Kong and Australia.

They will preload the devices with exclusive content, including movies that haven’t yet made it to a DVD release. The Zune HDs in question will now been encased in rubber, with their screens protected, and batteries charged.