According to a Xantrex Technology Inc. Survey, 71%of American travelers do not have an emergency preparedness kit in their vehicle, and only 11% have an independent jump-start solution that does not require another vehicle’s assistance. Notably absent is the number of American drivers, like me, that have jumper cables but don’t have any idea how to use them properly. → Read More
Short Version: The Medis 24/7 Power Pack makes for a good, easy-to-use emergency charging kit to keep in the car or for use anywhere without access to conventional power. At $30 to $50, it’s relatively inexpensive as long as you use it sparingly. → Read More
http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/mnr_lib/200808/players/player-single.swf?job=34799Get right the hell outta town with this thing. Here’s a blender – a blender – using wireless power. It’s the result of “eCoupled intelligent wireless power” which has been created by Fulton Innovation. The company is working on building the same magical power system into other “high-powered kitchen… → Read More
File this one away in the “only if I thought of this, I could pay my baby momma.” The Smart Kleat. Kind of self explanatory but still innovative. It will be available from Charles & Marie eventually for a yet to be announced price. via Apartment Therapy → Read More
Hey, this deal is only good until 1:00 PM Eastern today, so hop on it if you’re interested. It’s the Sunforce 5004 60 Watt Solar Charging Kit, sold by Amazon. The kit includes a PVC mounting frame, 7 Amp charge controller, 175-watt inverter, and wiring/connection cables. And with the built-in blocking diode technology, this charger kit is designed to protect against battery discharge at night. → Read More
Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. For $22.99 you can charge four USB-powered devices plus another regular DC-powered device in your car. It’s only $22.99 – roughly the cost of one or two device-specific DC adapters. Since just about everything charges via USB nowadays, this is a pretty obvious choice for any gadget fiend who spends a lot of time on the road. Car Charger with 4 USB Ports and 1… → Read More
Socket Sense is a power strip with plugs set at 45-degree angles. Each one expands or contracts based on the size of the thing you need to plug in. Brilliant. My current surge protector makes me sad now. It’s $30, available here, and is good for over 2,000 joules of surge protection. via Switched → Read More
Taking another step towards using our trash for fuel, Plasco Energy Group is putting up a large-scale plant in Ottowa that will use plasma torches to essentially vaporize trash into usable “syngas.” If it sounds too good to be true, that’s kind of the case because it’s quite expensive to run. But the technology works: the trash goes in and is reduced to simple gases by 2000… → Read More
We’re not sure exactly how the math on this works, but according to an Australian consumer group, called Choice, the Playstation 3 consumes more electricity than a medium-sized fridge. Not just a little more, but five times more, and that’s just plugged in with no gameplay. Plasma TVs are also hardcore energy vampires, sucking down four times more energy than standard TVs. Not all… → Read More
Well how’s this for a Die Hard scenario: Chinese hackers are believed to control some of the electric power grids and may have caused blackouts in Florida and on the East Coast. How, you ask? Spyware! Using “slurping” software, Chinese counterintelligence has grabbed data from businessmen. But wait, there’s more! Kevin Poulsen calls the story bogus and so would I if my… → Read More
Just a quick note for those of you who purchased replacement power adapters for your iBook or Powerbook, the ones that cause sparks and start fires that burn you and your family alive: you’re getting a refund. Depending on which adapter you have and for which portable, you could receive up to $79 from Apple in a class action settlement. This is addition to the power adapter recall Apple had… → Read More
I do not have enough plugs in my house, so I have several unsightly power strips for me to trip on and break my face. It’s excellent. I want some sort of plug multiplier like this British deal. It’s both functional and cute, just like yours truly, and it has individual toggle switches for each outlet, so you can keep from being as much of a power vampire. Bring it to America, please. → Read More
People who wear lab coats somewhere in Illinois (Argonne, to be exact) have reportedly developed a lithium-ion battery that’s capable of storing 30 percent more energy while at the same time being safer than current lithium-ion batteries. What’s more, the technology has been licensed to Japanese laptop battery manufacturer Toda Kogyo, so we might actually see these batteries in… → Read More
Click To Play Powercast exhibited their power transmission technologies by “shooting” LEDs with energy and making them light up. These guys make the CES rounds so we’ve seen them before but their plan here is to embed their technology into wireless robots and simply send the power along with the control commands as the robots traverse scary terrain. So far they can replace a set… → Read More
As if it wasn’t enough that your Nano was counting your every step through the chip in your Nike+ shoes, now it can track every mile you pretend to bike at the the gym. Ellipticals and such, too. They’re teaming up with 24 Hour Fitness and some Virgin thing to provide machines that track your use, assuming you have the time and inclination to plug your gear into the the thing’s… → Read More
[photopress:_hamster_power_generator_light.jpg,full,center] You want to be green, don’t you. You get sick at the thought of those orphans the Chinese burn for fuel, and what it does to the air. You need to do your part to counter that. You need a Hamster Powered Generator. Just like the jokes you’d tell about your first beater car, the HPG is a hamster wheel that turns a dynamo and… → Read More
[photopress:XPS_630_350.jpg,full,left] Sure, the company owns premiere gaming rig makers Alienware, but Dell wants its own piece of that lucrative pie. Enter the Dell XPS 630 desktop, a great gaming powerhouse. Running Vista Home Premium on a Core 2 Duo E8200 chip clocking in at 2.66GHz, it’s got muscle. The real deal is the nVideo GeForce 8800 GT graphics card and 2GB RAM. According to… → Read More
Bolt four sticks onto a giant solar panel and what do you get? That’s right, a $3600 table that charges in 3 hours and can power your laptop and other crud using a built-in 150-watt power inverter hooked up to a NiMH battery. I’m going to buy this as soon as summer rolls around. And by "buy" I mean "not buy" because I won’t have that kind of money in my… → Read More
Faculty members at the University of Delaware have built an electric car that’s capable of selling back excess stored energy to utility companies depending on the demands of the electrical grid. "A car sitting there with a tank of gasoline in it, that’s useless. If it’s a battery storing a lot of electricity and a big plug that allows moving power back and forth quickly… → Read More
As someone who sits at home in front of a computer all day every day, I can — like Richard to Tommy in Tommy Boy — actually hear myself getting fatter. So the thought of sitting all day every day in an apparatus that forces me to expend energy in order to provide power to my lifeline to the outside world and device by which I earn money for food, shelter, and clothing is intriguing to… → Read More
Sure, you could build your own similar device for far less than $4.4 million (Australian) but would it look nearly as awesome as the vest that the bad mamma jamma on the left is wearing? My position is “no, it would not.” The aforementioned money was given to Australia’s national science agency as a grant in the hopes that it could develop an “electrojacket” that… → Read More
If the domestic U.S. airlines were as forward thinking as Qantas, we’d be so much better off. At least the geeks would be. Sure you can use SeatGuru to find out which seats have outlets or pull out your Maglite just to check, but wouldn’t it be easier if every seat in every class had power and Wi-Fi? → Read More
During extended periods of time when I’m busy playing World of Warcraft working really hard on my Macbook, I’m always pissed to find that my battery is in the red and I’m forced to find a charger ASAP. Proporta’s new Portable Laptop Battery aims to solve that problem with a 6000mAH battery that can provide hours of use after your internal battery dies. With multiple… → Read More
Recently, Sony showcased a range of concept products it’s been working on that don’t require batteries or AC power. For instance, the Spin ‘N’ Snap camera is powered by hand. You pop in your fingers, spin it, and it generates enough juice to power the camera. Seems like it could be pretty handy for people who enjoy camping, love the outdoors, or hate batteries. → Read More
Fresh off the wire is the announcement of Newertech’s Nupower Video+ iPod battery pack. At the ridiculously low price of $49.99, it’s one of the cheapest iPod battery packs on the market today. But just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it sucks. The Nupower Video+ can provide up to 80 frickin’ hours of extra music listening or an additional 16 hours of video viewing. → Read More
Well, here’s a bit of news you can use while you spend 70 hours trying to finish Zelda. The Wii uses considerably less electricity than the PS3 or Xbox 360 and makes the PC look as wasteful as a Hummer with a hole in its gas tank. At its peak, the Wii sucked down 18.4 Watts during gameplay as compared to 209.7 Watts in the PC and 199.7 Watts in the PS3. The total power consumption is… → Read More
Evan Ackerman at OhGizmo! posts about this wacky fish-skeleton Maywadenki extension cord. At $30, the tail of this 4-feet cord plugs into any wall socket while the head serves as an AC port. The eyes of the skeleton also glow when plugged in. The cord can be found at J-List. Na Cord Fish Bone Extention Cord [TokyoMango via OhGizmo!] → Read More
The $100 XPower PowerSource Mobile 100 is the perfect portable power source to charge your laptop and other electronic gadgets. It features an AC outlet and two USB ports that can charge a laptop for at least two hours or an iPod for a whopping 44 hours. It also provides over-temperature, overload and low-battery shutdown, and comes with a vehicle and airline power adapter. If you plan a long… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
