An Open Standard For Wireless Charging? 82
Charging portable devices without needing to carry a power adapter sounds handy, and it's slowly getting closer to widespread use. IPAQ2000 writes that AT&T, Google and Starbucks announced yesterday "that they have joined the Power Matters Alliance (PMA). Founded by Powermat Technologies and Procter & Gamble, the PMA's Honorary Chairman is Google's Vint Cerf – one of the fathers of the Internet — and its board now also includes AT&T, Duracell, Google and Starbucks. The U.S. Government's Energy Star and Federal Communications Commission – both PMA members — are board observers." (How does Starbucks come into it? They're "testing PMA-compatible Wireless Charging Spots in select Boston stores.")
Will this chargers be "always on"? (Score:4, Insightful)
I was surprised, a couple of years back, when I measured how much power unused wall-warts added up to. And don't even get me started on VCRs...
Convenient but inefficient (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems slightly strange that when a lot of effort is devoted to improving power efficiency this is championed when it's just favouring convenience over efficiency. Maybe one day people will regret that.
It finally caught on (Score:2, Insightful)
Tesla was just born about a 100 years too soon to have his wireless ideas popularized, regardless of whether his methods were more or less efficient then the way forward this group plans to go. I'm personally glad to see this being researched. You can't make an inefficient process more efficient if you ignore it. Who knows what we'll learn and discover while researching this topic not to mention the potential device revolution when you're no longer limited in size by ports for power and data transfer. Maybe we'll start seeing foldable devices that can open to a full sheet of paper (a good scifi example is the device used in the movie 'Looper'; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I9MsT7juTM&noredirect=1).
I'm excited to see what comes out of this group!