“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling has updated her official website with a note saying that she’s getting ready to write the seventh and final book in the popular series.

“For 2006 will be the year when I write the final book in the Harry Potter series,” she says. “I contemplate the task with mingled feelings of excitement and dread, because I can’t wait to get started, to tell the final part of the story and, at last, to answer all the questions (will I ever answer all of the questions? Let’s aim for most of the questions); and yet it will all be over at last and I can’t quite imagine life without Harry.”

Rowling adds that she’s been working hard on preparing for the big project.

“I have been fine-tuning the fine-tuned plan of seven during the past few weeks so that I can really set to work in January. Reading through the plan is like contemplating the map of an unknown country in which I will soon find myself. Sometimes, even at this stage, you can see trouble looming; nearly all of the six published books have had Chapters of Doom. The quintessential, never, I hope, to be beaten Chapter That Nearly Broke My Will To Go On was chapter nine, ‘Goblet of Fire’ (appropriately enough, ‘The Dark Mark’.)”

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Electrical engineer John Parkinson developed the concept for this keyboard in time for last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, but had no prototype to display. At this year’s show, in Las Vegas, he’ll have keyboards on hand that reflect his design, which he says is more efficient than the QWERTY layout.