It’s a universal problem.  No matter what, there are some nights when you have to get up and go to the bathroom.  That means either fumbling around in the dark or turning on the light, and neither of those ideas is a good one.  If it’s dark, you run the risk of either sitting where there’s no seat or missing entirely, plus you’ll stumble over stuff on your way to the bathroom.  If you turn on the light, good luck getting back to sleep right away, because that light is always so harsh and blinding.  Enter the LavNav Lavatory Navigation Toilet Night Light from Arkon.

It’s the perfect combination of a night light and a toilet tracking system.  It only comes on when someone gets close to it, so it doesn’t burn all night and eat up batteries or waste power like a traditional nightlight.  It even monitors the position of the toilet seat, which is very helpful.  Green means it’s down; red means it’s up.

I can’t think of a single house where this wouldn’t be a must-have item, if only for the most-used bathroom in the joint.  It’s a simple invention, but it’s genius in that it solves a problem I think most people had just resigned themselves to living with.  All you need is a spare $20 and two AA batteries.

Oh, George Lucas just cannot leave well enough alone.  First, the Star Wars saga was released on home video, and it was good.  Then, in the late 90′s, Lucas had the prints cleaned up and the movies were re-released in picture-perfect VHS editions.  I still have my VHS copies from this release.  Later, Lucas went back and added special effects, restored some deleted scenes, and generally got a little too… creative with his movie.  People still bought these versions, but they weren’t as good.

That was years ago, and between adding stuff back into the original Star Wars trilogy, releasing Episodes I-III, and pumping out cartoon series based on The Clone Wars, George Lucas just cannot be stopped.  Now he’s going to go back to the well one more time, and re-release Star Wars yet again.  This time, the man who never met a special effect he didn’t immediately love more than good storytelling, compelling writing, or decent acting is jumping onto the crowded 3D bandwagon and re-releasing the Star Wars saga, all six movies in 3D, starting with Episode 1 in 2012.

The reason for Lucas’s conversion to the third dimension is not because of how much money Avatar made in 3D, but because there’s a growing number of 3D-capable screens and 3D home theater systems just waiting to be capitalized upon.  So, really, we can blame James Cameron for making 3D the next big fad, or we can blame George Lucas for never leaving a dollar on the table.  Either way.

Like a lot of writers, sometimes I have problems focusing.  I like a lot of background noise when I wrote, or have a lot of background noise either by choice or by circumstance, so sometimes I tend to lose my thoughts or my mind wanders.  The fact that I do so much typing on computers or in word processing programs isn’t helping that, either.  When in the course of writing, if I don’t like a phrase or have trouble with a word choice, I’ll edit.  I may lose half an hour on one paragraph, and by the time I get it written to my satisfaction, I’ve lost where I was going.

If you’re going to do any serious writing with your iPad, then you really need Writer for iPad, a new writing app from Information Architects.  Not only does it narrow your focus down by highlighting only three lines of text, it also changes the iPad interface into a simpler writing program to keep distractions at bay.  It’s just something you use to write, not something for heavy editing or lots of text tricks.  Even the typeface has been optimized for long periods of staring intently at the screen, so as to reduce eyestrain and increase visibility.

Information Architects is also working on a desktop version with a word counter, for people like me who do our writing in solitude, rather than in Starbucks.

There’s a knife, and then there’s a knife.  This is less a Swiss Army Knife and more of a forearm-sized do-it-all device.  Technically, it’s the Giant Knife, AKA the 16999 Swiss Army Knife from Wenger, and it’s staggering in its awesomeness.  For one thing, it costs $1400. but it may well replace half your toolbox.  It also weighs an incredible two pounds.

So what does it do?  Try everything.  The Wenger Giant Knife has 87 tools and does 141 different functions.  There are multiple keyrings, every type of screwdriver you could think of (magnetized and non-magnetized), wire strippers, wire cutters, a mineral magnifier, an awl, a leather punch, a reamer, a ruler, a flashlight, a saw, a laser pointer, a telescoping pointer, every sort of watch repair tool you could possibly need to do watch maintenance… basically, this baby can do anything to anything, provided you know what you’re doing with it.

What could you possibly do with it?  I mean, is it really useful?  I don’t know, but I do know I’d rather have it and never use it than need it and not have it, wouldn’t you?  Put that beast in your glovebox for emergencies and you’re prepared to do everything short of fight off a bear.

View full size at xkcd.

There are 54 million smartphone users in the United States, and right now most of them are on devices from RIM or Apple, but Android-based smartphones are the only company really growing market share at the moment.  Indeed, in many ways, Google’s Android is the future of the smart phone, as it’s open source and free to developers who might want to use it to power their smart phones.  Now, rumor has it that Facebook might be designing its own mobile phone based off of Android.

Facebook already has 150 million or so mobile users who routinely log into Facebook via phone, app, or what-have-you.  Facebook is definitely working on a software application that would allow you to make calls to people on your Facebook friends list via mobile phone browser (integrating Facebook and your phone’s Facebook app).  The greater rumor is that this isn’t just another app, but the basis for a Facebook-based social networking phone.

What does Facebook gain by doing this?  Well, nothing, really.  Facebook is already all over every smart phone imaginable; while this might make an interesting test chamber for future ideas, it won’t supplant other Android builds, the iPhone, or RIM in terms of usage.  It might make selling ads easier, but pushing devices seems like a way to alienate all the other device carriers who currently play nicely with Facebook.

I’m of two minds about commercials that feature songs that I know and love.  Cake is one of my all-time favorite bands, so I’m thrilled that they’re getting a little publicity from Apple, a little money from Apple, and the exposure that comes with being featured in a commercial that’s going to play a million times a day across the United States.  On the other hand, every time I’ve heard the commercial for the new iPod Nano that features this particular song, “Short Skirt Long Jacket” off of their 2001 album Comfort Eagle, it makes me want to find the song and just listen to it all the way through.

So, in that spirit, I will present to you, gentle reader, one of the funniest music videos ever, the official Sony BMG video for “Short Skirt Long Jacket,” in which people on the street in what appears to be California (Venice Beach?  Looks like a boardwalk to me.) get to listen to Cake’s then-unreleased single and give their unfiltered reaction to the song as it plays.  Some of these are absolutely hilarious.

One of the recent trends I’m loving is book trailers.  Basically, you take a book and make a movie-style trailer for it as a way to sell the book in a world in which the image means so much, and moving images so much so.  A book trailer is a great, inexpensive way to sell your book to a country that doesn’t read much, and no company does book trailers better than Quirk Books.

Quirk, the company behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, has produced a classic book trailer in the form of Night of the Living Trekkies, in which a sci-fi convention becomes ground zero for, you guessed it, a zombie apocalypse.  It’s just absolutely hilarious and a dead-on spoof of both Star Trek conventions and zombie movies, and I, for one, cannot wait to read the book when it comes out.  If there’s one thing you can say about Quirk, it’s that they make reading fun again.

(Warning:  Video has over-the-top violence and one piece of language, but is otherwise SFW.)

The town of Prague, in the Czech Republic, has a little problem.  Despite the best efforts of the local government, the taxi cab business may as well be the old west.  You never know who is going to overcharge you using a slightly-increased meter speed, longer routes to where you’re going, and the general trickery that American cab companies try to eliminate.  Even the mayor of Prague was the victim of overcharging during an inspection ride to stop this very thing!  However, where the government has failed, private industry has stepped in.

A company that makes cell phone apps in the country, called Et Netera, has debuted a taxi-checking app they’re calling the Virtual Meter.  Not only does it help you check for overcharging by running as a traditional cab meter, it also uses GPS tracking so you can watch the route your driver takes and detect whether or not you’re being taken for an extra-long ride in an attempt to separate you from your money! Now there’s a weapon in the hands of the victims, to give the cabbies a taste of their own crooked medicine.

Speaking of saving money, Et Netera is even making the system available to city hall free of charge, with the ability to remotely report dishonest drivers to the regulators after one of its foreign business partners fell prey to the cabbie scam.  The app is expected to be free; no word on when it’ll be available for the American neck of the woods.  I imagine it’d be quite popular in places like New York and Chicago, where cabs are the best way to get around.

Image via: DVice