Microsoft's New Sidekick Is The Kin

When is a dumbphone smart? Not often, but I think the Kin might be pretty damn close. The Kin is Microsoft's project Pink we've been hearing about for months now. The little Kins One and Two are the spiritual successors to the Sidekick. The Kins are both manufactured by Sharp who manufactured every iteration of the Sidekick (except the Slide which was Motorola), not to mention that not long ago, Microsoft picked up Danger, the company behind all the Sidekicks. 

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YouTube Dropping IE6 Support March 13

Mountain View is continuing its crusade against IE6, announcing that support for the world's worst browser will be dropped from video behemoth, YouTube. Google has been pulling support for IE6 from its products for some time, and this is another nail in the coffin. In fact, the Aten Design Group in Denver, Colorado is holding a funeral for the antiquated browser on March 4, just a few days before Google yanks YouTube support. Ars Technica discovered the information yesterday when they stumbled upon an interstitial that users on older browsers would see when attempting to watch a video. The interstitial helps select a new browser and lets the user know that YouTube will no longer support the current browser as of March 13.

Microsoft's CES Showing Underwhelms

The only reason I'm posting this is because technically, it is big news since Microsoft is a technology juggernaut, but I'm thoroughly underwhelemed with Redmond's presence at CES. What did they have to show this year? Some flat PCs. Great. Thanks. Now, to be fair, I didn't expect much of anything at all, but please at least make me feel like there's some kind of innovation happening here.

I was half hoping Ballmer would hit the stage and pull a "Jobs" with "One More Thing", but no such luck. If you want to check out the full details, feel free to click through to the releases, but suffice it to say, I'm not surprised we've got very little to talk about on the Windows front.

On the other hand, we finally got a ballpark release date for Project Natal, the motion tracking new camera control scheme devised for the Xbox 360. The device is said to his stores at the end of 2010 in time for the holidays. Again, click through to the press releases for the details.