When Cisco killed the Flip this week, they weren’t just killing the name – they were killing a camcorder which was due to be announced the day after they canned it. The New York Times says the camcorder, called FlipLive, was capable of streaming video live to Twitter, Facebook or sending an email link to the video-cloud in realtime, over Wi-Fi. Sounds darn impressive, even if there are many apps that can do that already.
Overnight, Cisco quietly took a knife to the throat of its Flip Video business, killing off a company they paid $US590 million for just two years ago. But Cisco isn’t the first company to spend a lot of money taking over a company only to get rid of it later. Here are our five favourites, including the Flip.
Did you know you can customise Flip’s camcorders with any image you want? Gizmodo reader Trina used a photo of a retro film camera for her skin, no doubt inspired by the Leica iPhone 4 case that everyone loved.
You can write your own tongue joke for this one: ageing rock dinosaur group KISS has added a KISS-branded Flip HD to its tour merchandise as it subjects the USA to just one more round of “Rock And Roll All Night” and “Detroit Rock City”. At $US199, that’s a lot more than the typical $US150 price for the Flip, but any suggestions that you could get much the same effect by printing some cheap knock-off stickers would probably not be well received by the KISS faithful. We look forward to the inevitable KISS Kinect. [KISS Online]
