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Despite the fact that they had already slashed prices on the Palm Pre Plus to very low prices, Verizon has dropped the price on the smartphone again, this time to $30 USD.

Additionally, the Plus comes with free Mobile Hotspot (formerly $30-a-month) and a BOGO (buy-one-get-one-free) option as well.

That's right, so little people want the Palm smartphone that it is being offered at 2 for $30 with free Mobile Hotspot. The Palm Pixi Plus, the little brother of the Pre, is priced at the same point currently but expect the price to drop to $9.99 or lower in the very near future.

Recently, HP agreed to purchase the struggling smartphone maker for $1.2 billion in cash, including assuming Palm's debt.

In Mid-April, Microsoft announced that it was releasing its formerly dubbed 'Pink' phones the Kin One and Kin Two, aimed at the teenager set.

Today, reports are stating that the phones go on pre-order this Thursday, with a May 13th release day.

Microsoft has not confirmed the dates, but the reports stem from leaked Verizon posters showing off the dates, so they seem pretty set in stone.

The phones will be available in the U.S. via Verizon and in the UL, Italy, Spain and Germany via Vodafone.

The Kin One specs:

- Has a compact full QWERTY keypad
- Multitouch screen
- 5MP camera with LED flash
- 4GB memory
- "Media player powered by Zune."

The Kin Two specs:

- Full QWERTY keypad
- Multitouch screen
- 8MP camera with LED flash, HD video recording
- 8GB memory
- "Media player powered by Zune."

Apple has announced today that on Friday the company sold its 1 millionth iPad tablet, just one month after its release.

The iPad, in its Wi-Fi-only version, was released on April 3rd, and quickly sold over 300,000 units.

Additionally, iPad owners have downloaded 12 million apps from the App Store, and over 1.5 million e-books from the newly launched iBookStore.

"One million iPads in 28 days—that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone," says CEO Steve Jobs. "Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers."

Developers have created 5000 apps specifically for the iPad, with some of the most popular being legal streaming movie and TV show services such as Netflix.

Users of older Android devices such as the T-Mobile G1 and even newer devices like the Motorola Droid have always complained about the lack of available room for apps downloaded from the Android Market.

Droid users, for example only get 256MB of space, and G1 users much less.

When the company launched the Nexus One, engineers said they were working on a solution, and it appears finally that an official "Apps2SD," the feature found in all rooted ROMs is on the way, giving users almost unlimited (who can possibly fill an 8GB microSD card with apps?) amount of room for their apps, and freeing up internal memory.

Issue 1151 in the Android Code page now says "future release" after months of saying "assigned." The engineer who changed the note, San, had the following to say:

Promised for the "near future" in early March, it appears that Android handsets on the Sprint network will finally receive the 2.1 firmware update.

XDA Developers revealed the screenshot today, a memo leaked from Sprint itself.

The memo says the Samsung Moment will get the update this weekend and the HTC Hero will get it in the next week.

A leaked Best Buy Mobile memo seems to point to the Hero update coming next week as well but seeing is believing in this situation.

The updates will not be OTA as they are both pretty large (80MB and 117MB respectively) so it seems like they will have to be downloaded manually.

Movie Gallery, the parent behind the once popular video rental chain Hollywood Video has announced today that they will close all 2415 remaining U.S. stores, liquidating all inventory and the stores over the next few months.

The company is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, for the second time since 2007.

There are 184 Hollywood Video chains that remain in Canada, and it is unclear whether they will be shut down.

The worst part of the news may be that Movie Gallery had 19,000 employees when they filed for bankruptcy, meaning at least 15,000 more people will be laid off soon from their jobs, depending on how many employees still remain since the bankruptcy filing.

The company is the second largest brick-and-mortar rental chain in the U.S. behind Blockbuster (which is struggling as well). Redbox and Netflix continue to strive, without the need for physical store.

As Apple and Adobe continue to fight over the positive or negative affects of Flash in the mobile universe, browser maker Skyfire has released Skyfire 2.0 for Android, which has pseudo-Flash support giving "access to Flash videos on a web page that otherwise would not play."

The company has said it is creating an iPhone version, that it hopes to submit to the App Store later in the year.

When we say pseduo-Flash support, we really mean it. When the browser identifies any Flash content in a web page, it sends that content to Skyfire's cloud servers which then converts it to HTML5 on-the-fly and streams it back in that format.

Apple has so far refused to allow Flash on "i" devices and at this point has said support is never coming. Skyfire says the cloud support allows for "faster and smoother video playback and extended battery life by off-loading more of the work to cloud servers."

While Android is way more open in terms of Flash than the iPhone OS, Android smartphone users will not see OS-level support of the format until the release of firmware 2.2 (Froyo), which is expected later this year. Skyfire could help those who do not want to wait.

Less than a week after computer maker HP agreed to purchase the struggling smartphone maker Palm $1.2 billion in cash, sources are noting that it will be removing Windows 7 from the Slate tablet, instead choosing to use a WebOS variant, arguably the best smartphone operating system available.

Sources say HP was not happy with the overall performance of Windows 7 on their unreleased tablet, saying the OS was too power-hungry. Additionally, a Windows 7 license will bring up the price of any final Slate product, and now that HP owns WebOS, the move makes sense.

TechCrunch says also that HP is set to drop the Intel processor used in the tablet, which would completely kill off any chance of Windows 7 being used.

The Slate, in its original state, would have run on Windows 7, would have been $549 at its cheapest, and had an 8.9-inch 1024x600 multi-touch screen. Additionally, the tablet had a 1.6GHz Atom Z530 processor, 1GB RAM, SDHC slot (with support up to 128GB), two cameras, a USB port, a SIM card slot, and five-hour battery life.

In just the next step in the ongoing battle between Adobe and Apple, the former company has decided to give away free smartphones running the Android operating system to its employees.

Although the company hasn't decided on which phone to give away, it is expected it will begin distributing the high-end HTC Incredible.

Adobe additionally announced that it will demo a version of Flash for Android in May, at the Google I/O conference.

The point of the free phones, (which are not mandatory) is a way to give employees more time to practice using Android, as well as Flash Player 10.1.

Google also said that all attendees of the I/O conference will be given either a Motorola Droid or a Nexus One.

According to the latest figures from NetApplications, Google's Chrome browser continues to take market share at a rapid pace, and should be on pace to surpass the 10 percent milestone by the end of the year.

The browser has been out for 19 months, and has no marketing campaign, yet continues to steal share from leaders Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.

Additionally, Safari continues to take share as well, albeit at a slower pace.

Chrome jumped to 6.73 percent share, from 6.1 percent last month, while Internet Explorer fell to 59.95 and Firefox remained about flat at 24.59 percent. Safari jumped marginally to 4.72 percent.

IE continues to fall since its peak in 2003, when the browser was used by 93 percent of those connected to the Internet. Google and NetApplications have said they expect Chrome to have anywhere between 8.5-10 percent share by the end of 2010.

Thanks to a glitch, some Avatar Blu-ray owners can still not play their purchased discs, leading to understandable irritation.

Says one angry customer: "When 3 out of 3 players in my house (Denon, Samsung and PC) won't play it, then 20th Century Fox should be slapped with losses on this one."

The customer's anger is aimed at the wrong place, however. Fox is not the issue but instead it is the Blu-ray players and their respective firmwares. Avatar, requires, in most cases, the latest firmware, but owners of older players without active Internet connections are usually not the most up to date.

For some people, the glitches get weirder. Users have reported chapter pop-up boxes showing up throughout the movie, sometimes without leaving.

It is unclear how Fox will try to help users who cannot play the discs or are receiving the glitches, but likely the number of users is still small, yet vocal.

NASA is teaming up with blockbuster director James Cameron to help build a new 3D camera that will be mounted on the new Mars rover, Curiosity.

Curiosity will launch next year.

NASA had originally scrapped plans for a 3D camera in 2007 saying the "upcoming flagship mission to Mars was consistently over budget and behind schedule." Comically, most of James Cameron's movies over the past decade have also been "consistently over budget and behind schedule" so it seems like a match made in heaven.

The director lobbied to NASA administrator Charles Bolden, who agreed that the rover would need a cinema quality camera to help the public connect to the mission.

The 3D camera is now being built by Malin Space Science Systems.

Just 5 months after purchasing the music streaming service, Apple has decided to shut down Lala, likely signalling that it will be integrated into iTunes.com.

All current members have until May 31st to continue using the service, but as of today the site is not accepting any new members.

Lala is a download and streaming music service that gives members a "digital locker" to store their music. What made the company different from iTunes, Amazon MP3, etc, is that Lala would also sell streaming rights to tracks for pennies, allowing for unlimited streaming online of the track, but no download.

Current members will be given a credit for songs they have purchased to use at iTunes.

Apple is now expected to open a Web-based iTunes that will be based on the Lala framework and will do much of the same things, such as a digital locker for "Web-only" versions of the tracks.

Valve has finally confirmed the official release date for Steam on the Mac platform, with the streaming service confirmed for a May 12th launch.

The service has been in beta since mid-March.

Doug Lombardi, Valve's VP of developer marketing says the first two games to be ported will be Portal and Team Fortress 2.

Among the features available at launch will be Steam Play, which allows gamers to play a game on the PC, then continue to play on a Mac, right where they left off, as long as the game is available for both platforms.

Additionally, Mac users will play in the same multiplayer "universe" says GI, meaning all platforms can play on the same servers.

Sony, the former #1 TV maker that has seen recent declines in sales, will begin launching new HDTVs with Intel processors and running the Android operating system, say sources cited by Bloomberg.

The electronics giant will unveil the products at an event in San Francisco on May 19th, a conference sponsored by Google, the company behind Android.

The sources say the Intel chip will be a customized Atom chip, and the OS will be a customized Android dubbed "Dragonpoint."

All three companies are also working with Logitech to create a keyboard that will work as a remote and would allow for easier typing when using a browser via the TV.

Sony has recently fallen to third place in the TV market, behind Samsung and LG globally, and behind Samsung and Vizio in the United States.