It was only a couple of days ago that the U.S. ITC ruled that some of HTC’s smartphones was violating several of Apple’s patents. HTC has already started testing out new phone models that work around technology that was cited in the patent lawsuit that was won by Apple.

Microsoft has announced that CES 2012 will be the last time they will be giving a keynote at the annual gadget conference. The company will continue to participate in CES, but the company will not have a keynote or a booth after this year’s conference. Why? “because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing,” stated Microsoft Corporate VP of Corporate Communications Frank X. Shaw. This is a big deal because Microsoft has had a 20-year working relationship with the Consumer Electronics Association. [TechNet]

Expedia has successfully spun off TripAdvisor.com as its own public company. TripAdvisor.com is currently trading on the stock market with the ticker symbol TRIP. Currently TripAdvisor has a market cap of about $4 billion.

Amazon.com has announced that the Kindle Fire now has an over-the-air update that will help resolve many of the complaints that customers have had. Kindle Fire owners will now be able to select and remove items from the carousel. The WiFi system now supports passwords and is more robust. The touchscreen response has been improved as well. The Kindle Fire Update 6.2.1 is expected to arrive soon or you can force an update by doing these steps:

Verizon Wireless customers have seen the second nationwide 4G network outage this month. The outage took place this morning and affected 3G and 4G networks. The service is back up as of right now. Some customers have received a credit for the outage. [Engadget]

Comedian Conan O’Brien has put together a funny skit about how to go about fixing the Kindle Fire using an actor playing Jeff Bezos. The actor makes some excellent suggestions such as putting duct tape over the power button. I’ll let you judge the rest in the video above. [Fortune]

Apple’s $500 million acquisition of Israeli flash storage company Anobit has been confirmed. The news was confirmed by Israeli newspaper company Calcalist. As of earlier this month, I wrote about how it was simply a rumor. Apple will be opening an R&D facility in Israel as a result of the acquisition. Anobit is known for developing a chip that enhances flash drive performance using signal processing. This chip is already used in the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. [Ars Technica]

In a world where Apple, BlackBerry, Samsung, HTC, and Motorola have been reigning supreme in the smartphone market, Intel is the latest challenger. In the past, Intel has sat on the sidelines only to provide the internal parts to these smartphone manufacturers. Above is a photo of a smartphone prototype that has been developed by Intel and runs on the Android operating system. This concept phone currently has the code-name “Medfield” and we may even see it at CES.