Admittedly, since I found this on a site called “China Grabber“, this is probably going to be the lowest kind of knockoff goods, but I’m just here to tell you about stuff.

It’s the Wireless Car MP3 Player with FM transmitter, and it’s actually not a terrible idea.

For some of us with older cars that have cassette players, we all know that sometimes you can’t use those cassette adapters to hook in your MP3 or CD or whatever player.  But this bypasses that idea completely by sending your MP3 signal to an empty FM channel on your radio.  It’ll even tell you which by way of a handy dot matrix window on the front.

Sure, it’s not exactly the highest achievement in technology, but hey–for twenty three bucks, if you’re looking for an alternative to radio you may just have it right here.

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Let’s face it, folks, our cars STINK.

Fast food, sweaty feet, coffee, and everything else add up to make a pretty unpleasant smell in the car.  That whole “new car smell” doesn’t last any too long once you drive it off the lot, and car air fresheners are a joke.  In some places they’re even illegal!  You can’t have stuff hanging off your rear view mirror! How ridiculous is that?

Well, the folks out at Target have a solution, and for a whole twenty bucks, you too can make your car stop smelling like a stadium restroom.  The Ionic Pro Car Ionizer plugs into your car’s cigarette lighter (seems like most everything does these days), and helps recirculate air through a field of negative ions, which in turn neutralizes a lot of the hydrocarbons in the air that cause a stink.

At least I think that’s how it goes; I’m really stretching my electrochemistry history on this one.

But still, for twenty bucks at Target, this isn’t a half bad idea.

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Now this is actually six different kinds of awesome right here, folks–now, you all probably remember the last time we brought up the idea of the breathalyzer, how it connected to your steering column and wouldn’t let you drive unless you blew a clean meter?

Well, this one isn’t quite so restrictive, but it IS a lot more portable.  It’s the Breathalyzer Keychain, and it is pretty much what it sounds like it is, a Breathalyzer on a key chain.  You know we love our key chains out here at Car Buyer’s Notebook, so this is definitely one we had to discuss.

You can actually TRACK your progression throughout the night, seeing what makes you drunker as you go, or trying to see how many pretzels it takes to drop your blood alcohol content.  I look for something like this to become the focus of dozens of bar contests as people bet on who’s drunker, or what somebody’s blood alcohol content is.

Best off, they’re not too pricey, either.  You can get one of these for as little as fifteen bucks.

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It’s a great thing to be able to hook your MP3 player to your car stereo.  Most of the time it beats listening to the radio by a whole lot, because you have so little control over the radio.  You don’t control what songs are played, when they’re played, when they break for commercials, anything like that.  You’re at the radio’s mercy.

But controlling your iPod while driving, now that’s a dangerous, and possibly even deadly, task.  After all, you really can’t take your attention off the road just to fiddle with some device, right?

Well, that’s where the AI-talk Voice Controller comes in.  Hook this to your iPod, then plug it all into the car stereo.  Now you’ll be able to TELL your iPod what you want to hear.  Search by artist or song title, or just order a general search to hear snippets of every song on your player.

You can get one of these gadgets for seventy bucks, which is a small price to pay if you do a lot of driving.

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Considering that, now, you can both make popcorn in your car and have a variety of ways to make coffee in your car as well as keep a supply of food on refrigeration in your car, you’re likely to have more spills in the car.

That’s okay, because Wagan Tech has also managed to come out with the Wagan 9793 Auto Power Vacuum.  It plugs into, once again, your vaunted cigarette lighter, and comes with brush attachment for the seats and carpet and a crevice attachment for that part of your car seat where french fries go to die.

I can’t help but laugh, really–there are entirely too many interesting devices and too much sheer raw awesome to not talk about this.  Oh, sure, I’d likely never buy any of this stuff but there’s plenty of it to go around!

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Let’s be frank for a second, folks…long drives can be a real pain in the…lower back.  Just the sheer act of sitting, no matter how comfortable your seat is, for hours on end can do really unpleasant things to your lower lumbar.  This is why most people recommend that you get up and stretch every so often.

But when you’re on the road, places to “get up and stretch every so often” are in short supply.  This is why there are gadgets like the Shiatsu Lumbar Massage Cushion.

It’s pretty much exactly what it says it is, and for seventy bucks, you’ll get a cushion that fits just about every known chair and car seat. It delivers both rolling and kneading massage directly to your lower back, giving you a little extra edge in the long driving category.  Plus, it comes with both types of plug in, AC and DC, so even when you get where you’re going you can still enjoy the massage.

I’ve even heard about some of these that’ll offer heat along with the massage, so keep your eyes open, if this particular model from Merconning doesn’t agree with you.

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If you, like me, thought that the existence of one brand of car-based coffee maker was bad enough, then you, like me, will be absolutely poleaxed to hear that there’s actually competition in this market segment.

Now you have a choice in horrendous ideas with the Mobile Coffee Maker 9877.

This preposterous idea will brew up to five cups of coffee at once–be a real hit with your carpool by offering fresh-brew for the ride to work–and will keep it warm accordingly.  You plug it into your cigarette lighter, and off you go, brewing coffee down the road.  It has a see-through reservoir to show you how much you’re brewing at any one time, and uses a basket filter and a “decorator” carafe, which basically just means it looks nice.

Leave aside the sense of brewing coffee on the road, but if you want to, now you can, and you won’t even spend a lot of cash doing it.  These retail for about thirty five bucks each.

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Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever gotten stuck in the mud or in snow while driving, but I can tell you this much–I certainly have.  And I would have absolutely loved to have a gadget like this while trying to get myself OUT.

It’s the Foldable Traction Mat, and they’re essentially piece of high-density plastic gadget that can withstand weight and preposterously cold temperatures to give your tire a surface to grab onto that isn’t made of snow, ice or mud.

You just slip the end under your tire–in the mud or snow or what have you–and then you drive onto that.  Get out of the sticky item in question, then go back and recover the mat when you’re on safer ground.

This gadget definitely is a smart idea, great for winter and late fall / early spring when mud is prevalent.  And forty bucks for a traction mat is a lot cheaper than a tow would be.

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If you’ve been on  a job interview at any point in your life–which I used to do before I discovered writing as a career option–then you know how tough it can be to even get there.  Driving in a suit jacket isn’t exactly easy, and the compression of the driver’s seat doesn’t make it any easier.

Well, now there’s a car gadget that costs just ten dollars but will go a long way toward keeping your jacket looking crisp and sharp–the Maxsa  Double Hanger.

It’s basically just a compact coat hanger with two hooks, made out of plastic, which as you know can be extremely strong if it’s used right, and in this case it looks to be.

Of course, it’s not just limited to keeping your jacket in good shape–you can hang anything else you like from there.  Get some extra cargo room by using some of the dead space above your back seat.  Hang your hat.  Whatever!

It’s a smart little invention whose time has most definitely come.

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Oh my.

Once again I’m forced to apologize, gentle reader, as technology once again puzzles me by giving me something that really shouldn’t exist and yet does.

Let me preface this by asking a question:  when’s the last time you were driving in your car and thought, gosh, my ride to work would be much, much nicer if I could just have a bag of hot popcorn to munch whilst I drive?

Well, maybe you wouldn’t use the word “whilst”; that’s pretty much a writer’s term.  But you’ve probably never even thought of the popcorn, so I can’t imagine why the car microwave even exists.

Yes, you read that right–a CAR MICROWAVE.  A microwave. In your car.   It comes with a 12v cigarette lighter attachment and sells for around a hundred bucks.

My mind recoils in denial and horror at this very idea.  The thought of being able to microwave food while you drive leaves me astonished.  Oh hell, it leaves me utterly gobsmacked.  I’ve seen my share of weird gadgets in my time but this has to take the cake.

Well, at least it’d heat it for you….

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Sometimes I really love car technology.  Sure, it’s given us its share of preposterous car gadgets but one shining day it will give us the car that drives itself.  And that will be a happy day for me.

Until that day comes, however, you’ll be happy to know that they HAVE managed to create the automated navigator in the form of AIDA.

The Affective Intelligent Agent Driving–AIDA–will tell you the best route to your destination by keeping track of traffic reports.  But not only will it tell you how to get where you want to go, it will also tell you when you should get gas, and even suggest places you may want to go that you didn’t know about based on your earlier visits.

Moreover, this joint project of MIT and Volkswagen is slated to include a “display” to communicate with the driver, allowing it to “smile when the driver seems angry”.

A pretty clever idea, though release dates and pricing are still wildly up in the air.  If you were considering buying a GPS, you may want to hold off and keep track of AIDA instead.

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Folks, we all know that one of the biggest dangers on the road, especially at night, is sleepy drivers.  It’s easy to nod off when you’re tired and driving–watching the scenery flow by, the hills rolling, rolling gently, and a little at a time, a little, a li….

See?

That’s how easy it is to drop off.  But now, thanks to Australian inventors, there’s the SmartCap.  It looks like your ordinary Class-X baseball cap, right?  And you may think you’ve seen devices like this before that sound an alarm when your head dips below a certain angle.  Well, that doesn’t always work, folks–but the SmartCap goes it one better.  Check THIS out:

The SmartCap uses a number of sophisticated sensors to measure brainwave information, and apply an independently-validated algorithm to identify when the wearer is experiencing symptoms of fatigue.’

IT READS YOUR MIND.

A baseball cap that reads your mind and tells you you’re getting sleepy.  That’s actually kind of cool in a creepy sort of way.

No word yet on when they’ll be commercially available or at what price, but chances are these will be a big deal.

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We all know the dangers of driving after dark in the months of, roughly, October and November.  With deer season starting and the deer in rut as well, there’s a lot more of them out and a lot more of them moving than there were.

And we’ve all heard about plenty of products that purport to keep deer away, one of these we’re talking about today, the electronic deer alert system.

This one operates by sending out a series of sonic and ultrasonic pulses, audible only to deer and other animals, which in turn warns them to stay away from the road.  Being that it’s electronic, rather than wind activated, it gives an extra measure of reliability, or so it says.

The problem with devices like these is that it’s tough to prove their value.  If I offered to sell you a rock that keeps tigers away, on the basis that you don’t see any tigers near that rock, would you buy it?  That’s why I have my doubts about this one too, but if it worked, it’d be a great gadget.

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You know, I thought I’d heard just about the limit when it came to outlandish car gadgetry.  I thought that the in-car refrigerator or the inverter shaped like a coffee cup might well have been the last word in car gear.

But then I discovered the Personal Mini Coffee Maker.

Now, there’s nothing that SAYS you’ll be wanting to mostly use this in your car.  But considering that the plug is a CIGARETTE LIGHTER PLUG, it’s clearly implied.

Seriously, you can now have a coffee maker in your car.  You can now officially brew yourself a cup while driving to work.  I would think that the smell of percolating brew in your passenger seat alone would wake both you and your entire carpool.  Mount this sucker on the transmission hump and watch how eager everyone is to get to work!

And even if you, like me, think this is a pretty stupid idea, it’s not as though they’re even all that expensive.  You can get one of these bad boys for just under twenty four bucks.

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This one is just about certain to amaze you because it exists for virtually no clear reason.  See, I was reading about the Porsche Cayenne, and of course, since it’s a Porsche it’s awesome.  But what they wanted to include as an option, for the low price of twenty one hundred bucks, just blew my mind.

What does twenty one hundred bucks get you when you’re a Porsche owner?  Brace yourselves–it gets your heater vents trimmed in LEATHER.

No, seriously.  They actually think you’re dumb enough to pay the price of an entire used car (if you shop carefully) for leather trim around the heater vents.  Will you even notice after the leather has been put on?  Probably not.  It’s not like it’ll improve the heater’s capabilities or anything like that.

No, all it’ll do is blow twenty one hundred dollars of your hard earned money on one of the dumbest car gadgets I’ve ever heard of.

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