Hasta La Gadget!

While the empty space behind my apartment’s walls is filled with the bodies of dead cheerleaders*, it’s likely that the space beyond your drywall is going to waste. So why not hook up some of Meysam Movahedi’s splendid Rambler Sockets and put that void to use?

The sockets eliminate cable clutter by putting an extension cord in the wall itself (too bad if you have an old stone-walled house). Squeeze the little ears to release the socket’s core and out it comes, trailing a snaky 1.5 meters (5-feet) of cable behind it.

When you’re done, you just give it a little tug and the spring-loaded mechanism within winds it back into the bulkhead, just like the cord in a vacuum cleaner. You want to buy one right now, huh? Sorry. The home electrics industry still hates you, and is determined that none of the wonderful innovations we bring you on these pages will make it to market. That’s our long-winded way of saying that this remains, for now, a concept design.

*Joke.

Recoiling Socket In The Wall [Yanko]

See Also:

• Clever Power Outlet Incorporates Dual USB Chargers
• Art Lebedev's 3D Pop-Up Power Socket
• Mysterious Spinning Power Outlet Accepts Any International Plug …

Sandia National Laboratories have unveiled their newest photovoltaic cells — glitter-sized particles made of crystalline silicon. The cells are made using common microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems techniques, and the results are pretty spectacular to behold. More interestingly, however, is the fact that they use 100 times less material in generating the same amount of energy as a regular solar cell.

Here comes the sun

Bacteria for better solar panels

Because of their size and shape, the cells are well-suited to unusual applications, and researchers envision mass-production of the cells for use on building-integrated tents or clothing, so campers (or military personnel) could recharge their cell phones on the go. Researchers also think that these particles will be inexpensive to produce, but there’s no word on when they’ll be ready for consumer application. We’ll keep you posted — but hit the source link for more a more detailed description.

Snowflake-shaped photovoltaic cells bring the holiday cheer originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Inhabitat  |  Sandia National Laboratories  | Email this | Comments

Don’t freak out or anything. But all that time you spent building a DIY in-wall USB charger may have been for naught. Of course, you’ve gained a useful learning experience and potentially gotten a lesson in the dangers of electricity, but you could have simply ordered this TruPower UCS outlet from FastMac, which packs the same two USB charging ports as the DIY outlet, along with two standard power outlets for your other power-hungry devices. Best of all, it only costs the same ten bucks that the DIY option would have set you back, but it looks like it won’t start shipping until sometime early next year.

$10 USB power outlet leaves no plug behind originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Dec 2009 10:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  FastMac  | Email this | Comments

What you’ll require here is about 30 minutes’ endurance, a $10 budget, and a good reason why you’d want to swap some good old versatile wall plugs in for USB-only power outlets. Once you’ve got all that sorted, it’s a quick skip to the source link, where you’ll get step-by-step instructions on converting to “the future” of power distribution. And hey, just to help you justify all that expenditure of effort, we’ve got a whole category devoted to the cornucopia of most awesome devices you can power via USB. Kudos gained for clever design, kudos lost for relatively redundant outcome.

In-wall USB charger is as cheap as it is ingenious originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SlashGear, GottaBeMobile  |  Instructables  | Email this | Comments

You’d buy a solar powered charger for your MacBook, right? Save money, save the planet, and all that other hippy stuff the Mac user cares about. How much would you pay for such a thing? $100? $200? Sure, it might be the cost of a couple spare batteries, but you’ll make it back in the end, won’t you?

How about $1,200, or $200 more than the MacBook itself? That’s what Quickertek wants for its new 55 Watt Apple Juicz (ho ho) charger, which can refill a tired Mac’s battery in as little as six hours. You can opt for the less powerful 27 Watt model which will take from eight to 12 hours to complete a recharge, and consequently “only” costs $700.

The solar panels are pretty huge when folded out, measuring around 12 times the size of the computer they are supplying (imagine a 4 x 3 grid of 13” MacBook Pros and you’ll get the idea). If you’re the kind of person who likes to camp for days on end, but can’t go without a computer, we guess this might be for you. On the other hand, $1,200 will buy an awful lot of extension cord.

Product page [Quickertek via