There's some new threeeeeeeeeeeee-dimensional wood molding technology from Olympus that takes Japanese Cyprus wood and compresses it so it's harder than industrial plastic. Add a nice finish and you get wood that's moldable for manufacturing yet hard enough to be used as casing for standard consumer electronics. Obviously Olympus's immediate plans include using the new technology on their digital cameras.



Olympus has an English press release with more details here:
http://www.olympus.co.jp/en/news/2006b/nr060925woode.cfm?ote=1&nr=1

This is o­ne of the longest stretches of using "world's first" I've seen in a while, but Olympus' new "μ-mini Digital" camera looks pretty neat. The way it's been described, it sounds as though o­ne of the key aspects of its design was creating something easy and nice to hold, as well as look at.

It's also water resistant, just in time for Ivan.