In Japan, the Takara toy company is launching Ma Mail, a bean that sprouts to display a message.

The Apple keynote speech yesterday surprised me with two smart new products.

iPod shuffle a USB flash drive that plays audio, branded as a micro-iPod. At $99 for the 512M unit, it's only a little more expensive than a flash drive that doesn't play music. Engadget has a look inside the package.

Mac mini is a $499 home computer — you supply the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I hope this product catches on, if only so that PC manufacturers will try out this form factor.

I still don't buy the Apple hype. For such good visual design, their products' practical design seems to suffer: plastic iCube cases cracking with age, notebooks in which the keyboard scratches the screen, and so on. Despite this, I really like the direction Apple is heading in.