Does doing a postdoc mean a commitment to an academic career? I have heard that it would be a bad idea to take up a post-doctoral position, if your ultimate goal is to work in industry. The basis of this maybe that it is harder to be hired for an opening at a company, maybe because you would seem unsure of your direction, or would be over qualified for a junior role.

If there are no ideal jobs available at present, should I take up a post-doctoral position as a safe option, or easy way out, in the meantime?
Well, clearly, it depends on many factors (my answer is probably strongly influenced by the Computer Science field). 


If you want to apply for a non-research industry position, then clearly, the postdoc might not appear as a strong point, unless you can travel, attend conferences, manage a budget, develop an application/software/experiment, apply for patents, etc, in general any transversal skill that you can justify. But if the postdoc is just sitting in an office writing theoretical papers for a couple of years, then it's probably not the best choice. 
If you want to apply for a research industry position, then a postdoc can be a good point, although of course, the closer you can be connected to industry, the better it will be. 
Ideally, you could do a postdoc in industry (in CS, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, and many others offer this possibility).