LONDON, England – The people behind the 1980s phenomenon the Rubik's Cube have a new brain teaser in the pipeline.

Called the Rubik's 360, it's due to hit the shops later this year.

The original, fiendish plastic puzzle was launched on an unsuspecting public just in time for Christmas 1980.

Professor Erno Rubik, an architect and university lecturer in what was then communist Hungary had spent six years struggling to get his prototype – originally designed as a teaching aid for his students – into commercial production.

Once he did the Rubik's Cube quickly became the fastest selling toy of all time.

While sales inevitably declined over time, the Cube has enjoyed a renaissance in popularity of late, with sales of 15 million units achieved worldwide last year.

Whether his new puzzle will be as huge as its predecessor only time will tell, but according to Professor Rubik, the 360 takes the puzzle concept into another dimension. Literally.

As with the Cube gameplay is easy to grasp, but not so easy to execute. It's also not very easy to describe, but as I'm game for anything I'll give it a go...

The Rubik's 360 is 10 centimeters or so in diameter and consists of a transparent plastic sphere housing two additional transparent spheres, both independently suspended on a rotating axis, with six colored balls at its centre.

Er, are you still with me?

The object of the puzzle is to steer the colored balls through holes in the spheres and into their respective colored 'home slot' domes on the outside.

Sounds easy, right?

Wrong. Along the way you have to contend with some tricky problems thrown up by the force that keeps us all from flying off into space.

Just when you've got a ball where you want it, gravity kicks in and whips it away to the other side of the sphere. It's infuriating and great fun.

I was given one to play with at Hamleys toy store in London. After an hour or so of flipping, spinning and teeth gnashing I'd got no further than one or two colored balls locked in the wrong home slots and had to go lie in a darkened room to calm down.

I'm willing to bet that not long after its official launch there'll be eight-year-olds all over the world who'll be able to solve the 360 in under a minute.

And that thought is more annoying to this 40-something reporter than the puzzle itself!

Watch my report on Rubik's new toy.

BARCELONA, Spain – Well, we've arrived in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress and have hit the ground running. As I write, producer Adam Charlton and cameraman Woj are editing video of some cool gadgets that we shot earlier at "Show Stoppers" - a pre-show curtain raiser (see Adam's earlier blog entry.)

We went straight to the sprawling Congress venue from the airport. Unusually for the press we've been given access all areas, 24-hour passes, and so set immediately to work testing our satellite and camera equipment for tomorrow's broadcast. It was hard to believe that in less than 15 hours the place would be open for business. It was a hive of activity, with carpenters, electricians and exhibitors busily constructing their stands. Everywhere you looked were piles of construction waste.

The work will continue right through the night to ensure that everything's in shape before the 9 a.m. deadline, when thousands of people arrive from all over the world to see the latest innovations in the world of mobile technology.

LONDON, England - I can hardly contain my excitement. I'm like a child counting the days until a birthday. It's Friday as I write and I don't head to the airport until Sunday, but I'm already packed. For me to be so organized ahead of a trip is highly unusual, to say the least.

And what's causing such anticipation? Well, you can call me sad but I love gadgets, gizmos and all things hi-tech. Starting Sunday, I get to live, eat, sleep and breathe mobile phones for a whole week at the GSM Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Talk about a busman's holiday!

Like any self-respecting gadget geek, er, sorry, technology journalist, I'm keen as mustard to get my hands on the latest technology and the handsets that will become this year's "most wanted." To play with the sleek new designs and marvel at just how much hi-tech wizardry can be crammed into such a sleek, desirable box.

I'm also keen to hear how the mobile industry views its future in these unprecedented times. How Google's "Android" has impacted upon the smart phone market, about Microsoft's plans for its dominant mobile platform and how it will in future integrate with desktop PCs and the "cloud." About video, search, location-based services and remotely hosted business applications. And I'm especially keen to learn about how the iPhone continues to force a change in the relationship between manufacturers and carriers to the benefit of us consumers.

At last year's event I got to interview the living legend that is Robert Redford.  Read last year's blog from Barcelona

This year I'll be interviewing two-time Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey about the Mofilm short film festival. Other "celebrities" that I hope to pin down include will.i.am, and Jamie Cullem. We'll be talking to top CEOs too, like Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, R.I.M.'s Jim Balsillie, Ericsson's Carl-Henric Svanberg and others.

And just in case all of that was complete gobbledygook to you, look out for my daily reports from Barcelona when I'll explain all. The team and I will be reporting and blogging for CNN.com, and you can get really close to the action by following me minute by minute on Twitter (username afinighan). It's going to be a really exciting week and you too can be a part of it.

CNN's Adrian Finighan (left), Neil Bennet (center-left) and Alysen Miller (right) meet Robert Redford at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

BARCELONA, Spain - The stands are being dismantled. The delegates are drifting away to prepare for the journey home. Relationships have been strengthened and new ones begun. And so, after four frenetic days, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is over for another year.

I sincerely hope to be back. As trade fairs go this one is pretty special. Wherever you are and whatever you do, if you use mobile technology in any way, shape, or form what happened here in Barcelona this week will impact your life

From the phone that you’ll upgrade to, to the software you’ll use. From the applications and content you’ll download to the network infrastructure innovations you’ll use without even knowing it. It all debuted right here at this show.

But while it’s all so very exciting, the journalist in me is frustrated. I could have filled hours of airtime with coverage of what went on here. Being the premier industry showcase, the big fish in mobile technology are all here and freely available to those of us here to cover it.

And while our reporting told you everything you need to know about the main issues of the day, the constraints of TV and the Web mean that I was only able to scratch the surface!

And I haven’t even mentioned the little guys. There are so many smaller companies with fascinating stories to tell and exciting products to push that I’d have needed a whole year of airtime to give you a true flavor of the show. Such is the life of a TV reporter!

So, what did I enjoy most? Well, meeting and interviewing Robert Redford, urbane and articulate as always, was a high point. And chatting with industry big-wigs and CEOs like Sunil Mittal of Bharti, Jim Balsillie of RIM, Samsung’s Geesung Choi. And with Dan Harple of GyPSii, a mobile social networking platform which, I’m willing to bet, will soon be as big a phenomenon as Facebook. Bigger, perhaps.

And of course there were the phones, the new "iPhone killers." My Palm Treo 650 is looking a little tired and if Apple doesn’t release a 3G version of its iPhone anytime soon I’ll be choosing Samsung’s gorgeous new "Soul." Or one of Nokia’s new GPS-equipped beauties. And if I can hang on just a little longer I could take possession of the sublime new Garmin GPS phone which will ship later this year.

I loved the mobile software company that was marketing an application that offered real-time translations of both SMS and voice calls, just like the babel fish in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

But, for me at least, the most exciting innovation on show was the Femtocell, the small white box that may sound the death knell for fixed line telephony. Remember where you read about it first.

Time for me to head back to London. So, until February 2009 and next year’s Mobile World Congress, it’s adios Barcelona!

Watch my report on the Femtocell here.