We thought it was weird that Verizon oddly resurrected Kin after Microsoft killed it. It doesn't matter anymore because on January 31, 2011, Microsoft's Kin Studio, the cloud that the Kin relies on to work, will close. Verizon will even give you a free 3G phone to replace your Kin.

We warned you they would be back—and look who just swaggered into town today, as if they never even got killed off by Microsoft. Should've picked better aliases, though—Kin ONEm and Kin TWOm is just plain weird.

The Microsoft Kin One and Kin Two—which were killed off six weeks after launching—are coming back to life according to a leaked Verizon roadmap. Why, God, why?

Theories abound as to the forces behind Kin's speedy demise. And yes, ultimately the plug got pulled because it wasn't selling well. But a theory over at ZDNet holds that spats between Microsoft's internal fiefdoms doomed Kin from the start.

If you're interested in either the Kin One or Kin Two and don't mind its expensive data plans, then you might as well get one now as Verizon has dropped their prices to $29 and $49, respectively. [CNET via Engadget]

Chipworks and iFixit teamed up to take a look beneath the Kin Two's black and lime exterior, finding some things that were expected, like the NVIDIA Tegra APX2600 processor, and some, like a Sony image sensor, that were, well, not.

Microsoft's Project Pink—sorry, Kin—in a sentence: It's the phone I'd beg my mom for if I was 15 again. And didn't want an iPhone.

It's either stupidly long names like Microsoft Windows Phone Series 7 or monosyllables like Kin, the final moniker for Microsoft's Turtle and Pure Pink phones. The Kin One or the Kin Two, according to this Verizon database. [PhoneArena via 9to5]