Its larger form factor and bigger battery mean the iPhone 5 should last longer on a single charge. But to overcome the fact that battery technology still basically sucks, Apple has applied for a ‘shake to charge’ patent that uses electromagnetic induction to convert everyday motions into extra battery life. More »
When you’re traveling and completely reliant on your gadgets you don’t care how sketchy a power outlet looks—if it’s free, you’ll use it. So for those times when you have to plug in and charge no matter how dangerous things look, Satechi’s compact USB surge protector has got you covered. More »
One of the key features of Apple’s upcoming North Carolina data center is its mammoth field of solar panels, which aim to provide the center with the majority of its power. Though the solar farm in progress is a whopping 100 acres, and aims to put out 20 megawatts, that’s only 60 percent of the center’s expected draw. More »
NVIDIA’s had some trouble shaving its Kepler GPUs down to an entry-level price point, but it looks to have put the problem behind it with the new GeForce 660 and 650 graphics cards. The company’s ambition was to coax impoverished gamers clinging to DirectX9 (and to a lesser extent, 10) into switching up to this wallet-friendly pair of low-end units.
The 660 has been designed to be the “weapon of choice” for budget gamers. It’ll play most games at reasonably high settings, thanks to its 2GB of RAM, 960 CUDA Cores and GPU Boost, which automatically overclocks the silicon according to the demands of your software. While we’ll wait for real-world benchmarks, the company expects four-times the performance of the GeForce 9800GT, claiming games like Borderlands 2 and Guild Wars 2, in a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 will play at frame rates of 51fps and 41fps with full 3D, respectively
The 650 is the company’s self-proclaimed “gateway” into gaming, being the lowest-priced Kepler it’s planning to produce. Unlike the other cards in the range, it lacks GPU Boost, but the company left six-pin power on the card, giving card makers 64W to push the “good overclocker” 1GHz units all the way to 1.2GHz. It’s got 1GB of DDR5 RAM, which will apparently handle even the newest games at mid-range levels of detail with its 384 CUDA Cores. The pair are available from today, with companies like Maingear and Origin already announcing discounted desktops for them to nestle inside.
Continue reading NVIDIA ticks budget boxes with the $229 GeForce 660 and $109 GeForce 650
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NVIDIA ticks budget boxes with the $229 GeForce 660 and $109 GeForce 650 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Even though the companies involved have finally come together in a consortium and finalized a standard, wireless charging is still struggling to gain acceptance. But a new technology called adaptive resonance from Fulton Innovation promises to bridge the gaps between devices, and make wireless charging pads less difficult to use. More »
How big is your cable squid? Mine is pretty big, and threatening to take over more and more space on and around my desk. It’s never been easy to organize cables, but Switzerland’s Punkt seeks to change this by simply hiding away all of your cables in a sleek box.
The Punkt ES 01 was designed by Georges Moanack, and it allows you to tuck away cables under its rounded lid. Chaos becomes organized, and it’s good looking enough that you won’t be worried if people see it in your home office. Its neutral colors blend in with most interiors. It’s got a soft white LED that indicates its power status.
The ES 01 has 5 sockets, a removable lid, and a central power button to power all of the outlets off simultaneously. The way that the sockets are positioned is supposed to allow you to plug in power supplies that cover two or three sockets.
The ES 01 comes in red, white or black and will be available shortly. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s only going to be available with European sockets for now.
[via NOTCOT]
When jammed full of plugs and adapters your typical power bar is an eyesore you’re happy to stash out of sight. But Punkt’s new ES 01 wrangles all your power cables in a beautiful UFO-like design that you just might want to put on display right next to the photos of your kids. More »
The next time you go camping, instead of bringing batteries to keep your lantern running, you might only need to bring a salt shaker or a really sad book. Because Green House Co. Ltd., a Japanese company, has developed an LED light that runs on just salt water. More »
Batteries used to be the only way to power implantable gadgets, but additional surgeries are needed to replace the power packs once their juice runs out — a less-than-ideal solution for patients. Recent discoveries, however, have such medgadgets being powered by photons, hip hop and now high-frequency radio waves. Electrical engineers at Stanford built a cardiac device that uses a combination of inductive and radiative transmission of power, at about 1.7 billion cycles per second, to its coiled receiving antenna.
Previous prevailing opinion held that the high frequencies needed for wireless power delivery couldn’t penetrate the human body deep enough, and the lower frequencies that would do the trick require antennas too large to work as implants. That conundrum was solved by getting the high-frequency signals to penetrate deeper using alternating waves of electric and magnetic fields. That allowed a 10x increase in power delivery — up to 50 microwatts to a millimeter radius antenna coil — to an implant five centimeters below the skin. That antenna also was also designed to pull power regardless of its orientation, making it ideal for applications inside always-moving human bodies. Of course, the implant’s really just a proof-of-concept at this stage, but hopefully it won’t be long before battery powered implants go the way of the dodo TouchPad.
Filed under: Science
Stanford researchers make heart implant powered by radio waves, put batteries out of a job originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Sep 2012 23:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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In a “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” type paradox, this multifunctional smartphone accessory has mysterious origins. Did someone slap a backup battery on a mediocre Bluetooth keyboard as a redeeming feature, or was a Bluetooth keyboard added to a backup battery for added value and more incentive to carry it around? More »
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