This past November a crew put together a tool called ‘ChevronWP7’ that couldunlock Windows Phone 7 handsets. At the request of Microsoft, the team eventuallypulled the applicationand the company promised to meet with the group to discuss homebrew development for the platform as a compromise. That meeting started today. As reported byWinRumors:“Microsoft representatives met with Rafael Rivera and Long Zheng of the ChevronWP7 team on Monday to discuss the tool and Microsoft’s plans to support homebrew applications on Windows Phone 7....

We’ve been discussing the end of Zune for so long now that if Microsoft simply killed the service it would actually be a relief. Well, not quite. Still, we have heard that Zune will be folded into Xbox, or Windows Live, depending on who you talk to. No one is completely sure. However, news today indicates that Xbox is the chosen home for Zune, if its individual brand identity is later axed....

After enjoying more than a week of positive press in regards to its Windows 8 product, Microsoft has found itself in a new controversy today regarding the software, and is refusing to clarify the situation. Matthew Garrett, a mobile Linux developer at RedHat (purveyors of a popular Linux distribution),blogged this morningthat the ‘secure boot’ component of Windows 8, which Microsoft has touted as security-enhancing, might make it impossible to dual-boot Linux alongside of operating system....

Chalk this one up to the echo effect, but it turns out that Microsoft is not going to be shipping its new partner Nokia billions of dollars as part of their deal. A smaller cash transaction remains a possibility. How was if found out that the claim of flying billions was false? Someone sat down with the Nokia CEO and asked him. Sounds simple enough, right? You would think. Nokia’s CEO, Stephen Elop, said that the partnership with Microsoft is more “balanced” than people seemed to think....

Now this is an interesting development. Apparently as of June 14th, Microsoft now owns the domains Microsoft-Sony.com and Sony-Microsoft.com, reports gaming siteZoknowsgaming.Updates below. The domain registrations were discovered by a member of theNeoGAFforums, V_Ben, who offered them without comment besides, “who knows. Just, who knows. Probably WP7 phones.” We’ve verified the two domain registrations with separate lookup services and yes, Microsoft does now own both of those domains. While the possibilities set the mind abuzz, the most immediate thoughts of what the domains could be used for turn to a joint gaming console venture between the two companies....