standards

The Wireless Power Consortium, made up of Sanyo, Texas Instruments, Philips, Olympus, and Samsung, are making headway towards making their Qi wireless charging spec the industry standard. In their ideal world, any third-party, Qi-branded product will work on their line of charging pads, which function via magnetic induction. I happen to think it's just the boost wireless power technology needs.

The spec can deliver power of up to 5 watts, which is good for many small consumer electronics, and prototype gadgets using Qi will be revealed in the middle of September.

That Universal Serial Bus port in your computer is about to get an upgrade. You know, the one where you plug in all your external hard drives, digital cameras, MP3 players, thumb drives, and USB heated-slippers? If you bought your computer any time after the year 2000, it probably came equipped with a USB 2.0 port. However, later this year computers will start shipping that include USB 3.0 ports, which can transmit data up to ten times as fast. Here's what to expect.

We've all got the drawer. It has an indiscriminate collection of electronic connections, cords, and chargers for devices we haven't used in a decade and couldn't give away on eBay for free. But we guard that drawer with Obamian hope that the next purchase might actually require a serial port connection or that dot-matrix printers might hold the key to cold fusion. We wait for just one occasion to justify our persistence and silence throughout decades of shrieks from our significant others. It's likely that within that drawer are somewhere between six and ten cell phone chargers, one perhaps still connected through its one-of-a-kind connection to that swanky new flip phone you bought in 1999. We understand. We too have such a drawer, or cabinet or garage. But together, today, it's time to let go, just a little bit.