Hasta La Gadget!

Oh, and just in case the billionaire in running low on funds, “If money is an issue, we will be happy to pay for your ticket. After all, you are the guest of honor.”

Those who always assumed that the Internet was the sole jurisdiction of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are sadly mistaken. The Pope also has a stake in the World Wide Web, too. Pope Benedict XVI asked his followers not to mistake Internet communication for real communication.

“It is important to always remember that virtual contact cannot and should not be a substitute for direct human contact with people at all levels of our society,” said the Catholic leader in a statement released to followers this week.

The Pope is asking followers to celebrate the message of “Truth, proclamation and authenticity of life in the digital age” on June 5’s 45th World Communications Day.

Pope Benedict preached a similar message back in November, telling a crowd of 100,000, “Much love is proposed by the media and Internet, but this isn’t love but selfishness.”

The National Hockey League was looking to drum up some interest, so naturally it did what any major league sporting body would–it contacted Stan “The Man” Lee. The X-Men/Spider-man/Fantastic Four/Hulk/Iron Man creator helped dream up the Guardian Project, an odd team of heroes based loosely upon different NHL teams.

The 30 characters will “come to life” during the NHL All-Star game this weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina. The league will be showing of a computer animated short featuring the characters, which will offer “fans a glimpse of their individual powers and collective force.”

The adventures will continue over at the Guardian Website–and, of course, merchandizing in the form of cards, posters, t-shirts, pins, pucks, and a graphic novel.

Silly promotion? Sure. But heck, we’re writing about the NHL this morning, and how often does that happen?

A smartphone is about to boldly go where plenty have droids have already ventured–space. A team of British scientists at Surrey Satellite Technology in Guildford, England are preparing to launch a handset into space. The scientists have yet to reveal the model of the phone, stating only that it will be running a version of Android.

The idea behind the launch is, simply, to find out whether modern smartphones will work in space. The phone will be used to control a satellite, which will, in turn, be taking pictures of our home planet.

Of course, we’ve seen a number of stories about smartphones in weather balloons over the past year or so, but According to the BBC, this is the first time such a phone has gone into orbit. The business has been deemed STRaND-1 (Surrey Training Research and Nanosatellite Demonstration).

“Modern smartphones are pretty amazing,” Shaun Kenyon, the head of the team told the BBC. “They come now with processors that can go up to 1GHz, and they have loads of flash memory. First of all, we want to see if the phone works up there, and if it does, we want to see if the phone can control a satellite.”

The phone, Kenyon said, will remain intact. “We’re not taking it apart; we’re not gutting it; we’re not taking out the printed circuit boards and re-soldering them into our satellite – we’re flying it as is. And, in fact, we’re going to have another camera on the satellite so we can take a picture of the phone because we want to operate the screen and have some good images of that as well.”

If you feel like you’ve missed out on a lot of this week’s news. That’s what Twitter’s for! You’ve been checking Twitter, right? You haven’t? Well then you have no idea what’s going on in the world. Don’t worry, we’ve been keeping up with the top trends on Twitter this week, so we’ll fill you in, and your friends will be none the wiser.

Here are the top trending Twitter topics for the week ending on January 21:

1. Golden Globes
The 68th annual Golden Globe Awards were held on Sunday and were hosted by Ricky Gervais. Many viewers were upset by Gervais’ crude humor, and therefore, Twitter heard their complaints. #GoldenGlobes

2. Catwoman/ Anne Hathaway
The news hit that Anne Hathaway had been cast as Selina Kyle, AKA Catwoman, in the next Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises.” Many people were shocked by the choice to pick Hathaway, who has never played a role like this. Here’s hoping she proves all the naysayers wrong. #Catwoman

3. RIP Justin Bieber
Everyone calm down. Justin Bieber is not dead. People on Twitter are just, as the English put it “taking the piss” out of the ol’ Biebs, or more, his cult fan following known as Beliebers. Other trending topics are #JBisJonasBrothers, #JustinaBieber, and #DamnBeliebers. #RIPJustinBieber

Check out the rest of the Top 10 list after the jump!