We’ve received word that a respected member of our tech community, James Kim (whom many of you may know as CNET’s senior editor of digital audio), and his family have gone missing. As we understand it, last weekend James, his wife Kati, and his very young girls Penelope and Sabine, drove from their home in the SF Bay Area to Seattle. They were expected back some time Sunday, but were last seen by a hotel clerk at 5:45 PM on Saturday in or between Gold Beach or Portland, Oregon. If you have any information as to the Kim family’s whereabouts, please contact the SFPD at 415-558-5508 during normal business hours, and 415-553-1071 after hours.

If you want to live in a “digital city,” you might want to start looking to the Rocky Mountains or south of the Mason-Dixon line. Florida. Arizona. Colorado. Southern California. To some of us, these might sound like vacation destinations or Sun Belt retiree getaways. But according to the Folsom, Calif.-based Center for Digital Government’s 2006 “Digital Cities Rankings,” these regions are home to some of the most technologically astute municipal governments in the country.

Online dating is so last year. Now, if you’re thinking romance, look to your mobile phone. Match-making companies are creating new services that allow people to post their dating profile online and then automatically receive a text message on a GPS-enabled phone when a match is nearby, say, at a coffee shop around the corner. The phenomenon, also known as “mobile romance,” already has arrived in China, home to some 430 million mobile phone users.

The new BlackBerry Pearl from Research In Motion will arrive on the shelves of select Cingular Wireless stores beginning tomorrow–just in time for the holiday shopping season–with an exclusive look and new features, including Cingular-exclusive Push to Talk capabilities and a GPS-based wireless navigation service. Customers can now enjoy the benefits of these new features for the BlackBerry Pearl together with easy-to-use phone, email, organizer and browser applications–all in an incredibly small, light and stylish handset.

“Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine’s” 2006 Best of Everything Software Package is the most comprehensive Windows Mobile software package available and contains the full and latest versions of over $3400 of the best software from the magazine’s 2005 Best Software Awards. It has been discounted $50 from $297 to only $247. Due to an agreement with the Software Vendors whose products make up the package, January 31, 2007 is the last day to obtain the full versions of all of the software from “Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine’s” secure customer Web site. In order to make up for the decreased amount of time to obtain the full versions, the Package has been discounted from $297 to $247, an additional $50 savings.

Nokia plans to offer email and instant messaging from Yahoo on its phones. The rollout will begin with the new Nokia 6300, 5200 and 5300 XpressMusic phones, which will have the capacity to sync with Yahoo contacts, tasks and calendar items, in addition to Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger. These services will soon be added to many of Nokia’s Series 40 phones as well, according to Nokia.

The Bush administration wants North Korea’s attention, so like a scolding parent, it’s trying to make it tougher for that country’s eccentric leader to buy iPods, plasma televisions, and Segway electric scooters. The U.S. government’s first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run his communist nation.

Comcast has become the first U.S. cable operator to take on telecommunications providers in the cell phone market, having begun marketing the service to consumers in Boston. The largest U.S. cable television operator launched the service in Boston and Portland, Oregon, earlier this month after a year-long trial, but is only promoting its “mobile access” service with television commercials and direct-mail drops in the Boston metropolitan area.

Pacific Design announced the availability of the Nano Contour Sleeve Collection, a unique case for protecting and styling your Apple iPod Nano 2G. The Nano 2G Contour Sleeve is constructed of a molded leather interior core with a polyurethane material on the outside, giving the case a soft feel and sleek look, without sacrificing durability. In addition, this case comes in striking color combinations including the currently available black/grey and pink/white. In spring 2007, new colors for the Nano Contour Sleeve will be available in black/red, green/white, blue/aqua, and grey/orange.

Iambic has released YourCall for Palm version 1.5. This new version brings in a number of additional features, noticeably the ability to bring up the YourCall dialog for any past call, call log refresh functionality, follow-up application personalization, full-featured reverse phone lookup, category exceptions, and many more.