Hello Kitty, that marketing phenomenon from Sanrio, turned 30 years old on November 1st 2004.
In honor of her birthday, THQ Wireless has announced two new Hello Kitty games for mobile devices – Hello Kitty Jump Rope and Hello Kitty Park Adventure.

Wireless Gaming Review has a review of Hello [...]

For those who like mysteries, a pointer to a Dec 21st article in the Los Angeles Times entitled “Gravity May Lose Its Pull“.

The article discusses the so-called “Pioneer Anomaly“, which refers to the fact that nobody knows why the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which has travelled 7.98 billion miles since it was launched on March 2nd, [...]

While opinions differ about which is the best gaming notebook, PC Magazine believes it to be the Voodoo ENVY m:790.

The m:790 is a high-end notebook. The price depends on the configuration and starts at about $3,800. That buys you a SYSmark 2004 score of 185 and a 3DMark03 score of 2730. [...]

NVIDIA, the graphics processor maker, today announced NVIDIA? PureVideo? technology, a combination of hardware, such as the nVidia GeForce 6800 GT graphics card shown below, and software intended to improve the video capabilities of desktop and notebook computers.

The programmable video processing engine found on the 6 Series supports the tweaking of video playback [...]

Here’s something different: PC Magazine in an article by Jim Louderback, entitled “Ten to Avoid—The Worst Products of the Year “, nominates ten products for a putative ‘Gadget Hall of Shame’. Four of those items are listed below:

Concord 5062AF Digital Camera
iPAQ rz1715 PDA
Samsung D415 Mobile Phone
VoodooPC Envy m:380 Notebook

The Guardian has just published a list of their top 10 gadgets of the year. The number 1 gizmo of 2004 in their estimation is the Sky+ 160 digital satellite receiver & hard disk video recorder. The unit has a capacity of 160GB and sells for about €580.

The Guardian has also published their list [...]

Eleksen, a company known for conductive fabric sensing and switching applications, will demo a fabric keyboard and joystick in a few months.

The firm’s keyboard is aimed at mobile phones, PDAs and laptops and will have Bluetooth connectivity, while the joystick is targeted at games players on the same devices.

We were able to use a Samsung SGH-D500 mobile phone for a while yesterday although its not supposed to be available here in N.A. This sleek, glossy-black Triband Megapixel high-end Slider makes a nice first impression.

Specs are here. Highlights include:

1st Samsung mobile phone with Bluetooth

~$800

Vivid 176×220 pixel screen

1.3 Megapixel camera + flash [...]

We don’t usually pass along health advice, but this one seemed too intriguing to ignore. The 18 December edition of the British Medical Journal in this article, states that the Polymeal eating plan can reduce heart disease by 76 percent. The components of the Polymeal ranked by importance are:

Wine (150 ml/day)
Garlic (2.7 g/day)
Fruit and vegetables [...]