If you're very clumsy (or you love watching TV in the bathtub) Sony Japan has just the thing for you. The Rimotokomanda RM-PZ3SD universal remote comes in a palette of soothing colors, works with a wide variety of sets (including those by Panasonic / National, Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Victor / JVC, Sanyo, Aiwa, Sharp, Funai / PRECIOUS, NEC, Fujitsu, Pioneer, Philips, and, of course, Sony), and offers at least a modicum of water-resistance for wet-handed TV viewing (we'll leave that part up to your imagination). To be unleashed on the Japanese buying public "soon" for ¥2,468 (around $26). More pics after the break.

[Via Boing Boing]

While it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise given the fairly steady growth netbooks have seen since their inception as a product category, it's still pretty notable that they've apparently now managed to nearly double traditional laptops in sales growth during the second quarter of this year. That word comes from market research firm DisplaySearch, which found that netbook shipments grew an impressive 40% compared to the same quarter last year, as opposed to 22% for plain old laptops. As excitingly illustrated in the chart above, however, that still leaves netbooks (or "mini-notes") well behind laptops in terms of total shipments, although that seems almost certain to narrow considerably in the months and years ahead -- at least until the line between netbooks and laptops becomes so blurred that we just start calling everything "laptops" again.

Shoving breathalyzers into MIDs and PNDs has been all the rage overseas for quite a while, and now it looks like Toyota itself is getting in on the act. The breath-alcohol ignition-interlock system features a handset that detects alcohol on your breath (if any) and snaps your mug with a digital camera. Depending on your level of "fun" (that is, alcohol consumption) the thing can be set to alert you (in case you forgot about those three Iron Citys) or lock the vehicle's ignition altogether. In addition, it can be used to monitor vehicles of commercial fleets and notify the boss if the driver shows up sloshed. Testing of the device commences September 1st, and will go through November 30. Historians agree that had this technology been available thirty years ago, the 1970s CB radio craze could have been avoided altogether.

[Via Yahoo!]