I’m Flipping out!

After a pretty decent run in the portable video space, Cisco‘s finally admitting defeat to smartphones. They’ve just discontinued the Flip line, cutting a good 550 jobs. The entire purpose of the Flip was to be quick and portable, but now that cameras in phones have finally caught up, it’s losing in its own category. Bound to happen at some point.

Re-Kindle your love for cheaper gadgets

Really dying to get your hands on a Kindle, but short $25? Amazon’s running a promotion where Kindles will go on sale for $114 with banner ads and sponsored screensavers. It’s interesting to see the ad-supported model sneak into the hardware space, although it’s not too different with what usually happens with bloatware-loaded PCs. The potential for equivalent jailbreaking might be possible, as well; I’m sure that someone along the way will figure out how to disable the ads. Not that I’m condoning that or anything.

Sony settlement reached in a Hotz minute

As of March 31, Sony’s settled with George Hotz. As part of the terms, Hotz will have to remove all of his PS3-hacking shenanigans from the Internet, although he never claimed to support piracy. The full terms weren’t released, but I’m glad to see this finally come to an end. Let’s just move on and start pumping those dollars back into developing better products, instead of targeting those who could, if correctly channeled, be a huge asset to the community.

Windows on ARM

The idea of Windows running on ARM processors has been floating out there for a good while, but has just now been confirmed. The strategy from Microsoft’s end seems to be an effort to keep up with the onslaught of tablets in the market, but I’m not sold on that alone. Windows isn’t the answer for tablets – they need to find a happy medium between Windows Phone 7 and Windows 7 that works well specifically for a tablet form factor. Perhaps “Windows Tablet 7″?

Thought I forgot? Joke’s on you! Because of some traveling, this is coming a little late, but last week was a pretty big one in terms of technology happenings. So here goes.

Sony

Sony’s really been at it recently – they’ve announced the next generation PSP, codenamed NGP. It’s running an impressive quad-core A9 processor, and is focusing on a new UI, location, and augmented reality. Their Xperia Play (aka “PlayStation Phone”)  has also found its way into the hands of Engadget’s team; I got a chance to play around with the device at their show and was pleased with where it’s headed. The UI was ambitious but rough, and on the hardware side, it’s a little less phenom than the NGP, with only a single core processor.

NFC and iPhone 5 rumors grow

Even though the Verizon iPhone’s been at the front of most iOS-related news, June isn’t that far away, and with it will likely be coming an iPhone 5. Commercial Times reported that production should start around May, and will turn the most shipments ever. Big surprise. There’s also been a decent amount of buzz surrounding Near Field Communications (NFC) and its eventual migration to the device - being able to tap your phone on a card reader to pay would be nothing short of awesome.

Verizon iPhone plan details surface

Might want to enlarge this.

Looks like $30 per month will get you an unlimited data plan for the iPhone on Verizon, although the newly-announced “mobile hotspot” feature will run an extra $20. I’m curious as to how strict Verizon will be about enforcing the use of jailbroken apps such as MyWi or PdaNet – possibly detect insane amounts of data and bill appropriately?

Oh, Zuck

In a debacle I find somewhat amusing, some sly fellow on the interwebz managed to gain control of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook fan page, and posted the following message:

Let the hacking begin: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011

The page was shut down.

LinkedIn’s IPO

We’ve been waiting for this one a long time: LinkedIn has finally filed their IPO. They haven’t announced the actual date of the offering yet, and have been pretty tight-lipped about the price, though most of the details should be readily available by 2011. I’m particularly interested as to how this will influence the IPO roadmaps of other prominent web companies (I’m looking at you, Facebook).

Thoughts? Itching to get ahold of the next PSP? Going to wait in line for the iPhone 5? Comment away!