I don't know anything, but thoughts of changes come to my mind. What about you? Will we have a patch when it comes back up?

Today, Zune Marketplace and Zune Social will be down for upgrades and scheduled maintenance. Once the production teams bring these back online, I'll post again - stay tuned.

Source : Zune Insider

Wow. This is painfully obvious. I don't know if I would call it a hack though. More of a workaround. I am quite sure Microsoft will come with a workaround of their own soon too. Anyhow, here is a way to get around the 3 play song sharing restriction.

This is a bit of forehead slapper if you ask me. We thank the Zune team for ridding the wretched three day play rule, but they left the three play rule and that makes us cringe. Thankfully Zune Scene has figured out how to get around that, but this should only be used for tracks that you produce yourself or tracks from your musician-type friends. *wink* You simply need to change the genre tag for your files to ‘podcast’ and voila. Have fun and enjoy your unlocked tracks.

Source: Crunchgear

Sarah in Tampa is at it again and found another very useful hack to allow your Zune to be used to play to your PC Speakers through the cradle or sync cable.

1. Add the following key to your registry, either by creating a reg file with the text, or go there yourself and create the binary value:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\Settings\filter\SpeakerHp]

"EnableInputMonitor"=hex:01

2. Reboot

3. Enable the input monitor by going to "Control Panel" --> "Sound" --> "Speakers/Headphones." Click on "Properties," then click on the "Levels" tab and enable the input monitor button.
4. You're done - rock out!

Source: Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10  (Thanks Antonio)

I did...

Here are some tips to customize your Zune Software.

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Ok, this is nothing really new or groundbreaking, but I think it deserves some props. Let's say you are enjoying the social and you see you friend listening to some band you've never heard of. You can hop over to the Zune Marketplace and download it easy, right. Sure, but let's say you have time and you want to know more about the band and their music. You can simply click on bio and get a nice, well written bio complete with hyperlinks to other bands of influence, that bands album, etc. Really Cool.

In addition to the bio, you have photos too. Next to the bio tab, there is related artist that can help you find similar music you may have never heard of.

There are lots of ways to get music onto your Zune. I will cover 4 of these ways in this post. This is for the community as well as a reference for member of the Zune.net forums.

Rip a CD
This is a no brainer, but since there is no guide within the software, i'll show you. When the Zune Software is loaded there are 4 upper tabs above the music category. Collection, Device, Marketplace, and Social. Put a CD into your computer and this screen pops up in Vista. Notice you have a choice for Zune to play or rip. Pick Rip or close this window out and go to the 2nd way. (which is also the 1st way, but initiating the rip from the software.

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Well, once again I am linking to a nice nugget of info from my buddy Jason over at Zune Thoughts. He has discovered that you can still search dynamically.

When you are in the device or collection tabs, all you have to do is start typing and it will filter down your search. It's not as dynamic as it used to be with the old software, but who needs dynamic? I'd rather the conventional search method anyhow with the search box.

There is one BIG GOTCHA to Jason's find though. It only works in the device or collection tabs. Why is that bad? Simple, the place I most want to search is the MARKETPLACE. This is too bad, maybe this was an oversight on the Zune Team's part.

Anyhow, that's still a cool tip from Jason for those 2 tabs. With a LARGE collection, the search is pretty helpful still.

Source: Zune Thoughts

Are you still having issues with your Zune Media Collection? In the Zune.net Forums, user streetchariot has compiled one heck of a list of info to help you out. ( View the Thread ) Below are a couple of the common issues related to Album Art.

If your albums are not right on your Zune:
1.   Connect your Zune to your PC.
2.   Goto the Device Tab in the zune software, and remove any albums that are not right.
3.   Go back to the Collection Tab and browse to the albums you just removed.
4.   Right click them and choose "Sync with <<Device Name>>"
5.   Those albums will re-sync to the Zune.
* If this does not work, or every album is not right, you can re-sync your entire collection by wiping the Zune clean.

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SarahinTampa has a nice list of tips for getting more out of your Zune 2...

Hack #4: Convert DVD, video, audio, iTunes and YouTube video to Zune or Zune 2 - this hack gives you directions to convert DVD and popular video and audio file formats like AVI, MPEG, DivX, XviD, MOV, ASF, RM to Zune, convert iTunes to Zune, iPod to Zune, M4P to Zune, M4v to Zune, and download and convert video from YouTube, FLV, Google, Myspace, iFilm, etc. to Zune. It was written up for the original Zunes, but sources say it works on Zune 2.

Hack #8: Hack the new Zune 2.0 software to display custom themes - registered members at this forum can download custom themes called zThemes like this Halo 3 one or this Vista one. (Download link here)

To read the other 8, you'll have to head over to sarahintampa or Here.