Get ready for Wristomo, a mobile phone worn on the wrist and produced for NTT Docomo Inc. by Seiko Instruments Inc. The phone is being test marketed in Japan for release elsewhere later on. The Wristomo's design lets users transform it into a handset once it is taken off from the wrist.

The phone also supports web browsing with up to 64kbps. Seiko's three-piece design allows the different parts of the phone to fold into a bangle. The centre section holds the display, main circuitry and battery.

One arm holds the antenna while the other houses switches and buttons. The gadget weights about 113 grams is waterproof and sells for about US$420 each. Another new product from Seiko is its Rio PhotoPC Player P-1000. The tablet allows users to admire their digital photos on a 3.8" display.

The tablet has a ten GB hard disk, slots for storage cards, a printer port and a connection that can be used to connect to a CD-R/RW drive for archiving. The photo display tablet is expected to go on sale this summer for about US$590 in the US.

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A Cyprus newspaper last week reported the tale of a 14-year-old Romanian boy who suffered a breakdown after reportedly playing a computer game for nine days and nights in a row.

The boy was so physically and mentally exhausted from playing Counter Strike he had to be taken to hospital. The boy's mother said her son regularly missed his classes, told lies and stole things from the house to sell them and get money for the Internet.

"He didn't wash for days and lost about 18lbs," she is quoted as saying. In reality it's the boy's parents who are at fault in this sad story. Why didn't they stop him?

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For those of you who use the Setihome project screen saver there is a new update to the software to close a security vulnerability. Setihome is the software used by thousands of space fans who want to help scientists determine if there is life on another world.

The software allows desktop and workstation users to contribute processing time to the search for those secretive extraterrestrials by systematically analysing high frequency data gleaned from space. The software downloads the package of data from the Setihome site.

The software then kicks in as a screensaver when you are not using your computer and processes the data off-line to search for regular signals, which may or may not be a communication from outer space.

You can download the patched software from the project's home page at:

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

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Surprisingly, the Iraq war only came in second among the top 50 search items on the Lycos Internet search engine last week.

The controversial Arab television station Al-Jazeera was the number one search item, proving once again Oscar Wilde's adage that there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

However the number of searches for information on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is rising as people become increasingly worried about the spread of the disease.

SARS came in fifth on the top search term list on Lycos. Searches for "tattoos" came in at number three and the Internal Revenue Service was at number four(it's tax time in the US). Searches for "Saddam Hussein" dropped from number 12 on the list to number 20, and "prisoners of war" fell from the number three spot to number 41 compared to the previous week.

The new search terms that entering the list last week included "April Fool's Day", "Daylight Savings Time", "Centers for Disease Control", "Weight Watchers" (Summer is coming), and "World War II". Meanwhile the "Dixie Chicks", "B2K", "US Marines", "mortgage rates", "American flag", "Michael Moore", "Earthviewer" and "Iraqi television" fell off the list.

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Tech Tattle deals with issues in technology. Contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com