Cisco Kills Flip, Ad-Based Kindle, SP1 for Mac Office 2011, More

Good afternoon.

I'm in Las Vegas this week for MIX'11.

Cisco has shut down its Flip Video camera unit. No big surprise here: Video making capabilities in iPods and smart phones, as well as point and click cameras, has pretty much killed this as a standalone business.

Amazon is releasing an app-supported version of the Kindle, and to be honest, this seems like a good idea: It's cheap, at $114, and the ads don't appear to be all that oppressive. If you've been holding off on the Kindle because of the cost, check out the new Kindle with Special Offers, as the new unit is awkwardly called.

Head's up, Mac fans: Microsoft today released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Mac Office 2011, adding, among other things, Apple Sync support for Outlook. It's somewhat curious that this would ship so quickly, and before SP1 for (Windows) Office 2010, but there you go.

Microsoft accused Google of lying about the security of its Google Apps services, and the US government agreed with that assessment. But Google denies these claims, despite evidence to the contrary.

Gartner may think that Windows Phone is heading towards huge success, but it doesn't have similar happy thoughts about Windows-based tablets: According to the analyst group, Windows-based tablets will seize exactly 0 percent of the market. Or, more precisely, it doesn't even list Windows as one of the players in that market. And that's because it calls this market that for "media tablets," which it describes as device running "a lightweight OS such as Android and iOS that is more limited than, or a subset of, the traditional fully featured OS such as Windows." So its an apples and oranges thing.

Nokia may be jumping on the Windows Phone bandwagon, but that doesn't mean its above releasing two new Symbian based orphans phones. And so it has, launching the Nokia E6, aimed at the business market, and the X7, for gamers and multimedia fans. And, I guess, nostalgia fans.

Since it must copy everything Google does, Bing is launching a Street View rival in Europe. But don't worry, they'll do it the Microsoft way: "We're not setting out to record every street. We believe it is most valuable in urban centres where people want to find services," Microsoft director of search Dave Coplin told BBC News.

Speaking of Bing, Microsoft's search service apparently seized 30 percent of the US search market in March, according to Hitwise. (Google owned 64.42 percent.) Some aren't so impressed with these numbers, however.

And finally, the release date for the eagerly-awaited game Portal 2 is now live: Portal 2 will released on April 19 in North America and April 21 in Europe for PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.