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.

And the answer to the big question above?  Chrysler.

Ouch.

See, this is doubly unnerving after discovering that, yesterday, they were still trying to get a cohesive corporate strategy together and won’t actually have one until sometime later today.  Or at least not one they want to tell their franchisees about, who are probably all looking at this news with a kind of confused rage and just longing to scream various epithets at anyone who’s in charge over there.

Chrysler needs a comeback, plain and simple.  So what they’ve got to do is offer stuff you can’t get anywhere else.  Frankly, I have a hard time imagining just what it is they CAN do.  I drive a Chevy, myself, a wonderful if aging Monte Carlo, and my folks drive Ford Explorers.  There’s not a whole lot of taste issues as I’m considering switching to a pickup fairly soon anyway, and chances are I will go either Ford or Chevy.

Chrysler needs to get some new and interesting product, or it doesn’t matter how many bailouts it gets–it’s still done for.

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.

Yeah fellas, keep waiting.  I got a feeling that, before you get a viable strategy out of Chrysler, Hell will be a Frigidaire dealership.

But there’s a vague glimmer of hope here, as Chrysler franchisees will now be getting their marching orders from Fiat SpA rather than Chrysler proper.

Now, ordinarily, I’d laugh myself stupid at the thought that somehow Fiat (widely known by the acronym for Fix It Again, Tony) would be able to generate a more viable corporate strategy than Chrysler, but hey…I’m laughing out the other side of my face today as it becomes clear that Fiat outlasted Chrysler.  And in business, survival is the only real judge of viability.  If you’re still in business tomorrow, then your business model works.

So what will that strategy be?  We won’t find out until at least Wednesday, when the franchisees get the word.

…um…yeah.  The phrases “vested interest” and “wanted to keep his job” scream at me like thieves in the night, but apparently, Mike DiGiovanni, top GM sales analyst, says that GM’s market share will likely increase for the third straight month.

Oh, great…GM sales, up from squat to squat and a half!

Seriously, isn’t this report just the teensiest bit biased?  Especially with GM probably going to do a stock reissue in the very near future as its current per-share value is actually worth next to nothing?  So some putz from GM announces BIG BIG SALES A-COMIN’ and anyone’s supposed to take this seriously?

And okay, maybe GM market share will go up next month.  Does this really mean anything to any serious investor in the face of the bloodbath they’ve seen?  And how much of that hike is due to the now-over Cash for Clunkers program?  I look forward to seeing how this prediction plays out, but I have my doubts it’ll look anything like reality.

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.

It doesn’t really look good to win your own sponsored race, but at the same time, if you can’t manage to win the race you set up you end up looking pretty incompetent.

Thus, it’s not exactly a huge surprise that the Suzuki Alto is out in front and looking pretty good on its fuel consumption.

The Alto Green Challenge is sort of, from what I can tell anyway, a hybrid car race.  Both a race for hybrid cars and a two-pronged car race.  Cars are not only trying to clear the track first, but they’re also trying to do it with the least amount of fuel consumed.

For instance, that Suzuki Alto?  It’s burning through about a gallon of fuel for every fifty miles it travels, or 3.99 liters per one hundred kilometers.

I don’t care what country you’re in–fifty miles per gallon is pretty sweet.  So here’s to the Alto, the current frontrunner in its own contest.

Considering there is now enough vacant land in Detroit to cover the city of Boston completely, the place is definitely hurting for some good news.

Remember what I said about car shows going downhill?  Well, a reader alerted me, and I just saw the news today myself so I’ll pass it directly on to you.  The 2010 International Auto Show in Detroit is BOOKED SOLID.

There will be seven hundred different car models on display there, and what’s more, fifty of them will be never before seen models.

I can’t understand for the life of me, however, why Detroit is putting this show on in JANUARY.  January poses one of the biggest chances for inclement weather in the entire year, possibly only matched by February or maybe December.  The key thing is, about the closer you get to mid-January, the more likely you are to get serious snow mixed with ice mixed with a slow frozen death.

There’s an old joke in Michigan, and it’s got two endings.  The joke:

People say Michigan is a four-season state.  Not true; it only has two.  The two seasons in Michigan are winter and road construction (some substitute “road construction” with “winter’s coming”).

And this is why it’s probably a terrible idea for Detroit to have this show in the Russian roulette of horrible weather that is January.

Three words I’d never thought that I’d type on this blog, easily, by far, are “Twilight”, and “Edward Cullen”.

I hate that movie, frankly.  Most of us probably do.  But since there are enough twelve year old girls amply willing to fork over their babysitting money for a chance to see a glittery emo boi vampire sparkle in the sun, then so be it.  Never let it be said that I won’t jump on a chance at getting new readers.

Anyway, you can now enter a contest that’ll get you a shot at your very own copy of the car that Edward Cullen drives in Twilight, a Volvo XC60.

Here’s how the contest works, via Reuters:

Starting Nov. 1, players can register at www.WhatDrivesEdward.com and will receive clues to help solve a series of puzzles. Since the puzzles increase in difficulty, players are encouraged to exchange hints through Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The contest runs for three weeks from November 1 through November 23.

So if you’re willing to crawl through a series of puzzles, you too just might take home a hot new Volvo.