Apple fans will be well aware of and getting excited about the imminent launch of the new iPhone 5. Thanks to the Jimmy Kimmel show, these lucky people got a sneak preview of the new handset – or so they were led to believe.

Judging by the confident assertions of the clear superiority of the new model, we’re guessing most of these peopel were pretty embarrassed when they found out it was in fact just an iPhone 4s, identical to their current handsets. Just a shame they didn’t film the reactions afterwards!

At first glance, not much seems to be wrong with this picture. These construction workers are diligently putting the finishing touches to some new bollards they’ve installed to stop people parking on the pavement outside a public building.

All that’s left to do after their hard work is done is to pack up and drive away… Ah. Woops!

Shoulder pads, acid brights, MC hammer pants, even Indiana Jones – no stone seems to have been left unturned in the wake of our current long-running obsession with that most dubious of decades, the 1980s.

Was it the thrill of power dressing, the intoxicating aroma of Chaps Musk, the crushed-velvet tones of Rick Astley promising never to give us up?

Whatever the magic ingredient that keeps pulling us back, every now and again a genuine gem emerges from the ocean of ‘80s revival tat we’ve immersed ourselves in since the dawn of the new millennium.

This week brought one such gem with the news that the DeLorean will re-enter production in 2013, this time in a new and environmentally-improved electric incarnation.

Back to the Future fans will be disappointed to learn that time travel functionality won’t come as standard, in fact, the specs err on the side of underwhelming, with a top speed of around 125MPH and 260 horsepower.

But hey, who cares about the details when you look this fresh.

Of all the materials to make a bicycle out of, cardboard would probably have been the last on our list, but this beautiful cardboard bicycle by inventor Izhar Gafni has blown all of our preconceptions about the material out of the water.

At a cost of only $9 each to make, not only is this an affordable option, but also far less appealing to thieves. And no, it doesn’t go soggy in the rain!

Here at Shiply we’re big fans of road safety initiatives, but we can’t help but wonder at the mixed messages going on in this well-meaning but misguided road sign.

Admittedly, we can’t vouch 100% for the authenticity of this picture, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that this is out there somewhere in the real world making drivers smile as they pass it by. We just hope that none of them follow the instructions on the sign while they’re on the road!

Have you ever come back exhausted from a day’s shopping and wondered where all your energy went?

The chances are you probably covered some distance rushing from shop to shop trying to catch a bargain and much of your energy will have been absorbed by the concrete of the pavement.

In an innovative bid to put this wasted energy to use, London’s Westfield City Shopping Centre has become the first place in the UK to place an order for some rather snazzy sounding Pavegen slabs.

The rubber slabs use kinetic energy (that’s the energy generated by the movement of walking, for example), to convert shoppers’ footsteps into electricity.

The colourful rubber squares will be scattered among the normal paving slabs of the shopping centre, and will flex about 5mm when stepped on.

It’s this flexing that allows the slab to absorb the kinetic energy from the footstep either to be stored in a lithium polymer battery or be used instantly to power nearby electric appliances, such as lights.

In order to minimise the impact of the environment of manufacturing the slabs, each one is made from recycled materials such as old tyres and has an estimated life-span of 5 years, or approximately 20 million steps.

Not only will these innovative gadgets create 2.1 watts of sustainable electricity per hour for the shopping centre, they’ll look pretty cool too – each one will glow faintly when stepped on, at a cost of only 5 per cent of the energy produced by the slab itself.

With around 30 million shoppers visiting Westfield each year (and we can imagine lots of kids excited by the magic glow), these green gadgets are set to be a sure-fire hit.

It’s Friday night and after last week’s bank holiday celebrations, many of you are probably planning a quiet night in watching the Paralympics and eating takeaway.

Once you’re nice and settled on the sofa, even the short walk to open the door to the pizza delivery man can seem like a lot of effort – how much better would it be if the pizza could just fly through an open window to be delivered straight to your lap?

Well this invention by some students at the Freie Universität Berlin can do just that! We’re sorely tempted to commission one for our local pizzeria. Wonder if it could be adapted for currys and kebabs?

We’re used to hearing people grumble about the state of Royal Mail or the (in)efficiency of their service, but recent news from its cousin across the pond suggests that it’s not a peculiarly British affliction that our postal service suffers from.

It’s no great secret that the U.S. Postal Service has not been in fantastic financial health lately, as last month it posted a whopping loss of $5.2 billion in its third quarter, so that by the end of September it may have lost an annual total of $15 billion.

How on earth could one organisation lose such an astonishingly large amount of money in one year, I hear you ask? Well it might have something to do with the Postal Service being run by a group of over-enthusiastic teenage boys.

At least that’s the impression given by just one of their more amusing loss-making ventures – the decision to print 1 billion commemorative Simpsons stamps, incurring $1.2 million in printing costs.

Unsurprisingly, given the fact that for them to sell out it would have taken the equivalent of one seventh of the world’s entire population buying one each, only 318 million of the stamps ended up being sold. The rest had to be destroyed at a further cost to the postal service.

So what went wrong? Was there a flaw in their market research process? Were the sales forecasts skewed by exceptional economic conditions?

Well, erm, actually it turns out the decision to print 1 billion of the stamps was made on a ‘judgment call’ that the Simpsons would be twice as popular as Elvis Presley, who featured on their best ever selling commemorative stamp to mark what would have been his 58^th birthday. Now that’s what you call unfounded optimism – d’oh!