Here’s an idea whose time has more than definitely come.  If you’re fond of the game Forumwarz, like I am, then you’re already familiar with their special item the Versnatche Earbleeders, a kind of video monitor / earphone sunglasses that “block out the outside world completely”.  Well, these aren’t quite Earbleeders, but the Bluetooth Handsfree Sunglasses just might be the next best thing.

The Bluetooth Handsfree Sunglasses bring you eye protection and handsfree calling in one convenient and–let’s face it, folks–stylish package.  Plus, you don’t have to wear that ear blender cyborg earpiece, although if that’s part of the allure for you you may not be too interested in these.

They’re compatible with all Bluetooth equipped phones and offer a talk time of three and a half hours, which makes them a great alternative to nearly every hands free phone kit.  And best of all, they’re not even prohibitively expensive–you can get the Bluetooth Handsfree Sunglasses for just under fifty bucks a pair.

These days, folks, it almost seems like you’re taking your life into your hands every time you venture out from the safety of your home cave.  But things like the BodyGard Self Powered Emergency Tool can help make you feel just a little better.

First, the whole “self-powered” thing–that’s not a misnomer.  This thing comes with a hand crank dynamo built right in so that under pretty much any circumstances short of a massive electromagnetic pulse hitting the earth, you’ll have power.

And what will you be powering?  Why, an array of useful car gadgets, that’s what!  An LED flashlight, a red emergency flasher, a digital tuner FM radio, a panic button with alarm, a motion activated security alarm, a cell phone charger output, an AC charging adapter input, and even some lesser powered stuff like a compass, signaling mirror and storage compartment for pills or matches or an emergency key.

Okay, sounds great, right?  But what are they asking in terms of PRICE on that kind of thing?  How does twenty smacks sound?  Yeah, I KNOW…that’s pretty awesome.  So go grab one!

We’ve all been there at one time or another, out for an evening, and we’ve had a couple, and it’s not exactly easy to tell if you’re sufficiently blasted to call a cab or you can get your car home without too much trouble.  And frankly, it never helps that the cops have breathalyzers and such–because they can KNOW while you’re left to merely guess.

Now you can improve your guesses with the AlcoHawk portable breathalyzer.  It has a folding mouthpiece and an easy to read LED screen that tells you, just as surely as it tells the cops, just how much alcohol is in your system at any given time.

It’ll detect any range between nothing at all and .40, which is actually where you need to be in order to DIE FROM ALCOHOL POISONING, (the range, depending on tolerance, is actually about .37 to .50) so you know it’ll handle the complete range.

I personally like this idea, myself…if drunk drivers can keep themselves off the road, then that’s a whole lot fewer accidents.

Okay, remember how I was talking about the whole idea of putting an LED board in the back window, or the front window of your car so you can transmit your rage to other cars?  Or, conversely, so that you can thank people who do courteous things like letting you merge or take a turn first at a four way stop?  You know, that awesome stuff that people should do more often or at the very least get due props for?

Well, now you can take that whole idea to the next level of awesomesauce with the Scrolling LED Message Sign.  It comes with a remote and can apparently roll messages with no limit on word count.  You can also pick from your choice of ninety eight different stock messages.

I’m sorry, but this is either brilliant or idiotic, and I can see someone getting killed over this one.  But then again, it could inspire a whole new level of civility in driving when people get to see, firsthand, that their decisions have consequences for others.

Now…I used to think that OnStar was a pretty good idea.  It alerted the police in event of danger, if you got in an accident they’d call you an ambulance, they could unlock the doors if you got locked out, and plenty more besides.

But the recent OnStar ads, drawing attention to the fact that they can remotely shut down your car (which has apparently been available for some time now), have me all kinds of freaked out.

The thought that some button pusher from who knows where could reach out and stab a tab and say, tough luck, pal, you ain’t going NO-where, raises my every hackle.  There’s some value in the OnStar service, no doubt, but maybe we’re giving these guys just a little TOO much control over our cars.

I’m not suggesting throwing the baby out with the bathwater and dumping OnStar, but maybe a backup ignition system, or at least cutting OnStar out of that loop, may be a smart move.

You know how this goes–you’re out tailgating and someone brings out one of those awesome beer coolers or electric grills or what have you, and it’d be a great idea except no one knows where to plug it in.  Yeah, sure, you could hook it to your car’s cigarette lighter, but that could wear down the battery.

But now, that’s not even a problem with the 400 Watt Power Dome, a generator that fits in your car trunk.

Granted, four hundred watts is not a lot of juice.  It will, however, run a TV for five hours or a PS2 for eight on a full charge.  And, if you need more continuous power than a charge will carry, you can plug this into your cigarette lighter and, while running your car, run power through the Power Dome and use it like a giant inverter. You’ll have power until you run out of gas.

It’s a pretty nifty idea, and should really put a punch in campouts or tailgating.

If you’re the type who loves to geek out over horsepower and MPG data and all those other awesome stats that a car can generate, then you’ll be absolutely tickled to hear about the Car Chip Pro Engine Performance Monitor.

It does pretty much what it says it does–it monitors engine performance.  But it does a lot more than that–it’ll let you designate trips as business, commute or personal, which is especially valuable if you have a small business and take mileage deductions, plus it also lets you calculate gas mileage, emissions data, clear and interpret engine codes (those things that make your check engine light tick over)  and plenty more.

Here’s a quick sheet I got from ThinkGeek on how to install one of these. It’s actually not tough!

1. Locate your car’s OBDII connector. It’s found under the dash of cars, model-year 1996 or later, no more than three feet from the driver’s seat.
2. Plug the data logger in. A gentle push is all it takes.
3. Start driving. The data logger will start collecting data as soon as you start driving.
4. Connect the Car Chip to your computer via USB and download the data.

Amazing, isn’t it?  And you can find out all this stuff about your car for just under a hundred bucks.

Now THAT’s an interesting development, folks!  Most of us have probably been there at one point or another–car battery going downhill fast, or it’s just entirely too cold out for the battery we’ve got, so we need a quick spark from a live battery just to get things rolling.

But it’s a process–you’ve got to pop the hood and attach the cables (and even that’s kind of dangerous if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing) and then get the OTHER car to fire up.  Now, you don’t need that.

The Closed Hood Car Starter allows you to fire up the car with just a little trouble.  You’ll still need a car with a running vehicle, but now you can hook them together at the CIGARETTE LIGHTER.

You’ve got to love the cigarette lighter–that thing does EVERYTHING.  Even light cigarettes!

But anyway, once you’ve got them hooked up, you wait five, ten minutes and then, blammo…you’ve got a car ready to start as soon as the light on the Closed Hood Car Jump Starter turns green.

How awesome is that?

Best part?  They cost just a scant twenty five bucks each.

Answer: Yes.

And it’s actually easier than you might think!

First, you’re going to need a laptop.  Chances are you’ve either got one or are planning to get one, otherwise there’d be zero point in you reading this in the first place.  You’ll also probably want a car power adapter with it so you can plug it in and run it off your car’s generated battery power as you drive.

Second, you’ll need a GPS receiver and mapping software.  They come in two flavors, USB and Bluetooth.  If you have a Bluetooth capable laptop, your receiver will generally be wireless. A USB, meanwhile, will have a cable.

Now, you’ll put the laptop in the car, and the receiver in the window, and now you have a GPS built right into your computer.  Even better, you can do it for under a hundred bucks.  You’ll never have a reason to get lost again.

You know those black boxes that they have on airplanes? You know, the ones that you recover in the event of a crash to describe what was going on at the time the plane went down?  They’re also called flight data recorders.

Well, now there’s one for your car.  It’s called the Driving Reporter Gadget, and thanks to a combination of GPS and USB connectivity, your car will now keep a running record of where you’ve been, how fast you were going, and plenty more.  You can even watch your trip play out on the surface of the planet thanks to Google Earth.

This is probably one of those things that’d be great for parents, but could be misused so easily it’s not even funny.  I mean, seriously–what if people started putting these things under other people’s cars? Then they could watch everything you do in a typical day, or at least know where you go.

That’s one to think about.

You can add another feature to look forward to for upcoming Chrysler vehicles. Audiovox has announced that they will start supplying Chrysler dealers with FLO TV Entertainment System which should perk up the in-car entertainment being demanded today.

The FLO TV service is live mobile TV with the capacity for up to 20 channels with something for everyone. This includes programs like sports, news, children’s shows and reality TV. The system includes a OE headrest DVD and seat top solutions which can integrate with factory rear seat entertainment systems. A Mopar 7” DVD screen, remote controls and a small antenna is also included, promising better car entertainment for future Chrysler vehicle owners.

(Source) Press

One thing I know from terrible experience is that changing a tire SUCKS.  I hope to never have to do that again unless of course I’m in the safety and comfort of my own garage.  Even then, I’d still rather not.

But looking to make things a bit easier for me the, God forbid, next time I should have to do it is the MagnoGrip, a device you won’t want around your computers but is invaluable in changing a tire.

The MagnoGrip is essentially a magnet on a wristband.  You wear it while you’re changing a tire and you have a handy place to put your lug nuts.  It’s a clever idea that someone probably should have thought of long ago, but just somehow didn’t.  This is the kind of thing they probably should’ve had back in the days when they were filming A Christmas Story–wouldn’t have had the problem they did if Ralphie didn’t send the lug nuts flying.

Again, not the kind of thing you want anywhere near your computer, but it’s still a sweet idea.

You ever wish you could express your feelings while driving?  You know, with something other than the Courtesy Wave or an upraised middle finger?

Now you can, courtesy of the Animated Driving LED Emoticon.

It affixes to the inside of the rear window with a powered suction cup, and the remote is mounted on the front windshield.  When someone you’re facing away from (or maybe even toward!) does something you approve of, or don’t, you can flash your opinion via emoticon.you have your choice of sad, happy, heart or even winking.

This smells like an accident waiting to happen, or the perfect impetus for road rage, one of the two.

You know…some things…some things just shouldn’t exist.

And today, we’re talking about one of those things.

A lot of people like to put coolers in their cars.  This is fairly sensible–pack your own car snacks on long trips, water instead of pop, the healthy stuff that’s in short supply on the road–you get the idea.  But it may be going just a little too far to install a fridge in the car.

This one might be one of the very highest-grade car fridges ever.  It’s a twenty liter fridge with a digital LCD display, option to chill or warm, a chrome self-locking door handle and control buttons, and a maximum range of forty four to one hundred forty degrees.

A car fridge may be a little excessive, but I can see that on long trips this could be awesome, in its way.  Still, for everyday driving it’s a little much.

So TomTom’s beginning to realize that some people haven’t grown up with the internet and such and that they’re having some problems wrapping their heads around the whole GPS concept. To that end, they’re taking the bull by the horns and introducing the starter edition of the TomTom, the TomTom Start. It’ll run you a hundred and ninety nine dollars per (which is actually quite a bit more than other, more “advanced” models that have been out for years), and will offer a three and a half inch touch screen, a supposedly easy to use menu (though that’s subjective at best), and voice over for street names. In addition, the new gadget comes equipped with an EasyPort mount which, makers claim, can easily be slipped in pockets, bags and glove compartments, ostensibly so you can find your way back to your car should you go on a walking tour or something.  Not necessarily a bad idea, that. I’m not sure if this’ll be as “easy” as they claim, but it’s definitely something worth keeping an eye on.