The two major issues that we often hear when we talk about electric vehicles is that they have a driving range that is too short for long road trips and they take too long to charge. One of the issues that we often don't talk about is the cord needed to plug the car into the outlet for charging.
We're not shy about our aversion to cables, cords, and anything else that can tie us down and look remarkably messy at the same time. Sure, there's been products out there that have made us wonder if there's any hope for our surge protectors, but then there's gadgets like IDAPT's i4 that make us realize why, all over again, we'd much prefer to have one cable, if we had to have any cables at all.
Microsoft have been developing a dual-sided wireless charging pad for peripherals, that would both offer inductive charging and a compact external display for system updates and alerts. News of the project first emerged when a Microsoft patent application was spotted, but a real-world prototype - called the Microsoft uPad - dating back to at least March 2009 soon broke cover.
Ever been at the beach and realized that your cell phone was about to die? Ever been at the beach, noticed that your cell phone was about to die, and cared? Well, if you have, or perhaps a bit more realistically you needed to charge your digital camera while trapsing around, then it looks like a team of developers has just the thing for you. They're called Solar Trees, and you guessed it, they're solar powered.
While we hate to admit it, a universal charger doesn't seem to be something that's going to happen any time soon for the mobile phone industry. And while we don't expect anything from the other personal gadget manufacturers, it's pretty ridiculous that we usually need to buy a new charger when we get a new phone. Making a standard seems to be the obvious thing to do, but hey, what do we know? Then again, if we had a universal rule of thumb for charging our phones, we wouldn't get cool devices like this.
iLuv announced today two brand new devices that should make charging your gadgets while in your car a breeze. They are the iLuv iAD115 Micro USB Car Charger and the iAD119 Dual USB Car Charger.