Fortunately, the most involvement with law enforcement that many people will ever have is a traffic ticket. This is not to say that these tickets aren’t still an annoyance; they can take time out of a person’s life and almost always money out of their pocket. Fighting a traffic ticket can sometimes be a fruitful endeavor, but preventing one altogether is the best way to ensure avoidance of the consequences involved with being ticketed. If you are a smartphone user then you are in luck, preventing traffic tickets has never been easier because there’s an app for that.

Have you been looking at your cell phone contract just waiting for the day that you can get a new phone? You’re not alone. Part of the perk of staying in contract is the capability of buying a new phone every two years. If you’re contract is up next year, count yourself among the lucky! 2012 promises to be a giant leap for mobile devices.

Here are the most anticipated cell phones for this year:

1. HTC Edge

Tech reviewers are concerned that this new introduction to the HTC line will not include Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich. If it does, however, this may be the perfect phone. With 1GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, the phone is literally a computer in the palm of your hand. Bonus: it can make phone calls, too!

The Canon/Nikon grudge match got huge boost last Fall when Canon announced its new flagship DSLR, the EOS 1D X. Much to most photogs' surprise, the new Canon seemed to abandon the megapixel race, offering a full-frame sensor with "just" 18 megapixels, offering what may be a DSLR sweet-spot for low light performance combined with enough resolution for most purposes. By comparison, Canon's ever popular EOS 5DmkII supplies 21 megapixels in its full-frame sensor.

Not one to take a punch lying down, Nikon has now announced its alternative to the 1D X in the form of the D4, a DSLR that appears to go toe-to-toe with the Canon offering.

Like the 1D X, the new D4 seems to offer something close to the sweet spot for resolution and low light. Where its predecessor, the very well-liked D3, offered a full-frame sensor with 12.1 megapixels, the new D4 brings a 16.2 megapixel sensor to the pro-DSLR market, giving up a couple pixels to its Canon rival.

Canon U.S.A., Inc., announced the pending availability of the company’s new top-of-the-line DSLR camera for professionals on September 18. The new camera promises best-in-class high ISO performance along with a number of features and improvements that the company hopes will set it apart from the competition from rival Nikon, and, increasingly, from Sony.

The new camera, the EOS-1D X features a new canon full-frame sensor sporting 18 megapixels. The release of Canon’s leading camera with only 18 megapixels caught some by surprise. The company’s well-received EOS 5D MkII offers a full-frame sensor with 21.1 megapixels. Rival Nikon’s current top camera, the D3x, offers a full-frame 24.5 megapixel sensor. The company’s rumored D800 DSLR is expected to offer a 36 megapixel sensor when it is announced, though this figure is, again, only rumored. Sony, meanwhile, sells its innovative a77 mirrorless DSLR, equipped with 24.3 megapixel sensor and the ability to rattle off 12 frames per second in continuous shooting.

While the laptop mobilised computing to a huge extent, it is the smartphone that allows purely transportable connectivity and unlimited information on the move. Mobile shopping and mobile deal finding is something many of us take for granted, though some of the apps available are amazing. So, what are the best apps for smartphones to aid shopping, bargains and choice?

The Practical

For the more practical sort of shopping, Tesco’s app, from the major UK retailer, offers an excellent and well thought out experience. The app syncs with your existing Tesco account and using it you can add to your shopping list for the week, or you can create a separate mobile shopping list if you wish. As well as offering all products on a mobile platform, Tesco also allows you to book a delivery slot and checkout with this small but well produced app.

Thumb shopper is another excellent app for those necessities. It is a simple, but excellently executed app that allows you to create a simple and manageable list, which you can change, store or keep from week to week. The simplicity of this app is key and it means you wont forget your shopping list again.

Every time you flush the toilet, on average 1.6 gallons of clean potable water goes down the drain. While clean water is cheap and plentiful in the United States (for now anyway), it seems rather wasteful to use it to flush, well, waste. But, what other options are there?

The Sloan Valve Company of Franklin Park, Illinois has one innovative solution, available now. The company’s AQUS Water Reuse System, when retrofitted to a homeowner’s or business owner’s plumbing system, allows toilets to be flushed with drain water collected from bathroom sinks, making dual use of an otherwise wasted resource and saving money in the bargain.

The last mechanical typewriters are now being sold and the technology that once defined modern life during most of the 20th century is about to go extinct, pushed out of the market by the emergence of the personal computer.

Now, however, the question is how much longer does the personal computer have before it goes the way of the typewriter?

Two years ago, no one was asking this question. But the emergence of the iPad and the strength of the smartphone market has taken a big bite out of the PC. Two years ago, the iPad did not exist. But since its introduction in April 2010, Apple has sold nearly 29 million of the devices, dominating the emerging market for tablet-style computing. Absent the iPad, much of those sales would have been funneled in to traditional laptop and desktop PCs.

According to Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, iPads are even outselling the company’s line of Macintosh computers. And they are dominating PCs running Windows.

Sometimes, when a soldier returns home, it is as a changed person. Mental, emotional, and physical scars brought back from war remind other Americans that these brave men and women have sacrificed much for their service.

In order to lessen these scars, some American companies are creating amazing devices that can protect U.S. soldiers. Etymotic Research, Inc., in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, is one company that has created unique technologies that can help soldiers. The company has created High-Fidelity Electronic BlastPLG Earplugs that “were developed to mitigate hearing damage and tinnitus sustained by an alarmingly high percentage of deployed soldiers.”

According to a 2009 report from the ArmyTimes.com, more than half of the soldiers examined at the Ear, Nose, and Throat clinic at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan suffered from hearing issues, including hearing loss and damaged ear drums. “The first question I ask a patient who comes in with a hearing complaint is ‘Were you wearing hearing protection?’” Air Force Col. (Dr.) Joseph Brennan said. “Since I arrived here in May, I have not had one service member answer ‘yes’ to that question.”

George Lucas envisioned a fictional universe and brought his vision to the big screen with the epoch-making Star Wars in 1977. Instantly becoming a worldwide hit, the saga from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away captured the hearts of viewers and according to Wikipedia, as of 2008 had generated box office revenue of “approximately $4.41 billion, making it the third-highest-grossing film series...”

In 2008, Lucas continued with his fictional galaxy theme in an animated series called Star Wars, The Clone Wars. With the continued interest in and success of the Star Wars universe, books, video games, apparel, toys, and more continued to fly off store shelves. Now, adding to the merchandise, developer Mark Bongo from Major League Mods - Custom Game Consoles has created the ultimate gadget for Star Wars Fans — The Star Wars R2-D2 Xbox 360 with projector.

Japan is set to employ an innovative American “micro air vehicle” (MAV) to get a closer look at the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactors.

According to the Japan Times, “The government intends to use a small U.S. remote-controlled aircraft to check radiation levels around spent nuclear fuel pools at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, sources said.” 

The paper notes that use of the small drone, called the “T-Hawk,” was proposed by the U.S. government. The T-Hawk, says the Japan Times, has been used by the U.S. military “in reconnaissance operations in Iraq and other countries.”

The small device was developed by the Honeywell International Inc. as a result of a grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Looking something like a reconnaissance “droid” from Star Wars, Honeywell describes the T-Hawk as a “lightweight and portable … combat-proven unmanned micro air vehicle that can be quickly deployed.”  

In 2006, many people cringed when reports came out claiming that cell phones are filthier -- breeding more germs -- than toilet seats, the soles of shoes and door knobs. At the time, those worried about germs were told to wipe down their cell phones frequently with anti-bacterial wipes. Today, a better solution for germs is on the market -- the Violight UV Cell Phone Sanitizer.

British microbiologists studying germs living on cell phones found the devices were veritable petri dishes full of bacteria colonies. According to the British technology news site The Register, Joanne Verran, Professor of Microbiology at Manchester Metropolitan University, said that “phones contained more skin bacteria than the any other object; this could be due to the fact that this type of bacteria increases in high temperatures and our phones are perfect for breeding these germs as they're kept warm and cozy in our pockets, handbags and brief cases. These bacteria are toxic to humans, and can cause infections if they have the opportunity to enter the body.”

Recon Instruments, a Canadian company, has introduced an innovative new heads-up display equipped set of goggles aimed squarely at winter sports enthusiasts.

Called "Transcend," the company says the goggles are "the world's first GPS-enabled goggles with a head-mounted display system."

The goggles offer users like downhill skiers and others information on speed, latitude and longitude, altitude, vertical distance travelled, and total distance travelled. The goggles also offer stopwatch functionality, a run counter, temperature data, and time.