Have a loved one overseas or business partner that requires sending consumer electronic goods back and forth across the pond? If USPS is your current shipping choice, you’re going to want to find another. According to FastCompany, after May 16th, the USPS is refusing to ship any electronics with lithium batteries abroad due to the batteries’ highly volatile nature. The USPS also cites two fatal airline incidents since 2006 which authorities say were caused by...
Typically when we geek out about battery chargers or battery cases, we’re talking about a device that you must at some point, plug into the wall to recharge itself. But a more intriguing and slowly growing category is that of solar battery chargers. Juicebar’s multi-gadget “Pocket” solar charger seems like a steal at $49.99. But when we factor in real-world performance, is it really even worth that? Gadgetsteria has the answer. Design &...
What if you could take Facebook pokes and bring them into the physical world? If given the chance, would you? Dutch Designer/Developer Jasper van Loenen has created a way to do just that! He calls it the Poking Machine. It’s a wearable device that pokes you, physically, whenever you are poked on Facebook. Creating a custom circuit, van Loenan enables a motorized lever connected to a 9-volt battery and a Bluetooth chip, to extrude and resembling a human finger, poke the...
Having to constantly think about when your next charging session will be is a massive pain. Mobile devices are supposed to free us from the confines of physical boundaries. So why are we spending even more time with them? The problem according to University of Michigan computer science and engineering professor Kang Shin and doctoral student Xinyu Zhang is that idle usage on mobile devices is almost as high as if they were fully awake. They have a fix (naturally). By...
Nothing is more important to a die-hard gadget lover than battery power. The demands we place on our beloved phones, tablets and PMPs is simply growing too fast. There are options, however. Certain phones have cases with built-in batteries allowing additional runtime. And to cover all bases (phones) there are external battery packs with varying types of ports that allow users to plug in a myriad of gadgets for on-the-go charging. Unfortunately the most resourceful...
