The Woz has let fly a rumour that the iPhone 4′s delay is, in fact, due to the paint, of all things. During an appearance on The Engadget Show Live! last night, Woz explained that the painting process being used was allowing light to leak in and cause issues with camera performance. But those of you still clinging to your small shred of hope can breathe easy – the device still seems to be on course for its ‘spring’ release date, as a new painting process developed by a small Japanese company has squashed the problem. As light leaks are largely responsible for some of the most hipster photographs on the internet,…

Some people just don’t like Twitter – and can they be blamed? An ever-shifting sand of mostly-idle information, a Twitter account following even less than 50 people can be a terrible, cacaphonous racket of nothing in particular. So how would you like to have every tweet read aloud to you? Japanese toy manufacturer WiZ isn’t about to wait for your answer, and has released the Charatter bear, a toy that – of course – reads incoming tweets in a shrill, grating octave. This particular author follows 52 people and receives a tweet about once every 90-120 seconds. Imagine how quickly this bear would drive…

Not content to robotically emulate any and all members of the animal kingdom, humanity has turned to another branch of the Tree of Life for inspiration: that of plants. Japanese artist Akira Nakayasu has developed plant (no, really, it’s just called ‘plant’), an interactive robotic installation that does little but look beautiful. Then again, what else would a plant-bot do? The installation is designed to resemble grass blowing in the wind, and reacts to nearby objects – for instance, a human hand. 169 shape memory alloy actuators control 169 artificial leaves, which bend and sway independently,…

The concept of flavour just got turned on its ear as engineering students in Japan have developed TagCandy, a device which augments the flavour of whatever candy is inserted into it. Stick a regular lollipop into the handset, choose a flavour (Crunchy apple? Fizzy soda? …Fireworks?), and suck away. The vibrating speaker on the device sends pulses that conduct through your teeth as you eat the candy, emulating the vibration patterns that the chosen flavour would emit. How they discovered what it’s like to bite down on fireworks, you probably don’t want to know. Either way, it’s a totally wicked…

Talk about hitting an untapped market. First, a question for the male readers: have you ever been in a restroom, taking care of business, and bored out of your mind? You try dissolving the urinal cake, but let’s be honest – that sucker’s not going anywhere. If only the back wall changed colour when wet, or something, right? Well, it seems Sega has decided to do something about it by developing a console it calls the Toylet, to be installed in urinals all around Tokyo. An LCD screen is installed above the urinal, and a pressure sensor into the bowl, allowing for videogame interaction the world’s not seen…

Alright, before you read too far into that headline, let me immediately reassure you that we’re not talking about that kind of tweet. Indeed, a mouse that could post inane quips and lulzy links to Tweetdeck would be a marvel of science indeed, but this is infinitely more basic (and infinitely more complex). Science hath wrought a mouse that quite literally tweets. Like a bird. The absolutely adorable mouse came about purely by chance, as researchers at the University of Osaka carried out their ‘Evolved Mouse Project’, which had them breeding mutation-prone mice willy-nilly, unsure of what the…

Am I the only one who finds this terrifying? Like, sure, it’s not quite as immediately scary as Boston Dynamics’ BigDog, but imagine what it’ll look like a couple decades from now when several of these things are sprinting over a hill at you with guns for heads after the military buys them up? Can you say Judgment Day? Of course you can. The bot, called Athlete, is the brainchild of Ryuma Niiyama, a post-doctorate student at MIT, and uses pneumatic artificial muscles to simulate human legs. Currently, it can only run three steps before toppling over, but it’s only a matter of time before the current…

Yeah, so, uh… it may please you to know that Sony has just released an HDTV with a built-in PlayStation 2. Seriously, that’s really the long and short of it. It’s 22″, $299, and a good half-decade too late. Like, don’t get me wrong – had I a PS2, I’d still be playing We <3 Katamari and Frequency daily. It shall forever remain, in the annals of console history, a hero worthy of the mightiest fist bumps. But come on, Sony. It’s over. This is the PS3′s world now. It’s finally making money, and you’re cramming an on-board PS2 into a television? Horsefeathers. …

A new survey conducted by Japanese ad agency Dentsu has revealed the ‘hit recognized products’ in Japan for 2010. And hoo boy, what a list it is. Smartphones, of course, have more or less been grouped into one category as they would dominate the entire list of separate. Twitter has come in at second place, narrowly eking out munchable chili oil for the silver. Yes, that’s right. Munchable chili oil. The top three ‘hit recognized products’ in Japan for the year two thousand and ten are, in order: smartphones, Twitter, and MUNCHABLE CHILI OIL. No iPads. No gadgetry. Munchable chili oil. Oh, Japan….

No one can ever say Sharp didn’t make unique phones. Actually, ‘unique’ may be a bit of an understatement in this case, as these here two devices what I’m about to fill your eyes with are possibly more at home filed under ‘absolutely ridiculous’. Y’all ready for this? First out of the woodwork is the TOUCH WOOD. I’m not even making this up, this is a thing. The TOUCH WOOD. The Sharp TOUCH WOOD. I have a real hunch that released Stateside, we would see a zealously over-tasteful name change. Sadly, though, we won’t – the TOUCH WOOD is a Japan-only release, and will see 15,000 units distributed through Japan’s…