"Are you cool man? Like, how?"

I love when I find a new cool piece of technology. It is rare anymore, I have an RSS feed to engadget that you would expect to be chock full of this type of stuff, but it seems they mostly have a Treo and Hello Kitty fetish.

I was pleasantly surprised today to read the feed and see a device that is truly innovative and versatile. The product is the VR3 MP3 FM modulator. It is primarily sold through WalMart, although it is sold out right now so I had to find an alternate outlet.

The basic functionality of being an FM modulator is nothing interesting. Nor is the MP3 playback capability really. I'm pretty sure within a month new babies will be born with both of these features as prevalent as they have become.

Here's what is cool about this device. First, it is powered from your cigarette lighter. You know, that worthless thing used by morons killing themselves too slowly, but otherwise pointless for the most part. Next, it has USB host in it, and uses USB drives to hold the music. This is very flexible and very sweet. I have 1 or 2 flash drives that I no longer use, so this gives them new life. It also means you decide exactly how much space this player will have, depending on what form factor you wish to use. 1 GB flash drives are nearly free after rebate now, which would give the same capacity as the larger iPod shuffle. Otherwise, you could go all out and slap a USB hard drive on that bad boy.

Speaking of iPod shuffles, this is where we thought of a few more cool uses for this product. Why not stick the iPod shuffle in here, and have this be the FM modulator? Better yet, this is now essentially a car charger for the shuffle as well. Pop your music on, use this to listen in the car and recharge, and then take the shuffle with you and avoid human interaction the rest of the day.

My car just happens to have a lighter outlet in a spot where these controls will be very readily available, and is just out of the way enough not to be bumping it all the time. I'm anxious to get this and try it out.