This is great: a live back-channel for a fundamental component of communication - mood. Talk in the vicinity of a Kotohana, or mood flower, and it will recognize emotion from your speech and transmit this to your chosen partner's flower, which then glows in an appropriate colour. Who needs the phone and IM now?

Birds and novels, flowers and moods, the research coming out of Japan these days is just Zen...

[via Rich Burridge ]