Have you ever wondered how people woke up in the old days?  I’m not talking about the 80’s, either; I’m talking the 1880’s.  You know, waking up for work isn’t a modern invention, but the older generations had some pretty clever ways of getting up in the morning, most of which still work today.  Mental Floss put together a list of 7 ways older generations got up on time.

Among the more ingenious methods (that still works today) is overdrinking.  Basically before bed, you drink a bunch of liquid and in a few hours, you’ll wake up to use the bathroom (or wake up wet, depending on how heavy a sleeper you are).  I knew people in college who did that to wake up for tests and such.

Today, I have no less than five alarms to make sure that A) I wake up on time and B) I don’t just turn the alarm off and go back to bed without knowing I’ve done so.  My alarms are set for 5 AM, 6:15, 6:45, and 7:00.  Now that I’m used to get up early, waking up at 5 isn’t so hard, but it still helps to make sure I’ve got backup plans in place, just in case I can’t drag out of bed in time.  They’re all digital alarms, though; there’s not a clepsydra in the bunch!

It’s no secret that I love a good, free piece of software.  If there’s some program I feel like I have to pay to use or purchase, I’d much rather find a program that will do it for free.  Call me crazy, but money is tight and I can’t afford to buy a new license for Office every time I need to move it to a new computer.  Plus, I lost my install CD and the product code years ago.  So, to fill that gap on my desktop, I installed the totally free (and excellent) Open Office.

However, that’s not all that can be used to replace pay tools.  Open Office replaces Office; Paint.Net replaces Photoshop, and all is well and good.  But, that’s not the future.  All those programs take up precious hard drive space, and the future is cloud computing.  That’s why Maximum PC has put together a list of 30 incredible (and free) web apps you need to try immediately.

No matter what you’re doing, from making how-to videos to planning a budget to writing a paper or just reading articles online, you can do it with one of these apps.  You name it, there’s an app for it on this list.  Cooking?  You betcha.  Interior design?  Got it covered.  From music to meals, there’s an app for that.  You may never need to install something onto your hard drive again after all this!

Google offers all sorts of services, from Buzz to Wave and everywhere in between Google’s products are an incredible treasure trove of goodies for products for the needy Internet user, website owner, and all number of other people.  However, not all Google products have gotten the big launch that Buzz did:  here are 10 Google products that you didn’t know existed.

So, will these Google products be any use to you?  Well, there’s no telling.  It depends on what you’re doing and what you’re hoping to use Google for.  Still, there’s a lot of stuff out there, and a lot more stuff coming down Google’s development pipeline that might turn out to be your next favorite program, gadget, or cloud-computing service.

Now that I’ve started using Google’s stuff, it’s hard to go back to the way things were in the old, pre-Google Everything days.  What Google innovations have taken-hold in your life that you can’t live without?  For me, it’s Gmail and, of course, Google Reader.

When I was working out seriously, I spent a good hour on the exercise bike every night.  That’s a lot of time to sit on your rear end, staring at the walls in the basement.  So, to kill the time and just get my mind off of how much I was sweating and how much time I had left on my ride, I’d pick up a book.  Actually, it was like five books at the same time, just switching randomly from night to night or in the middle of a ride, but either way I did a whole lot of reading, and I had nothing to put my book on.

That’s where Performance Bike’s Book Caddy would’ve been a great pick-up.  I’d ride with one hand on the yolk, and one hand on my book, and it was always awkward, especially with larger books.  If I tried to focus too much I’d get dizzy from the body movement, and it was generally not the easiest thing in the world to do.  Just don’t read and ride on the streets, unless you want to get tangled up underneath oncoming traffic.

Most importantly, it looks like it could hold more than books.  A CD player, a portable video game system, maybe even an iPad or netbook would settle in on that stand quite nicely, and given the adjustable clamshell of the netbook, you could angle it perfectly and get work IN while you work OUT, all without dropping anything too expensive while dropping pounds.

If you work from home, have a home office, or just get a lot of junk mail and credit card offers that you want to make sure don’t fall into the wrong hands, odds are you have a paper shredder at home.  I have one, and it’s one of the most fabulous inventions that’s ever been introduced into the modern home.  No more tearing unwanted junk mail in half and tossing it away; just feed it into the machine and condense a month’s worth of mail into a sandwich baggie-sized pile of confetti!  However, what if there was a way to turn that refuse into something useful?

Well, the Japanese company Oriental Co. Ltd. has introduced a machine they call the White Goat.  Basically, it takes your scraps of old paper and turns them into fresh, usable toilet paper.  It only takes 40 sheets of standard A4 paper to make one roll of TP, which is about what I get in junk mail, bank statements, and miscellanea every week.  Just think about it; you’re recycling and making a social statement about where credit card companies can stick their unwanted applications at the same time!

Granted, the machine costs about $100,000, which is a little steep for the average home office’s budget.  Plus at 6 feet tall and 1300 pounds, it’s not exactly something you can wheel into the spare bedroom.  Still, if you choose to make the investment, it’ll pay for itself after about 200,000 rolls of toilet paper, or 16,000 recycled reams of paper, not counting the water needed for the paper pulping process.

I love salty, greasy snack foods.  Popcorn and potato chips?  Yes please!  However, the thing I hate most about those snacks is that nasty, greasy feeling you get all over your fingers from eating said snacks.  Plus, while you eat, you can’t do ANYTHING else or you get whatever you’re working with/on absolutely besotted with chip bits and salt and congealing oil.  Yuck.

That’s why Japanese toy company Takara Tomy has released the Potechi Hand.   It’s like a miniaturized pair of those collapsing gripper arms, but made so as to not smash potato chips to smithereens in the process of going from bag to mouth.  I have to say, I’m pro-Potechi.  This invention cannot get to the US fast enough for me.

It actually solves two issues for me.  One, it keeps my hand clean.  Two, it means I never have to stick my arm into a half-bag of snacks again.  Knowing that I hate grease on my hands, can you imagine how much I hate getting grease and salt all over most of my forearm?  This is an invention that’s a LONG time overdue, in my opinion.

For the last week or two, all the talk has been about Apple.  That in and of itself is not unusual; however, it’s not another version of the iPhone or iPod that’s getting all the attention.  What’s got the Internet buzzing is the idea that Apple might be entering the tablet computer market.  Looking to beat the rush, and looking to firmly seize the cheap tablet market is Freescale, which is rolling out a $199 tablet computer at CES this year.

Freescale is a semiconductor company at heart, but they’re the company pushing the smartbook revolution.  Smartbooks are like netbooks, but even smaller and lighter.  Despite being tiny, the Freescale tablet packs 512MB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage, a 1GH processor, a 3 megapixel camera, and, crucially, that tiny price tag.  We all know there’s no way Apple’s putting out a tablet for anywhere near that price.

Freescale seems to be positioning the device as more of a chance to push their PC guts, rather than actually producing tablets themselves.  I have no doubt someone’s going to pick up the design (though it’s probably not Apple).  I just hope that $199 price point stays intact, because that’s a pretty tempting little device for that price.

Image: CNet

It’s a one-stop morning machine.  With one wireless unit, you can crank up the morning weather report, check your email, AND make your morning cup of coffee.  It’s the iMac Coffee Sub casemod from designer Klaus Diebel, and it combines a coffee maker, a Mac Mini, and a JBL wireless sound system (complete with subwoofer) in one recycled iMac case.  Each one is hand made and completely designed to your specifications, which makes the price worth it.  Just head on over to the official website and start working on your personalized iMac CS!

I’d much rather have a mini Windows (or even Linux) machine inside the iMac case to save a lot of money off the initial cost, but the old iMac case is perfect for this kind of design.  It’s plenty spacious, yet it has a sleek design and keeps all the pieces together with no mess.  I wonder if I could order the iMac CS, hold the Mini?  It’d be a whole lot cheaper that way, that’s for sure!

Did you get a Kindle this year?  If so, you’re not alone.  In fact, according to Amazon, the Kindle was the hottest selling item on Amazon, and the Kindle outsold all physical books during the holiday season.  It was the most-gifted item ever!

That’s not all the good news from Amazon.  They’ve amassed quite a collection of random facts and figures about the holiday season, but none of them are quite as eye-popping as Amazon’s biggest sales day.  On December 14, Amazon moved 9.5 million items worldwide.  That means they sold 110 items every second of that day.  Even more impressive is that 99 percent of the items sent arrived on time.

Did you have a good holiday sales season?  I only ordered a few things online, and I’m not sure if they arrived as expected or not.  Given that I waited entirely too late to order my Christmas goodies, they may not have hit their respective destinations yet.  They’re due today, so I imagine they’ll arrive in the proper post boxes sometime this afternoon.

Image: Wired

You know those cool light shows people put up for Christmas that feature lights blinking and twinkling in time to some sort of holiday tune?  Have you ever looked at those and thought to yourself, “Self, I want to do that, but I lack the background in electrical engineering and computer programming needed to pull it off!”  Well, my forlorn friend, I have found the solution for you:  Mr. Christmas.

You can find Mr. Christmas at Amazon, and undoubtedly other places as Christmas gets closer and closer to reality.  While Mr. Christmas is a bit expensive, it’s probably still the cheapest way you can replicate your favorite viral video/holiday beer commercial.  There’s only 20 songs on Mr. Christmas, but that’s enough to make sure you and your neighbor aren’t doing the same show at the same time, and that’s what matters.

Let the Griswold family Christmas begin!