When it comes to saving energy while cooling or heating your homes, use an electronic thermostat to control the temperature. These are far more energy efficient than the conventional electromechanical thermostats. Also remember to fix the temperature of the air conditioner to 24 degrees. This is the most comfortable temperature and uses the least energy to cool the place.

Lighting is another part of civilization that takes up a whole lot of energy. Using florescent lighting can bring down the energy consumption by over 50 percent. Since lighting uses up over 40 percent of the energy of a home changing over to florescent lighting will lead to substantial energy conservation as well as hard cash saved.

While industries and scientists strive to make gadgets more efficient it is a fact that the smaller and lighter the gadget is the more energy efficient it will be.

Gadgets for the Car – Making Life More ComfortableCars with automatic window shutters are a rarity and come at a premium no doubt. For the manual roll up window mechanism there is an add-on in the market. The automatic rollup car window gadget is making life easier for many people. These useful little gizmos come with attachment that also detect the brightness outside and switch on or off the headlights of the car. You can set the level of darkness outside to trigger the switching. When you go through a tunnel the headlights will turn on and when you exit it the headlights will turn off. The other little gizmos are electronic sensors that will turn on and off the windscreen wipers whenever the screen gets frosty with dew or rain.

One gadget for the car that Gadgets. in found quite useful is the rear camera that is connected to the rear view mirror. The mirror has a small LCD screen which displays the entire rear section of the car. This enables the driver to see the rear with ease irrespective of anyone in the rear seat blocking his or her view through the rear view mirror. Some people are developing this gadget to record certain periods while the car is moving. In case of an accident the driver can save the recording to replay it as a support for his claim of not being responsible for the mishap. If the driver does not save the clipping then the video will erase the clip a few minutes after the vehicle has stopped.

Other gadgets include state of the art stereo radio players that cone with inbuilt DVD players and CD players. The latest in the range of IPods is the iPod dock that fits into the coffee cup holder. This iPod dock fits snugly into the cup holder and rotates enough to face the controls of the iPod so the driver has easy accessibility to them. Next in the same line of car gadgets is the iPod FM transmitter. This transmits the music on an FM channel that the car stereo FM layer is tuned to creating music for all in the car to enjoy.

Creativity knows no bounds. Let us take the Japanese for example: the gadgets they come up with are amazing. Some are useless but then again, it takes a lot to think of something and then actually pull through with it. Only the Japanese have the guts to conceptualize strange gadgets like that and then actually produce it. For that reason, I’m putting the spotlight on several strange gadgets.

Here are a couple of favorites:

1. Noodle Eater’s Hair Guard

Do you have long hair? Does it annoy you when your hair suddenly falls and dips in your bowl of soup? Being primarily a country who takes pride in their noodles, it’s only natural that the Japanese are starting to get annoyed at that experience. So what do they do? They invent! Basically, the Noodle Eater’s Hair Guard is a pink rubber gadget that fits snugly just around the face. It’s similar to a dog cone actually, only it doesn’t cover the whole head but just the face. In any case, when you wear it, you’d still look like you’re wearing a dog cone. This peculiar gadget is not only strange, but of all colors it just had to be pink.

2. Nap Alarm

This is particularly interesting for me. The Nap Alarm is the perfect gadget if you find yourself sleeping in between classes, lectures or even driving. You place the Nap Alarm just over your ear and through its electronic motion sensing feature, it calculates when you’re about to nod your head off and then it sends a loud sound right in your ear if it senses that you’re about to fall asleep therefore saving you from embarrassment or even death. (Though I doubt that an alarm would make the fact that you’re about to sleep a little more discreet)

3. Plunger Helmet

When the Nap Alarm fails, you can always use the Plunger Helmet. Not when driving of course. The Plunger Helmet is a gadget you use when you fall asleep on the train. It basically looks like a hard hat; the typical helmet construction workers use, but then it has a plunger attached to the back part of it. The plunger keeps your head in place. It is actually more helpful for your seatmates rather than yourself as this prevents you from swinging madly from side to side. Perhaps if you’re going to buy one, you’d rather use it on a drowsy seatmate than yourself.

4. The Amazing Shoe Umbrella

For people who buy designer shoes and wouldn’t dare have anything soil their footwear, the Japanese thought of something that would aid them. It doesn’t matter if your whole body gets wet, as long as your shoes remain untouched. How this amazing umbrella can fit into your shoes without destroying it is an unknown fact but as long as it keeps water out of the shoes then the inventors are satisfied.

These are just four of a lot of Japanese gizmos and gadgets that made its way to the market. The conceptualization of these gadgets seems to be logical. The addressing of a simple need is what propelled the invention of these weird gadgets. Isn’t that what consumerism is all about though? Isn’t it all about the creation of something that satisfies a simple need? If that’s the case then we can safely say that these gadgets fulfill those needs. Perhaps what we should laugh at is how absurd our needs are. Not the gadgets that are made to satisfy them.