This week, Microsoft finally unveiled what had long been known, in rumors and leaks, as Project Pink. The official name: Kin, which consists of two phones, a new way of doing things, and a chance that it just might sell:

Do you wear silly hats? Glasses that cover more than 35% percent of your face? Have a beard, even though you can't fully grow one? Wear jeans that fit extraordinarily well? Love coke? Then you'll adore Microsoft's Kin, in theory!

Dumbphones are dead, right? So why—at the time of the great Windows Phone 7 resurrection—is Microsoft pushing a totally separate phone platform that doesn't even run apps? The answer is borderline insane, but just might work.

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]

Microsoft's sent out invites for an event on April 12th, plastered with the phrase "It's time to share." It's double entendre about their leaked "Pink" social networking-centric phones, see!?!

After the Windows Phone 7 launch passed without so much as a mention of Project Pink, Microsoft's other new phone project started to fade into memory. Today, we can confirm: Pink's coming, and Verizon's the carrier. UPDATE: First live shots.

With Windows Phone 7 out, everyone has forgotten about the other Microsoft handsets, the allegedly Sidekick-derived Turtle and Pure cellphones. Someone got a peek into the firmware, which confirms some of the rumors about these "not-so-dumb cellphones".

Another alleged insider has starting spilling—flinging?—beans about Microsoft's Pink project, enthusiastically piling the hate atop earlier claims that the project was under dire threat of cancellation, for sucking. This time, the rumors come via AppleInsider, and they get personal:

Microsoft's been consistently cagey about whether or not they'll make their own phone hardware "like Zune and Xbox," but today at a Windows Mobile roundtable, Robbie "Not Glacial" Bach put it straight: It's not happening. Officially.