This, my friends, is absolutely shocking. That guy who made himself the laughing stock of the entire internet by getting himself tattooed up with not one, not two, but three Zune logos, has decided to cover up the tattoos. It's not out of shame, however. We've known for a while now that this Adonis has no shame. The reason is much, much better.

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DirectX 11 is coming, and it looks pretty awesome. Sure, you get advancements in shading and better support for multi-core machines, but what's really got our heads turning is the concept of letting programmers use the GPU in your video card to do some of the heavy lifting, meaning your graphics chip becomes a second, parallel processor. While the idea itself isn't new, this is the first we've heard of DirectX using such technology and we're sure it'll have PC gaming fanboys drooling when it rolls out, whenever that happens to be. [Joystique]

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Not content to just offer a new version of Windows Live Messenger for a competing platform, Microsoft today released an updated official version of the full Windows Live app for Windows Mobile that features contacts syncing, support for Live Spaces, Live Maps, and push email from Hotmail, MSN, or Live accounts. It's a free mobile download, though you'll have to make sure you nuke the old version first lest you mess up your device. [Download, via JK On The Run]

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Many companies use Windows Live Messenger for corporate IM because it's free and comes with pretty much any Windows computer they purchase. Windows Mobile users have had mobile IM love for awhile, but BlackBerry users have been left out, at least as far as official messengers go. They had already been promised an official client, and today Microsoft published it. Also included is live Hotmail support, for those who still use it. Go and download it, BlackBerry addicts, if you haven't already. [Download, via Ars]

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We literally have no further information other than what you see in the image above, but either way, it's a very interesting photo even if it might be a fake. It makes sense that whatever huge display is running off a Windows XP machine—many giant displays do. What's also interesting in the photo are the cops (are they cops?) manning the line with fire extinguishers in case one of the Beijingnese Apple customers gets outta line. [Thanks Chris!]

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Games For Windows LIVE, the PC equivalent of Xbox Live, has now gone free. As of now, you won't have to subscribe to a Games For Windows LIVE Gold Account (US$49 a year) in order to get the PC to PC or PC to Xbox 360 multiplayer action. Great news for PC owners, but we hope that Microsoft will refund the cash for people who still have a few months left on their account. [Games For Windows via Gamerscore Blog]

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You know how solid state drives aren't very common right now? SanDisk laid the blame for that directly onto Microsoft's face, accusing Windows Vista of not being optimised for those SSDs. The next-generation drives due out soon require more advanced controllers (the stuff that interfaces with the drive itself), which "need to basically compensate for Vista's shortfalls."

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Either that or their agency just really loves Thomas Friedman. Anyhow, Microsoft's US$300 million campaign to return fire after Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads with our buddy John Hodgman--which, like it or not, were a wildly successful campaign and definitely helped shape the public's perception of Vista--has begun with this image from microsoft.com, comparing the potential realisation that Vista doesn't suck to the debunking of the flat earth theory. It took a bold voyage to the New World by one Christopher Columbus to change everyone's mind on the first one--but Microsoft is hoping a little ad campaign will do the trick to clean up the gross misconception the public (and tons of Windows users) seem to have about Vista.

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Curious as to just how the Netflix functionality is going to work on the Xbox 360 when it's added this fall? Major Nelson just posted a video of him going through it, showing off just how it's going to work. Essentially, it looks exactly like the interface on the Roku Netflix box.

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After opening up more spots in the technical beta last week, the Live Mesh folks got a bit ahead of themselves and accidentally let leak a pre-release version of the Live Mesh Mac client, which brings file and data syncing, but no remote desktop control yet, to Intel OS X machines. The download link is gone now, but the folks at jkontherun were able to grab it and put it through its paces and grab some screens. [jkontherun via Liveside]

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