Well, it’s certainly about time. Nintendo has confirmed that the rumoured ‘Project Café’ – the whispered-of successor to the rapidly-aging Wii – will be playable at E3, and on shelves in 2012. Sporting a 6-inch touchscreen on each controller, Project Café’s aim is allegedly to bring more freedom to the concept of the home console, and to take the gamer’s focus off the idea of a console as a plastic box tethered to a television set. There are no plans for 3D, because 3DTVs haven’t caught on yet (smart move), but beyond that, there are still very few details. What details there are, though, can be viewed…

It’s still sort of interesting to ponder about the passing of the telephonic torch – that the shorthand ‘phone’ now typically refers exclusively to mobile phones, and that you have to clarify ‘home phone’ when discussing the landlines of Luddites still clinging to the past. Just give it up, guys. Mobile is the way. And speaking of such mobile ubiquity, check this out: an origami phone. Designed by Chengyuan Wei to be quick n’ drrty disposable, the phone is a single sheet of foam that folds into a more-or-less handset-shaped configuration – perfect for those months when you can’t even afford pay-as-you-go….

Before today, I didn’t know about Bacon Day, but henceforth, I will never forget. It turns out those celebrating this obviously-best meat-based holiday like to celebrate by doing things like construct weapons from their favourite cuts of flesh-of-the-innocent. Here, we have a rocket launcher made of bacon. A rocket launcher made of bacon. A rocket launcher made of bacon. At 36 inches, this is some serious hardware, sending sausages (what else?) flying at high velocities by the power of 8 AA batteries alone. Awesome. You’d be disappointed if I hadn’t brought a video, but I’m not in the business…

If there’s one thing the Kinect is good for, it’s facilitating interesting and downright clever hacks. Obviously. If you thought I was going to say ‘gaming’, you’re not a gamer. In any case, check this out. London Hackspace has developed what they’ve dubbed the Evil Genius Simulator – a device which uses a Kinect to monitor the motions of the aspiring genius’ hands. The higher they’re raised (ideally accompanied by maniacal laughter) the more lightning that jumps between two Tesla coils set up behind it all. This is nothing if not a lesson in basdassery. I dunno how comfortable I’d feel turning…

Erik Pettersson isn’t about to spend over 100 dollars on a lame, featureless digital frame. And why should he, when he’s got an old laptop and a nice, modern picture frame from IKEA? Don’t answer that. This is too cool to suffer your smarmy comments. Running on Ubuntu, the once lap-worthy machine has been hacked to bits by Erik, who can now update the frame at will using VNC over WiFi. In the event that’s giving him guff, he’s left the keyboard open in the back for manual adjustments. Too rad. Sure, it has a cord running down the wall by necessity, but let’s be honest – this still looks way more attractive…

How cool is this? The answer, before you read any further or watch the video for additional information, is this: really cool. The Biological Cybernetics Lab at Tsukuba University here demonstrate a robotic arm that mimics a user’s movement via Kinect-like camera. It can recognize over 100 different hand shapes (after all, some of us, myself included, have pretty weird hands), and checks over one hundred times per second what position your hand is in, so it can adjust itself accordingly. The idea is not only to provide a real-time robotic control solution, but also an intuitive way to program…

Out of the big box marked ‘stuff that will blow your mind today’ busts John Kestner’s Tableau. Tableau is a night stand with a wire coming out of it. And boy, if it didn’t make me flip my lid. It isn’t the design of the stand that incited all this lid-flipping action – I’m more of an IKEA guy – but its function. Tableau is the most ingeniously-disguised Twitter client you ain’t never seen. Barring right now, that is. A hidden printer/scanner resides within Tableau’s drawer, connecting to your Twitter account and quietly printing and depositing photographs for you to discover. As well, any photographs…

Anyone who knows me knows that Jenga holds a special place in my heart. I adore the game and – not to toot my own kazoo or anything – but I’m kinda awesome at it. There is, of course, no way I’ll ever be able to prove this to you, but take my word for it. Jenga and I are tight, yo. Anyway, pursuant to Jenga being totally wicked – and my wickedness at it – check out this equally wicked device by Matthias Wandel: the Jenga Pistol, which you’d probably want to use in a match against a player such as myself. Even single central blocks are no match for the pistol, which unceremoniously deletes blocks from the pile faster…

Surely you’ve seen your share of Kinect hacks in the last little while – hell, even last week I posted a couple here on Techi. Microsoft was originally not down with this, and implied potential legal action against anyone modifying their device. But it seems they’ve now had a change of heart, claming Kinect was always ‘open by design’, and that they’re happy to have folks write all sorts of drivers for all manner of Kinect-based ballyhoo. “What has happened,” says Microsoft’s Alex Kipman to NPR, “is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn’t…

I have no idea how the dude finds the time. You thought Big Steve emailing his customers back was unusually conscientious? Get this: The Seattle Times is reporting the tale of iPad developer Ram Arumugan and his recent experience with the App Store approval process. After having developed an app, Economy for iPad, Ram found his work rejected for using a private API call that, interestingly enough, fixed a bug with the iPad’s virtual keyboard. In frustration, Ram ultimately emailed Big Steve about the rejection. Surely Apple would make an exception for an API call that improves the performance…