The Japan release of the iPhone on Friday is likely to spawn a series of touchscreen kanji writing videos online demonstrating the device's new ability to handle finger-drawn Asian character input. But another, decidedly more geeky looking device called the tagtype is still in the running to become Japan's gadget interface of choice. The Japanese-language input system was originally developed by Shunji Yamanaka and Kinya Tagawa as an aid for the handicapped but is now seen as a possible universal input device for everything from televisions, to video games and computers. If you're thinking of hacking this into something even stranger, you can check out the tagtype Garage Kit here.

Via Hits Paper