Microsoft Kin Phones Discontinued

The supposed ultimate social networking phone from Microsoft, the Kin, has been discontinued. Microsoft has officially announced that they won’t be producing any more Kin phones because of poor sales.

The Microsoft Kin phone is far too expensive for a phone that was designed to be used as a social networking phone and obviously aimed at the teenage market. However, Microsoft will continue to provide support for those who have already purchased the Kin phone. [Geeky Gadgets]

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Pearl’s E-Ink Next-Gen Tech Displays Contrast 50 Times Greater

The real “winner” of the e-book wars is E Ink, the Mass.-based (it was spun off from a project at MIT) company that develops the technology behind the screens of all the top readers, including the Kindle and nook. If you’re holding a Kindle or a nook, congrats, you’re holding the same core technology: E Ink’s display. The company has announced that its next-generation display, named Pearl, will be available in “Q2.” Pretty sure the second quarter of the year ended yesterday, so I’m going to go ahead and assume that the next new version of the Kindle, nook, etc. will use the new display. My bad: the new Kindle DX has the Pearl display. That’s even better news, yes.

So what’s new with Pearl? E Ink says it has a contrast ratio that’s 50 times greater than the current display, named Vizplex (seen here, Photoshopped for no particular reason other than that it looks neat). Combine that with a whiter display and you’ve got yourself a highly readable display—text “pops,” so to speak. Considering how readable the current E Ink display is (quite readable, that is), this is most welcomed news indeed.

The new display is also more environmentally friendly than the previous display—never mind the sense of cutting down tree after tree to make paper.

Amazon has a knack for releasing new Kindles in the fall, so I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see Pearl make its debut with a new Kindle in the coming months. (Presumably others readers, whenever they’re updated, will make use of Pearl as well.)

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Are Airships Making A Grand Comeback?

Sir David King, who you know is a big deal because dude’s knighted (and he’s director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford), sees a different method of freight delivery becoming a reality in the near future: cargo blimps.

While a blimp moves significantly slower than an airplane (currently not going much faster than 75 mph), they could potentially haul more, deliver goods to a wider range of places and do it without leaving a huge carbon footprint.

Where planes rely on fuel and runways, a blimp could take advantage of alternative methods for each. Solar power could keep a blimp in the sky, for instance, and it could be designed to be its own loading dock, so it wouldn’t have to land at any specialized facility. Depending on its size, the floating crafts could also haul twice as much as your average 747 freight plane.

Just how possible is the idea? Sir King thinks it could happen within the next 10 years, and that’s not as crazy as it may sound. “There are an awful lot of people we talk to who say this is going to happen,” said King. “This is something I believe is going to happen.”

We have certainly been writing about more and more zeppelins and blimps lately, and all around the world there’s been an increased interest in the technology, including America’s own Lockheed Martin, which received a grant from the US government.

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