Eighteen care packages will be strategically dropped along the route where an intensive search for missing CNET editor James Kim continues, authorities announced Wednesday morning. Items in the packages will include a bright orange sweatshirt, sweat pants, a large wool blanket, socks, gloves, waterproof bib overalls, three half-hour flares, a flashlight, a handwarmer, a MRE (meal ready to eat) and a personal letter from the family, Lt. Gregg Hastings of the Oregon State Police, said at a press conference. Late Tuesday afternoon, searchers found various items left by Kim, including two gray long-sleeve shirts, one red T-shirt, one wool sock, a pair of gray pants and the remains of an Oregon map. Officials believe Kim may have left them as markers or indicators of his path.

For people who are ready to move up to a full-featured mobile phone that includes everything needed to stay organized, Palm has announced the availability of the Treo 680 smartphone on Rogers Wireless, Canada’s largest integrated wireless voice and data network. Customers will find the Treo 680 smartphone easy to use, slim and compact, yet packed full of features beyond its stellar phone capability, such as email, Web browsing, messaging, multimedia, calendar, contacts and more. Palm believes this product will appeal to price-sensitive feature-phone owners who want a more capable mobile-computing device.

With dark winter evenings upon us, the launch of a new child safety device promises to give parents peace of mind when their children are out and about without them. i-Kids features a one-touch emergency button and the very latest GPS functionality to help relieve parents’ anxieties over the safety of their child, without limiting their independence. Children can reach a parent or guardian immediately in the event of distress or danger by pressing the one-touch emergency button, which automatically speed-dials four pre-programmed numbers in sequence until the child’s alert is answered. In the unlikely event that no-one answers, the call is diverted to the i-Kids service desk where a trained operator can offer assistance. Parents can govern safe everyday communications for younger children since i-Kids only allows children to call the four pre-programmed speed dial numbers. While children can receive text messages and calls from parents on their i-Kids device, they are not able to send text messages or engage in any communication that isn’t authorized by the primary guardian.

A huge study from Denmark offers the latest reassurance that cell phones don’t trigger cancer. Scientists tracked 420,000 Danish cell phone users, including 52,000 who had gabbed on the gadgets for 10 years or more, and some who started using them 21 years ago. They matched phone records to the famed Danish Cancer Registry that records every citizen who gets the disease–and reported Tuesday that cell-phone callers are no more likely than anyone else to suffer a range of cancer types.

Semtek announced the addition of the UniSwipe and UniDock products to the company’s line of Mobile Swipe and Docking products. Both UniSwipe and UniDock were developed in collaboration with Revolve Design. The UniSwipe/UniDock combination will enable PDA devices such as the Dell Axim, HP iPAQ and other handhelds with the ability to accept data input from magnetic stripe cards and/or to be mounted, charged, and connected to serial port peripheral devices, such as printers, GPS receivers or scanners. It also offers an on-board audio loud speaker system for amplifying the host PDA audio output for use as a hands-free accessory.

World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik lost his final game in a match against computer program Deep Fritz on Tuesday, ceding a hard-fought Man vs. Machine series 4-2. The Russian takes home US$500,000 — half of what he would have received if he had won against Deep Fritz, a commercially available chess program that runs on a powerful personal computer.

Unwilling to wait any longer, James Kim left his wife and two young children in their frozen, snowbound car and set off into the wilderness to seek help, wearing only tennis shoes, a sweater and a jacket. Now he is the one who needs help. A helicopter spotted his wife, Kati Kim, 30, waving an umbrella Monday afternoon. She and her daughters Penelope, 4, and Sabine, 7 months, were airlifted to a hospital and are in good condition. The fate of her husband is unknown. Trained dogs, horse patrols and a helicopter with heat-seeking capability were to join other helicopters, snowmobiles and foot patrols Tuesday for the 35-year-old. Trackers followed his footprints until dark Monday night.

Proporta has released a variety of accessories for the upcoming Eten M600i. New products include their aluminum and silicon cases, Alu-Leather case in book and flip style, and their Advanced Screen Protector. These accessories are also compatible with the Eten M600 and M500.

Synchronica plc, provider of mobile device management and synchronization solutions based on open standards, has announced the availability of Mobile Manager 1.3. Mobile Manager 1.3 extends existing support for Windows Mobile and Pocket PC devices to include support for Series 60, 80 and 90 Symbian Smartphones. The latest version of the software also offers a richer set of management functions to support new device features such as the latest Windows Mobile 5.0 AKU updates, with advanced security, device querying and reporting capability.

A malicious video on MySpace.com pages changes people’s profiles when played, embedding itself and adding links to fraudulent Web sites, experts have warned. The video is a rigged QuickTime file that exploits a MySpace vulnerability and support for JavaScript in Apple Computer’s embedded media player, Web security firm Websense said in an alert posted on Friday. When played by a MySpace user, the video adds itself to the user’s MySpace page and replaces the links on the user’s profile with links to phishing Web sites, Websense said. Phishing sites are fraudulent sites that attempt to trick people into giving up sensitive information such as log-in credentials.