It's finally official: Microsoft will no longer be producing Zune HD music and video players.

Technology has given Pope Benedict XVI a window into space and the astronauts he spoke to the ultimate morale boost.

Microsoft has nixed any future iterations of its Zune music and video player, according to a Bloomberg report, adding another name on the list of devices killed by Apple's iPod hardware and entertainment ecosystem. Microsoft has yet to make the death of its Zune official, but unofficially it's believed the decision is based on poor demand for its players since the Zune line was introduced almost five years ago.

Dolby's new PC Entertainment Experience 4, or PPEv4, pushes the capacity of one of the weakest sound players on the planet: the laptop. Built into the new line of Acer Aspire Ethos computers, PPEv4 sounded great and didn’t disappoint at CES this week.

A reader asked about re-recording his phonograph collection in digital form

He likes photography and skiing, but the primary concern of Lennart Poettering is advancing the Linux audio experience with PulseAudio, an open source sound server. With this the Linux audio experience will be more context-aware. For example, if a video is running in one application the system should automatically reduce the volume of everything else and increase it when the video is finished. We catch up with Lennart immediately after this year’s Linux Plumbers Conference to find out the latest PulseAudio developments.