It’s official. The next Wii is a go. Nintendo has announced that it plans to introduce the console next year. A “playable model” will be shown off at the E3 gaming expo in Los Angeles on June 7th. Details are scarce at the moment, but we just hope it isn’t called Wii Wii. Although the French might like that.

We can’t wait to see what Nintendo comes up with. The controller certainly sounds intriguing. And it will be nice to play a Nintendo game in something better than 480p. As we learn more, we will pass it on.

Perhaps the Mayan calendar was right. Maybe the world will end in 2012. Maybe it should end if we feel we need to pair a crappy prequel with crappy 3D. The new 3D-converted editions of each movie are on the way, withThe Phantom Menace officially returning next year on February 12th.

The effects people at Fox, Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic think the visuals of each movie would be good in 3D. Lucas thinks you’ll pay for the privilege of another reworked series. Again. We can’t wait to see Jar Jar slip and juggle fruit in 3D. You?

At CeBIT, Ford CEO Allan Mulally unveiled a new feature of the new Ford Focus that will launch next year. It’s called Sync Emergency Assistance and the service will come free with every Ford that has Sync installed. Sync Emergency Assistance uses your phone to make sure that drivers and passengers aren’t left unattended or stranded when they get into a car accident.

Should you crash, the car will automatically send out a phone call for help. It will even use GPS and cell towers to triangulate your position so that emergency services will know exactly where you are. The car will even speak the language of the emergency hotline operator, so language is not a barrier at all. We can expect to see Sync Emergency Assistance in Ford cars next year, when it starts saving lives.

Volkswagen of America will run two ads during the Super Bowl XLV on February 6, one for the 2012 New Beetle and one for the 2012 Passat. Forget the first ad, it’s the ad for the 2012 Passat that caught our attention.

It shows a young boy in a Darth Vader costume trying desperately to actually use Darth Vader’s force powers around the house, to no avail. It is only when he stands in front of the new Passat and commands it to start that it works. The kid’s father has started up the car with a remote starter in the key-fob. It’s a cute and geeky ad. We love it.

Sure, the 2012 Ford Mustang Boss 302 is already quite a powerful car, but it will go even faster if you pay some extra cash for the red-colored special TracKey. Whenever you start the Boss 302 using the TracKey, more than 200 parameters are changed in the car’s software instructions. This transforms the 444 horsepower street machine into a track racer.

It’s like having two cars in one. The TracKey will give you quicker throttle response, and a two-stage launch control feature that makes drag racing starts easy.

We knew there must have been some significance to the year 2012 other than the Mayan calendar ending. The GSM Association has announced that it and 17 of it’s partner companies are working a universal cellphone charger solution. They think they will have a common format in place by 2012.

Seems like it should meet the deadline no problem since the group’s choice of connector, micro-USB, has already gained acceptance as a pretty common format. They say that the “majority” of new phones sold by 2012 will support what they’re describing as the universal charging solution, which will need to meet strict requirements to be broadly compatible.