October 29, 2007 — Sanrio Digital today announced that Joichi Ito has joined the Company’s Board of Directors.

Mr. Joichi Ito is the founder and CEO of the venture capital firm Neoteny. He is a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage. He is the Chairman of Six Apart Japan the weblog software company. He is on the board of Technorati and helps run Technorati Japan. He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan.

For more details on this read here.

Does this mean that we’re going to be changing to a Six Apart Weblog system in the future?

Hello Kitty has arrived as a Mens line of fashion! A recent event demonstrated how Hello Kitty style would be fit for Men too!

A whole line that consists of T-shirts, bags, sports wear and watches.

Hello Kitty Watches in a black, men sort of style.

It even featured a line of Hello Kitty Boxers, that’s right, Hello Kitty mens underwear, if girls can have Kitty underwear, why not men? Hello Kitty has conquered the hearts of women, now it’s time Men looked at it too!

A set of pearls once belonging to Marie Antoinette and taken to Britain by a friend for safekeeping will go on sale in December, and are expected to fetch up to $800,000.

Now part of a diamond, ruby and pearl necklace, France’s last queen gave a bag of pearls and diamonds to Lady Sutherland, the British ambassador’s wife, before she fled revolutionary France in 1792, a year before Marie Antoinette’s death.

"Lady Sutherland was wife of the ambassador and friends with the queen, and they had children of the same age," said Raymond Sancroft-Baker, senior director of Christie’s jewelry in London.

"When you are in a dire situation, there are not many people you can trust and the key was to give the jewels to someone with diplomatic immunity," he told Reuters.

Marie Antoinette, legendary for her extravagance, did not know her fate at the time, he said, and would have hoped to be reunited with her treasures one day.

"Hope springs eternal," added Sancroft-Baker.

According to Christie’s, Sutherland arranged for clothes and linen to be sent to the queen while she was in prison.

"This was reportedly the last gesture of kindness shown to the doomed queen," the auctioneer said in a statement.

Marie Antoinette was executed by guillotine in October 1793.

The diamonds were made into a necklace, while the pearls were mounted later for the occasion of the marriage of Sutherland’s grandson in 1849.

Christie’s did not specify which of Sutherland’s descendants was selling the necklace.

"The owner said it just sits in the bank the whole time, and there comes a time for everything," Sancroft-Baker said.

He hoped the pearls, which have never been offered at auction before and remained in the same family for over 200 years, would be made available for the public to see.

"The Louvre might be interested, for example," he said, adding that the story behind the necklace made it one of the most important sales he had overseen at Christie’s.

"It’s right up there in the top 10 we’ve ever sold, because its provenance is rock solid, as far as we can be aware. There are documents to go with it and contemporary supporting evidence."

The necklace will go under the hammer at the Magnificent Jewelry sale in London on December 12, and is expected to make between 350,000 and 400,000 pounds ($700-800,000).

You could mistake her for a relative of Hello Kitty. I wouldn’t be the first one to think of Hello Kitty "dog" fashion, but it’s fun anyway, especially for the fluffy white variety of dog.

and some more intriguing pink kitty pictures, also taken from Deviant Art, very cool site btw.

Taken from Deviantart.

Ever seen a Hello Kitty Bikini? First one I’ve seen!

The shot is a little canned, but it’s certainly a statement that just because you’re pregnant and "bigger" you can’t be proud and beautiful about it as well! As it’s one of these China studio photoshots it looks a little fake, but she’s definately pregnant!

Aly & AJ have a new ride

The ‘tween’ pop duo hits the road in a Hello Kitty tour bus.

It’s a perfect storm of cute.

Aly & AJ, the pop star sister act, darlings of the "tween" music set, just setting out on their biggest tour yet.

Hello Kitty, the venerable pop culture icon of all things kawaii – cute in Japanese – sponsoring that tour.

And backstage at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine on Thursday, they met onboard the Hello Kitty tour bus – the usual deluxe motor coach on which you find your touring musicians, only this one decked out with as much Hello Kitty merchandise as you’d find in the typical Sanrio store.

"It was ridiculous," says AJ – she’s the younger sister, 16, with the straighter blond hair – of what they saw when they stopped by the bus on the way to their sound check.

"We were thinking there’d be a few things, and there’s SO much stuff!" she says.

"We saw it right before sound check and we FREAKED out!" adds Aly, 18, the one with wavier tresses of hair.

• • •

We walked through the bus with the gals and this is (some of) what we saw:

• A Hello Kitty water dispenser, popcorn maker, coffee maker and toaster that toasts a Hello Kitty face on your bread. Ice cube trays that make Hello Kitty shaped ice.
• Hello Kitty blankets, sheets, pillows, towels, rugs. A toilet seat cover – that’s a rare item, we’re told by the Hello Kitty decorators. Not many people even know they exist – so don’t tell anyone!
• Strands of Hello Kitty lights attached to the top bunks where Aly and AJ slept early Friday as the bus headed north to a show in Concord. Litters of plush Hello Kitty dolls, Hello Kitty clothes for those dolls, guitar straps and guitar cases that would have to be moved before they could even think about sleeping.

• • •

"This is our mom’s room," says AJ, walking us into the master bedroom at the back of the bus. And let’s really, really hope mama loves pink as much as her daughters think she does.

"Check this out – it’s a humidifier!" AJ says, pointing to a sorta egg-shaped Hello Kitty.

"Because our mom has asthma," Aly explains.

"How cool is that?!?" AJ says – they tend to talk in a rush, finishing each others sentences like sisters, as if, oh, they’ve spent a lot of time on a bus together?

Mom also gets lots of blankets, pillows, a Hello Kitty doll made into a kind of headboard, an iPod dock with speakers.

"Half this stuff, I was like, uhhh, they make this stuff?" Aly says, pointing to the iPod device and expressing their surprise at all of the new and unexpected toys they’re getting.

• • •

As for Hello Kitty, she’s getting exposure on stage on a tour that while crisscross the continent in support of the just-released "Insomniatic" through at least mid-September – check www.alyandaj.com for details.

She gets banners on stage or at the venue. She gets Aly & AJ playing their Hello Kitty Fender Stratocasters each night when they rock out on their song "Rush" – Aly playing a forest green one, AJ on the ice blue.

"The fact that they’re great musicians, they play guitar, they’ve been successful in an area that’s typically been dominated by males – it’s girl power and we like that," says Andrea Sobel, vice president of marketing for Hello Kitty.

• • •

Aly and AJ seemed absolutely stoked to have the Hello Kitty bus to call home for the next few months – and maybe in a way, it’s a connection to home.

It helps that the Kitty made provisions for their dog. The bus is now equipped with dog carriers, collars, bowls and bedding for Willow, a "teddy bear" mix of bichon frise and shih tzu, who comes on the road with them.

The Kitty also connects them to their past, before they had all the trappings – and endless attention – of fame.

"We’ve always been fans of Hello Kitty," says AJ, remembering how they used to descend upon the Sanrio store in the Thousand Oaks Mall as pre-fame preteens.

And now, the store is more or less onboard their own bus – what teen girl isn’t gonna love that?

Ying writes in her blog about the new Hello Kitty-like fashion mascot for the Beijing Olympics, a kind of Hello Panda.

The design is definately more attractive than Beijing’s own mascot which you can compare with below.

I don’t like the above design, it’s neither Chinese, nor Oriental, nor Modern….in general I think it’s ugly, transexual, pretending to be cool when it’s not.