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Sony NEX-3 goes pink on November 19, in accordance with our wishes
We weren't shy about telling Sony that it ought to bring some of those NEX-3/5 color concepts from Photokina out on the market, and the Japanese manufacturer has clearly taken note. To be fair, our pining was more concerned with the white variant than this pink number, but whatever, a new hue is a new hue. Japanese lovers of small cameras with big sensors and rosé color schemes will be able to enjoy their slice of nirvana on November 19 for around ¥80,000 ($975), while the rest of the world sits and ponders the crazy price. It's no higher than the standard NEX-3 kit, mind you, which can currently be had in silver, black, or red. And if Sony Japan's scheme to conquer the female market with a lick of new paint pays off, we might see the pink camera -- along with the litany of matching accessories also introduced today -- sailing out to new shores as well. One can only hope. [Thanks, Conrad]
Microsoft kicks out a pink mouse for Breast Cancer Awareness Month
If you've been following your NFL broadcasts, you'll have noticed an entirely unusual hue infiltrating your typically macho sport -- in most clashes this weekend players on both teams could be seen sporting pink paraphernalia alongside their usual uniform colors. This courageous act of pinkification was in aid of the US National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which Microsoft is also supporting in its own small way. That small way is called the Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000, which will retail from now until the end of September of next year for $40 and contribute a $4 donation per sale to the Komen for the Cure charitable fund. Hey, it's got BlueTrack if you need to feel manly while buying one! [Thanks, Andrew]
Samsung Galaxy S Femme bundles sexism in with your smartphone purchase
You know what really bugs us about this Samsung Galaxy S Femme handset? No, it's not that it once again trudges out the tired cliché that women must love pink -- it's that it presumes gents can't appreciate the benefits of Aveda's Damage Remedy and Hand Relief creams. We totally can! And we'd love to spend some quality time with the Aveda advisor app, which comes bundled on a 4GB MicroSD card, letting it identify for us the particular products we need to buy to keep our skin and hair looking their best. But, according to the packaging, this 4-inch, Gorilla Glass-bearing smartphone isn't for us. Sigh.
Pink DualShock 3 arriving September 21, who's manly enough to buy one?
Should the classy white, or the patriotic red and blue PlayStation controllers not take your fancy, Sony's rolling out another hue just for you, discerning consumer: pink! The Japanese maker of everything with an electronic pulse has a bit of a tradition with this color and it's not like the great PS3 hasn't been licked by a few strokes of red lite before. Pricing is your typical $54.99 for this wireless console commander and GameStop should have them in within a couple of weeks.
HK-Day arrives: Hello Kitty Online launches in NA and Europe
You've felt it -- the tingle of anticipation, the twitch of desire, the color of pink. And now, after years of waiting, it's finally here: Hello Kitty Online has officially launched across North American and Europe. While the game's been widely available for some time now, Sanrio Digital considers today to be the first of many glorious days of cats and their peppy greetings. It's a double celebration of sorts, considering that this is Sanrio's 50th anniversary. While you and your family can download Hello Kitty Online for free, Sanrio hopes that you'll go the extra distance and head out to a retailer to pick up the premium edition of this kid-friendly MMO. Hello Kitty Online Premium Edition includes a grab-bag of treats, such as $15 in Sanrio points for item shop purchases, an exclusive pet, the game manual, and postcards. The MMO is tied in with SanrioTown, the company's official Hello Kitty social network, which provides fans with tools to share their love of this world. Obviously, Sanrio is hoping that the worldwide Hello Kitty phenomenon will propel this F2P title to success. You can check out HKO for yourself at the official site.
Sony Ericsson adds gold X10 Mini, pink Mini Pro, infinite class
One problem with owning a phone as diminutive as the X10 Mini (or Mini Pro) is that it's pretty hard for others to notice -- and let's be honest: what's the point in owning a sweet little Android device if no one's going to spontaneously walk up to you and compliment you on your fantastic taste in gadgets? To that end, Sony Ericsson looks to be rolling out two new rather unabashedly in-your-face shades: a shiny gold (complete with gold highlights on the front) for the Mini, and pink for the Mini Pro. As you might imagine, they're both an acquired taste, which might explain why the company will only be deploying them to "select markets" starting next month.
Verizon halting Kin sales, supply getting returned to sender?
Not that Verizon really cared much for it anyway, but according to WMExperts, the carrier is preparing to cease sales of the Microsoft's Kin altogether. As for the fate of the remaining stock, it's apparently being sent back to, well, somewhere. While a few retail stores we called disavowed any knowledge of such a thing, PhoneArena has a supposed internal screenshot that suggests they may soon change their tone. Either way, Verizon's not selling Kin online anymore, that's for sure -- quoth the raven, 404.
Life and death of Microsoft Kin: the inside story
Since our piece on Wednesday, we've had more trusted sources step forward to fill in some blanks and clarify the story behind the amazingly swift fall from grace that Microsoft's Kin phones have experienced since their launch just a few weeks ago. It's a fascinating tale, and we wanted to share everything we've learned.
What killed the Kin?
While the news today that Microsoft has killed its troubled Kin line didn't come as the craziest of surprises, it's definitely left a lot of lingering questions about just what happened. Now we may have a little insight into what went wrong -- and what might be in store down the road -- thanks to a reliable source of ours who's shared some news on Redmond's inner turmoil. Apparently, the troubles started long before the swirling Pink phone rumors (and way before the name Kin was ringing in our ears). According to our source, the birth of these devices began with a decision at Microsoft to create a platform agnostic, cloud-centric featurephone. A featurephone that could be had at a relatively low cost, and sold to a burgeoning market of teens and young adults who had little need for a BlackBerry-level device (or pricing). The first step in the project was acquiring Danger to leverage the work it had done with the Sidekick platform, and aligning with Verizon as a launch partner who could offer attractive pricing plans for the devices to a big pool... and here's where the trouble begins.
Entelligence: Think Pink - First take on Microsoft's Kin
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. It has been a project shrouded in mystery and speculation that sparked imaginations about just what Microsoft was doing. Its codename was Pink, referring to the premium mobile experience group, and yesterday Microsoft finally revealed its Pink story. It's called Kin and it's pretty impressive. At its heart, Kin is centered around two devices called Kin One and Kin Two. Both the hardware and software were designed by Microsoft, and while Kin is a Microsoft brand, Microsoft is still not getting into the phone business. Built in conjunction with carrier partner Verizon, Pink is an extension of the company's mobile strategy, something that complements and co-exists with its larger ambitions with Windows Phone 7. In many ways, Kin is the extension and spiritual descendant of the Sidekick (which was a product of Danger, founded by the father of Android, Andy Rubin, and later acquired by Microsoft). At its core, the Kin philosophy is guided by the proposition that one size device doesn't fit all, and specific demographics have different mobile needs.
Microsoft Kin notifications have up to fifteen minute delay
Microsoft's new Kin phones promise to let "Generation Upload" stay in touch with their friends via integrated, streamlined social networking. It's the main draw, the big selling point, the reason why teens, tweens and those who want to share pictures of huge fat men eating Chipotle burritos will get one. But unless you hit a manual refresh button, Microsoft says Kin will only let you stay in touch in fifteen-minute intervals. That's how often the company's servers will ping Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Windows Live to grab info from the cloud. "We didn't want the device always pulling data from the network," said one engineer, citing battery life and immature social network APIs as primary reasons why. Our take? This might be how Microsoft intends to leverage cheaper data plans out of Verizon -- by subtly throttling data usage -- providing an always-on 3G experience at a tween-affordable price. We'll just have to see if "Heather M." appreciates that, when her clothing recommendation is subject to a quarter-hour delay.
Microsoft Kin UI walkthrough
If you've managed to pull your eyes away from our no-holds-barred liveblog of Microsoft's Kin announcement, you might've noticed that there are videos up on the official Kin site depicting the UI in all its hipster-lite, storytelling glory. Still, in case you're not a 20 something living in Brooklyn on your parents' money while pursuing a career in the arts, we've turned those motion video picture things into regular stills for your staid perusal. We even added little descriptors below the galleries, which due to your acute lack of ADD you might even find time to read. We upped the videos after the break as well, just in case you wanted to try your hand at the young-and-hip life. %Gallery-90321% Kin Spot is a little hot spot at the bottom of the screen almost akin the virtual "binding" in Courier. You can drag pictures, addresses, web pages, and other media into it, and then drag the faces of friends who you want to send the stack of stuff to. Once you tap the spot you can preview your message, add some text, and choose from MMS or email to send it out. Haven't had enough? Check out our hands-on and the official announce post! Videos and the rest of the features are after the break.
Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two announced: Windows Phone roots with a social slant (updated with video)
It's finally official: Microsoft Pink -- the product of Redmond's acquisition of Danger -- has just been unveiled as a pair of handsets sourced from Sharp (which made most of Danger's Sidekicks) known as the Kin One and Kin Two. The devices are being marketed as Windows Phones, and while they're ultimately based on most of the same underpinnings of Windows Phone 7, it's a distinctly and totally different experience -- the entire user interface is custom to Kin with a heavy social media slant, a custom browser (we're told it's based on the Zune's browser), and surprisingly, zero support for third-party apps. The displays are capacitive with support for multitouch (yes, you can pinch and zoom in the browser), but there's no support for in-browser Flash or Silverlight. Kin One -- the phone we'd seen rumored as "Turtle" -- is basically a curved square slider with a QVGA display, 4GB of internal storage, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, and a full QWERTY keyboard. Kin Two, meanwhile, is the phone leaked as the "Pure," upping the ante with a HVGA display and a more traditional landscape QWERTY slide form factor. It also moves up to an 8 megapixel cam and 8GB of internal storage, but otherwise, the experience is roughly the same as what you get on the One; both phones have WiFi and Bluetooth in addition to their 3G cellular radios. For what it's worth, Microsoft is emphasizing that internal storage really isn't a big deal with the Kin phones, because your entire photo and video collection that you capture using the onboard camera is synced seamlessly with your bottomless online storage; you can access the entire collection from your phone at any time by browsing thumbnails, and if you want the full content, you can download it. Kin comes bundled with a desktop web experience that's entirely based on Silverlight for viewing and sorting just about all of the major stuff that you can see on your phone -- contacts, social network status updates, images, and so on -- and we've got to admit, it looks pretty slick. Keep reading after the break for a lot more info and video! %Gallery-90314%
Live from Microsoft's 'It's Time To Share' event!
We've been ushered out to lovely San Francisco today (well, actually, not so lovely -- the weather is uncharacteristically yucky) to learn all about this mysterious "It's Time To Share" thing that Microsoft has been cooking up. The popular rumor is that a new line of handsets (Pink? Kin?) are en route. Stay tuned!
Caption contest: It's time to share... an '83 GMC Vandura
A rusty short bus isn't the first thing you expect to find parked -- nay, displayed -- outside one of Microsoft's most important events of the year, but alas... here it is. Josh: "It's time to share... this gun." Chris: "We assure you that the display of an inconvenient, worn-out, inefficient, disabled van isn't a metaphor for what we're about to show you." Nilay: "Microsoft takes sexting to the next level." Joe: "Creepiest ice cream truck ever." Richard Lai: "Way to re-use a prop from Zombieland." Thomas: "It's time to share... wives." Joanna: "Microsoft Pink: Get on the short bus." Don: "Needs more airbrush." Paul: "When not selling phones to tweens, Jimmy tours with his post-grunge band and runs an illicit button making operation." Ross: "The van of choice for 38-year old life maximizers."
Microsoft One and Two Project Pink phones appear in Verizon database? (updated)
What's this? Two devices apparently of Microsoft origin in Verizon's database prefixed by MSONE and MSTWO on the eve of Microsoft's big presser -- an event widely thought (and even announced) to be the unveiling of Project Pink. We're also seeing Sharp, the Sidekick manufacturer named on the Turtle and Pure looking handsets that passed through the FCC. Really though, "One" and "Two?" Surely those words are just placeholders awaiting today's event before getting properly named, right? Who knows... when you're believed to be launching a competing platform against your own Windows Phone 7 OS while simultaneously keeping the WinMo 6.x dreams alive for businesses, hell, anything goes. Update: 9 to 5 Mac is suggesting that the actual retail names of the devices will be Kin. As in next of, as in family. Since the company has an event in just a few hours, we'll obviously know for certain very soon, but it does look likely given the use of Kin in the listing above.
Microsoft Pink livestream page offers glimpse of Turtle, Pink name changing at launch
Man, Microsoft is not even trying to be coy with its Pink launch tomorrow -- these happy and attractive young people pictured on the livestream page are clearly being delighted by the "Turtle" portrait slider that keeps leaking all over the place. Or maybe they're just stoked they can use SanDisk microSD cards with it -- that's how the kids react to removable storage nowadays, right? In other news, Reuters says the phones won't actually be called Pink, and that they're likely scheduled to ship this summer, so that's something, we suppose. Honestly, we just don't know what Microsoft is going to offer here that'll be more attractive to teens than Windows Phone 7 -- we're still hoping to be wowed tomorrow, but we've got a suspicion we'll just be confused and sad. Which isn't a bad way to market something to teens, we suppose. Microsoft Pink: it's like having bad feelings. P.S.- If you squint just right, that dude totally looks like a young Bill Gates. He also loves cuddles.
Microsoft Pink device spotted in the wild, likely 'Turtle'
There's not much too this -- and we'd like to apologize on behalf of the uploader for the choice of music and transitions -- but it looks like someone has managed to score a shot of a Pink device tethered up to a lappie in a coffee shop. From what we've seen leaked in the past, we're figuring this is the smaller model known as "Turtle" internally with a portrait QWERTY slide; it's a funny-looking little beast, isn't it? We don't have much to go on other than this single shot, sadly -- so unless we get some more juicy leakage ahead of Monday, we'll need to wait it out through the weekend to figure out what this is all about. Follow the break for the brief video (and we might recommend a quick press of your mute button before playing). [Thanks, greenrolaids]
SanDisk calls it: Microsoft Pink being announced on Monday
Good secrets are hard to keep, and it looks like at least one of Microsoft's trusted partners has spilled the beans on the company's big announce for Monday. SanDisk used the occasion -- the unannounced occasion, that is -- to let some members of the press know today that Microsoft's Pink devices will be compatible with its line of microSD cards. That seems like a pretty lame way to ride on the coattails of a big hardware launch, but then again, when your most exciting products are nondescript pieces of plastic half the size of a postage stamp, how else are you going to make the news?
