Bet you didn’t even think there were ten songs about remote controls. Well, rest assured, we’ve searched high and low to bring you the ten best (only?) songs exclusively about man’s other best friend: the remote control.

Neil Patrick Harris “Put Down the Remote”

The Reddings “Remote Control”

Melanie Gerren “Remote Control”

Eric Avery “All Remote and No Control”

Jazzy “Remote Control Me”

Age of Electric “Remote Control”

Camel “Remote Romance”

R. Kelly “Remote Control”

The Clash “Remote Control”

The Beastie Boys “Remote Control”

A little more like KITT: TV screens come to the connected car

Soon, Glen Beck can drive you crazy… all the way home. Chrysler has just announced it’s plans to integrate a live TV service that will surely turn us all into mindless, drooling media-hungry zombies make your daily commute a little less boring.

Starting in December, Chrysler will be offering its new Flo TV service for $625 — plus installation. Just imagine: paid advertisements filling the calm of your car with all the oatmeal and free credit report commercials you can take. Why, it’ll be almost as fun as, well… your morning commute, I suppose.

Boasting national coverage and including cable networks like CBS, NBC, CNN, Comedy Central, ESPN, FOX, MSNBC, MTV, and Nickelodeon, it seems we are one step closer to physically cruising along the information highway.

Seeing that many states have banned texting while driving, I’ll be curious to see how channel surfing is any less threatening (though the actual viewing screens will remain behind the driver). And with claims like “For endless entertainment, all you have to remember is where you put the keys,” it sure makes me lose a little bit of faith in humanity as a whole. But hey, it’s got a remote control!

Unleash your inner Spielberg: SkyShutter has released the AeriCam, a remote controlled helicopter for your video camera. Backyard home videos just got a lot more interesting.

The AeriCam is a “lightweight 3-axis camera mount coupled with a customized Industry Radio Control Helicopter.” Founder and commercial photographer, Jason Lam brought his R/C enthusiast skills to bear in this product, which seems like something really special. Capable of flying up to 400ft into the air, the AeriCam not only makes aerial photography much more affordable, it also enables professionals to access locations that would have been off limits to full-size helicopters because of nearby buildings and other regulations. And for the consumer who can afford a $3,000 camera accessory — well, it might not be for the everyday wallet, but taking flight lessons and renting a chopper isn’t necessarily a day’s paycheck, either.

Operating the AeriCam is a two person gig: one navigates the helicopter via remote, while the other person pans, tilts and rolls the camera while monitoring a live video feed. I imagine this would be a natural evolution for the Google Street View crew. Why stalk the planet solely by pavement when you could take to the skies in beautiful panorama, cinema-scope?

Aerial Photography New York from Jason Lam on Vimeo.

Now, if William Sonoma’s big reveal of its remote control jack-o’-lantern candles made you giddy, you might want to brace yourself. The era of remote controlled candles blazes on with Electronic Mooncandles. For those of you who are clumsy, forgetful, or arsonphobic (yet fashion forward), these candles have you covered. They come in two styles: original (traditional cream) and the less-than-realistic, multi-color candles (these turn whichever color you’d like).

An included remote control allows you to choose your candle settings: brightness levels, constant or flickering. You can even choose the color via remote with phasing or constants. Personally, I think it would be cool if alternating colors were an option, but hey, who am I to demand so much? Although less glamorous, probably the best feature is the built-in sleep timer. Of course your house wouldn’t down even if you left them running, but at least you can save a little electricity this way.

Still, isn’t part of the craze in candles about the aromas they give off? It seems that these scentless electrics are missing that boat. Even so, I suppose my only gripe would be that this means having another remote lying around. With all these remote controlled this and remote controlled thats for the house, the hunk of rectangle plastic sure can pile up.

Starting to think about your Christmas shopping and don’t know what to get Dad? Well, if he’s already got the iPhone remote Viper car starter, how about a remote-controlled Lucky License Plate?

What’s that, you say? You’ve never heard of the lucky license plate? They are all the rage in Southern China. Operated by remote control, these license plates are designed to help you beat the traffic cameras to avoid tickets and fines. For 800 RMB (about US$115) a mechanical version flips down your license plate to obscure your identity. If you’ve got a little extra cash to burn, 2000 RMB gets you an LED-powered plate that can blank out or display fake numbers within a couple of seconds. This technology is quickly overtaking last year’s strategy of choice: fake military plates to scare off humble highway troopers.

“More than 50% of cars caught on camera for speeding and other offenses either cover up their plates or use a fake license plate. Our chances of capturing them is next to nil,” says a traffic policeman in the Yangjiang, Guangdong province. Weird Asia News

As I see it, if 50% percent of cars are getting away with it, somebody must be making a killing off of these magic plates. In fact, according to an anonymous salesman, they’re “…really convenient and economical too.” Anonymity doesn’t get in the way of business, though, because you can always visit the an official website. Not that I clicked through to look around a bit or anything.

If you’ve got a Corvette, you might consider a C5 or C6 remote control license plate frame. And hey, if you want to throw in a stocking stuffer, how about a digital scrolling flash frame?

You’ve heard the urban legend: in slumber we swallow, on average, 7 spiders a year. Now here’s a spider that you’d swallow intentionally. A cracker jack team of scientists in Italy have come up with a spider-like pill intended to film your insides to detect diseases and other potential health hazards. Personally, I would have preferred the Magic-School-Bus pill — but that’s just me.

Once the pill goes down the hatch doctors control the spider’s tiny legs to maneuver around and record your insides. It all works remotely via Wi-Fi. Not the kind of drug I imagine Huey Lewis had in mind.

Forget the life-saving opportunities — this just makes being a doctor sound fun. Trade in that scalpel for a video game joystick, and off we go.

There seems to be a real trend in healthcare automation. As technological advances plow on faster than you can say “right-to-privacy,” resistance is basically futile. Is this the beginning of a healthcare dystopia where tiny robots tweet status updates from your liver or am I just being paranoid?

GlideTV has seen the future and it comes in the shape of an ashtray made out of a halved Magic 8 Ball. Designed for home theatre PCs, Windows PCs, Apple Macs, AppleTV, Sony PlayStation 3, and Boxee (did we leave anyone out?), the GlideTV Navigator aims to make the merge between Internet and living room entertainment.

Billiard humor aside, it does look pretty intriguing. If anything, it’d at the very least make for a snazzy paperweight, but what can this little guy do?

The GlideTV features:

• Clickable touchpad mapped to your TV screen — precise cursor control, one-thumb scrolling, single and double-click selection.
• Backlit AV buttons to control volume and playback.
• Directional buttons for easy two-axis navigation.
• Dedicated Escape, Enter, Back, and Function keys to control applications.
• On-screen keyboard — requires download, Windows only.
• Integrated search menu with links to Google, Amazon Video on Demand, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube and more — requires download, Windows only.
• Rechargeable battery.

Not bad, but I haven’t been too keen on this whole onscreen keyboard business in the past. And at $149, I think I’d want a remote that could do a little bit more than search the internet for videos.

Still, A+ for effort. As the tradition of TV watching evolves towards more and more IP, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of this type of device popping up. It’s only a matter of time until the web is fully integrated into the living room — but how smooth of a transition remains to be seen.

You can feel it in the air: the leaves are falling, the nights are cooler, you have a year’s supply of candy ready to go and wouldn’t you know it – you drink so much Cider Jack you almost burn your house down every night!

Have no fear, trick or treaters, Williams Sonoma has got you covered. Behold the remote controlled pumpkin light. Boasting the most cutting edge in jack-o-lantern technology: remote controlled pumpkin lights, that control the lights in your pumpkin… remotely. “What?” says you? You want more? Okay, well check out these spooktacular features:

• Guarantee light emitting from your pumpkin in the wind AND rain!
• Flicker lights slow AND fast!
• Increase light from bright to BRIGHTER!
• Put the light out with a remote control up to TWENTY FEET AWAY!

There you have it, the Gords have spoken. Never again will we have to walk those extra twenty feet to blow out a candle ever again – and for only $19.95 no less!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we call a slow news day. Happy carving.

Growing up, my body weight varied so drastically, I would have given even Renée Zellweger a run for her money. Having once gone from 275lbs to 135lbs, I’ve become quite attentive to monitoring physical health and diet over the years. I can’t help but get excited at the thought of a digital interface doing all that tallying automatically.

The Withings Connected Body Scan is a Wi-Fi body scale that documents your body weight, lean mass and body mass index. The data is kept on a personalized website for you to monitor your fitness progress (or regress if it’s the holidays, you’re trying to quit smoking, or willpower means nothing to you other than a rickshaw being pulled by some guy named Will).

There’s even an iPhone app, which makes for a good use of inspiration while you’re out and about and thinking about ordering that extra serving of fries.

The concept is great and the potential for more health monitoring devices is definitely gaining, but at $159, my only real gripe about it is that the Nintento Wii beat them to the punch.

The Nintendo Wii ($199) has just released an upgrade to their Wii Fit Plus ($89) which also monitors your weight and health progress. It also gives you fun fitness games to play from strength training to balance to yoga and even aerobics. It also helps you create fitness goals in addition to tracking your progress. Speaking of giving a run for your money, the Wii Fit covers a little bit more mileage for your dollar. Withings Connected Body Scan is not alone in the race, but the increasing emergence of these kind of devices makes for a pretty interesting step into the future of self-monitoring health.

You be the judge:

Source: Engadget.com

The Tiger Beat crowd is going to get a kick out of this. Imagine that special real estate on your bedroom wall you always reserved for that totally awesome band, dreamy hunk or bodacious babe. Okay, maybe I’ve seen one too many John Hughes movies, but still: this could get interesting. The Funai Eco Scan Projector will open up the potential for infinite futuristic possibilities.

Of course, if teen adulation isn’t your thing, I’m sure this could still come in handy: display your images super-sized for everyone to see and then manipulate them with your hands. With the Funai Eco Scan you can adjust, move and replace images with simple finger gestures.

We’ve seen fancy projectors like this before, but it’s the finger operation that sets it apart. Using an RGB laser light and a two-axis MEMS mirror to display the image, light sensors detect the placement of your fingers as you move to operate it.

I suppose it’s only a matter of time before we get digital/interactive wallpaper and the cleanest, mess-free paint job anyone could ever imagine.

Hirzberger Events – Digital Wallpaper from Gregor Hofbauer on Vimeo.