Plug your cell phone charger into the wall. Feel it

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AT&T zeroes in on energy waste with Zero cellphone charger

Each manufacturer I’ve spoken to has said that only their glasses will work with their 3D TVs, which certainly throws a spanner in the works when you look at the $150 price. XpanD reckons theirs can work with any TV

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XpanD’s Universal 3D Glasses On Sale June For Not Much Less Than The Manufacturers Are Charging [3D Tv]

Huzzah! Yet another discovery for us to add to our ever-expanding list of “awesome things that’ll never actually happen!” Ibrahim Abou Hamad and colleagues from Mississippi State University have reportedly devised a method of charging batteries that could hasten the process rather significantly, and better still, it could provide “an increase in battery power densities” as well. The only problem? Lithium-ion batteries have been disappointing tech users for years, and so long as Energizer and Duracell are calling the shots, we kind of doubt a lot will be done to improve the longevity of ‘em

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Scientists discover method for rapid charging Li-ion batteries

If you were comforted by the first revieLITE , an iPod charger/nightlight combo from 2008, you’ll be even more thankful for the sequel: the ReviveLite II has a slimmer footprint, an additional USB port and still protects you from night terrors. More??

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Scosche reviveLITE II Charges iPods, Lights Nights [Chargers]

Energizer has pulled-off their Duo Charger/USB Charger from the shelves because the application that supported it threw up security warnings on Windows based systems. With these batteries users could charge nickel metal hydrate batteries from a wall socket or a USB connection. The software had to be downloaded from the Energizer site and allowed the user to view the charging status from a computer

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Energizer USB Battery pulled off market because of threat

ItsOnSale via eBay Daily Deal offers the Griffin PowerBlock AC USB Charger with iPod / iPhone Charging Cable, model no. 17B061001, for $5. With free shipping, it’s $5 under our October mention and the lowest total price we’ve seen for this charger. The cab…

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Griffin PowerBlock AC USB Charger for iPod / iPhone for $5 + free shipping

The XP1-Power is a little bulkier than your average USB cable, but it has good reason: it packs a back-up battery in-line. XMultiple have improved on their older version, now boasting 20 hours of extra juice and surge protection.

In addition to the surge protection, the XP1 is now compatible with several adapters that allow for the charging (and back-up juicing) of a variety of smartphones, MP3 players, GPS devices and the like. The adapters come at $4.99 a pop and the cable itself is $49.99. [XMultiple]

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XP1-Power USB iPhone Charger Packs a Back Up Battery Just In Case [Cables]

The Super Bowl 2010 is over, but the ads live on. Who won again the Super Bowl? Geeks have the result of the big game forgotten by now. We have covered the Super Bowl 2010 ads over several weeks in our Super Bowl Guide for Geeks. It was a fun ride. We have…

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The 10 Best Super Bowl Ads of 2010 [Videos]

Today I am looking at the Scosche powerFUZE Pro Home & Car USB Charging Kit for the iPhone and iPod. The charging kit sets the user up for charging at home from the AC outlet and in the car.

The powerFUZE Pro Home & Car USB Charging Kit is Made …

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Scosche powerFUZE Pro Home & Car USB Charging Kit Review

They stormed their way into our hearts last year, and at CES this week have announced a further line of products, throwing out the $40 cases needed per phone with their new swappable batteries.

Owners of HTC, Blackberry, Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson phones no longer need Receiver cases, instead Powermat is offering up batteries which can be inserted into the back of the phone, and charge wirelessly just by sitting on a mat. If you still need a Receiver, they’re now offered in silicone.

The Powermats themselves have been given an overhaul, now coming with enough space for either one, two or three gadgets, conveniently named the Powermat 1X, Powermat 2X and Powermat 3X.

Those Powermats also come in portable sizes for moving between between countries, in single and double options they come with a carrying case and international power plugs.

A charging station for netbooks, called the Powermat 3X Netbook, charges both a netbook and two other gadgets at once. Car owners will rejoice at the news of the Powermat Car Charger, unless of course their car already comes with a charger—or a lighter. No prices or availability deets yet. [Powermat]

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Powermat Throws Out The Cases With New Swappable Batteries For Wireless Charging [Phones]

The International Telecommunication Union, a branch of the UN, has decided on a standard for phone chargers that should finally cut down on a huge chunk of unnecessary e-waste. It’s about time.

It looks like the Universal Charging Solution (UCS) has some pretty broad support, from handset manufacturers like LG, Motorola and Samsung to carriers including AT&T and T-Mobile. No word on whether the standard will match the one the GSM Associatoin has been working on, but they’re both rallying around MicroUSB, so we’ll call it likely for now.

What’s sad to me is that, according to the source, this standard could save 51,000 tons of waste if it were in place today. Considering all phone chargers do exactly the same thing, it’s pretty ridiculous there wasn’t a standard in place before.

Participating carriers and handset makers should fully adopt the UCS by 2012. Hopefully America hops on board before then. [Reuters via Electronista]

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United Nations Approves MicroUSB Universal Phone Charger Standard [MicroUsb]

Iomega’s Ix2-200 NAS shows that you don’t need to run Microsoft’s Windows Home Server to take care of everything a home, or even a small business, needs for its network storage. It’s just surprising that it’s this cheap.

The Price:

1TB for $270, 2TB for $370 and 4TB for $700

The Verdict:

It does a lot, and it does it pretty well.

Here’s a list of the exciting bits on the Ix2-200’s feature list:

• Automated backup and restore: Full Time Machine support for Macs as well as Retrospect, a different backup scheme, for PCs and Macs.
• Automated copy jobs, which can automatically and incrementally copy (either with Windows file sharing or rsync) files off of network shares and dump it onto its own storage, or the other way around. Perfect for backing up other network shares for double data security
• RAID1
• DLNA, iTunes Servers
• Quiet running
• SMB features like email notifications, event logs, iSCSI, automated video surveillance (provided you have a compatible camera) and USB printer support
• A load of networking support, like Apple File Sharing, Bluetooth, FTP, NFS, Rsync, SNMP and standard Windows File Sharing (CIFS)
• Torrent downloading
• Remote access

Instead of building a Windows Home Server, like so many others have done, Iomega decided to build their own system from their own technology, and came out pretty feature-rich because of it.

The setup process is slightly finicky—you install the Iomega Solutions CD and wait while it searches your network for the server. This can actually take a few hours (we thought the Mac version was malfunctioning until it completed its setup and discovery process), but once you’re up, you’re up.

You control the server with a web interface, which works with a local app to provide integration into your file system. It’s pretty simple to use, and there aren’t too many tabs or options to confuse users with.

Backup and file storage

Time Machine works as well as if you were just shoving in a USB hard drive, and there’s little difference compared to running your backups over the network as if it were a Time Capsule. Iomega tells us that they’ve learned from HP’s first Windows Home Servers, the ones who weren’t able to run a complete Time Machine restore in the event of a total drive failure, so Mac users shouldn’t need to worry.

Retrospect, another backup software, can also configure backup plans on a schedule and automatically execute them without any input from you. Just choose which drives and folders you want to back up—it even backs up your network folders—and pick your schedule. If you don’t have a Windows Home Server on your network to handle your Windows backups, this is a pretty good substitute. And of course you can use Retrospect to restore your backups to your machine, in case of data failure.

Automated copy jobs is another feature that’s especially sweet for me, since I have a lot of network storage and I always worry about what would happen if one fails. This way, the Ix2-200 can maintain up-to-date copies of whatever’s sitting on other network drives, and act as the schoolmarm for all your data.

Networking and other features

Some of the other features are pretty much evaluated on a yes/no basis in terms of whether or not they work. The fan is very quiet even when transferring a mass load of files—although the hard drive is not, so that’s kind of moot—but is virtually silent otherwise. RAID1 works, and comes set up by default. The DLNA and iTunes streaming works in their respective clients, and Xbox 360/PS3 has no problem streaming files off of the server.

BitTorrent download works, but the server gets confused if you give it a URL to download a .torrent file from, so to play it safe you should just go ahead and download the .torrent yourself and feed that instead. Download speeds are decent, and you can configure what the maximum upload/download speeds are so as to not saturate your internet connection. You should also change your default port as well, since ISPS throttle that 6881 port hard.

All the networking stuff works as expected, as do the email notifications and event logs. The rest of the higher end stuff, like video surveillance integration and iSCSI we didn’t test, so we can’t say if there are any issues with them or not. It’s more than likely that they do work, but we don’t know if there are any quirks you should watch out for.

It’s a pretty good deal

Iomega’s aiming this at both the prosumer and the SMB market, which means that for most people, it’s going to have a lot of features that they don’t need. But that doesn’t matter! The Ix2-200 is so packed with stuff that it should satisfy the needs of just about any user who’s hurting for a network storage solution. And at a starting price of only $270 for the 1TB version, it’s a cheaper alternative than Windows Home Servers, and can do just about all the same things. Plus with its user-replaceable drives and three USB ports, you can easily upgrade the storage yourself and expand your storage after the fact. [Iomega]

Great backup options including Time Machine and Retrospect

Small, quiet and fast

Feature loaded

Fairly cheap for what you get

Setup process isn’t as easy as it could be

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Iomega Ix2-200 NAS Review (It Does All This?) [Review]

The entire wireless industry has been congealing around micro-USB as a universal charging standard for a while now, and we’ve taken yet another important step toward completely ridding the world of bizarre proprietary connectors (you know what we’re talking about, Samsung) with ITU ratification this week. The UN-backed International Telecommunication Union isn’t just making the move to make our lives a little less hellish, though — it’s also a strategic environmental move on a couple fronts, since universal chargers mean consumers will be able to hold on to a single charger over the life of several phones and modern chargers are far more power efficient than models that are even just a couple years old. The ITU move isn’t binding or compulsory, but there’s enough momentum behind micro-USB at this point that it’s pretty much going to happen for any phone you’d ever consider buying going forward, and many of the big players have already hopped on the bandwagon. We won’t lie, we won’t miss the days of buying a $40 car charger that powers, like, two LG models.

[Thanks, d0mth0ma5]

Filed under: Cellphones

Support for universal micro-USB phone chargers grows with ITU approval originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Support for universal micro-USB phone chargers grows with ITU approval

GEAR4 are releasing a wireless charger for the iPhone, which means, yes, that you don’t need to plug your iPhone into anything to charge it. Clever huh? What you do need to do is put your iPhone or Pod on the charging pad. Unlike other wireless chargers it doesn’t need to lock onto the charger, it just needs to sit on it. Using inductive charging and special liquid rubber case the PowerPad transmits power through the case straight to the battery. It’s a new era in phone charging – GEAR4 reckon – one of their employees explains the appeal: “As a constant iPhone user,” says Marketing Director Tom Old, ” it quickly became second nature for me to place my iPhone down on my PowerPad after finishing a call. Now I take for granted that my iPhone is going to be fully charged the next time I pick it up to leave the office.” Yeah, that could be quite useful. However… it’s not like no wires are involved – the charging pad needs to be plugged into the mains and this is a catch, the iPhone must be wearing the specific PowerPad compatible liquid rubber receiver case. Available in November from cost £79.99

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Charge iPhone with a PowerPad – no wires but you need a liquid rubber case

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Duracell announces myGrid wireless charger, WildCharge feels a little KIRFed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Duracell announces myGrid wireless charger, WildCharge feels a little KIRFed