Finally! Someone’s come up with a way to charge AA batteries right from a USB port on your desktop or laptop computer. No more worrying about whether you remembered to pack that extra bulky charger and cords or if you remembered to charge/top off your batteries the night before. 

While a little more expensive than buying a regular NiMH rechargeable battery and charger, the space saving of not HAVING to carry around a charger more than makes up for it. And if needed, these batteries can be charged in many popular brands of smart chargers (in case your USB ports are busy.)

These batteries might not hold quite as much as some NiMH batteries, 1300ma vs the newest extra capacity 2500ma, but how’s this for handy? You can use some game consoles’ USB ports to charge a set of these batteries while you’re playing, and swap them out as your wireless mice, game controllers or other battery-operated items need them, practically guaranteeing charged batteries are always available. 

With these batteries, you can go both green — each battery can take up to 500 charges before being recycled, saving CO2 and reducing toxic waste over non-rechargeable batteries — and go light. What a great combination.

The tech specs for these little babies are:

• Battery Chemistry
• NiMH – Nickel Metal Hyrdride
• Technical Specifications
• 90%+ Charged after 5 Hours by powered USB
• Also rechargeable by approved smart NiMH chargers at 250ma for 7 Hours
• Battery Type
• Rechargeable AA NiMH Battery 1.2v 1300mah
• Product Specifications
• Built in Intelligent Charger
• Charge by powered USB port (Laptop, Desktop, Gaming Console, etc.)

Moixa, the company that makes these is also developing AAA batteries with a fold-out USB connector, and also larger sizes (C, D), 9-Volt models and even cell phone and PDA batteries.  It’s about time someone thought of this!  (That could ultimately save having to carry 2-3 or more bulky chargers around!)

You can find the AA batteries right now at Amazon in 2 and 4 packs (or for the person who needs AA batteries for a business or for the serious music listener/gamer, in 24 packs!):

Little known rechargebable battery facts (according to Moixa):

The average person probably only recharges their batteries about 10 times because of never remembering to put them in the charger or from losing the charger. (With these new batteries, that isn’t a problem. Pretty much anywhere there’s an easily accessible powered USB port, you can charge them up.)

In the United Kingdom (where Moixa is located) 680,000,000 batteries are bought each year. The average household there uses 21 batteries per year. This creates an estimated 19,000 tonnes of general purpose batteries waste alone, of which less than,1000 tonnes are recycled.  (I don’t even WANT to guess what the United States is using/throwing away!)

The NiMH chemistry used in the cell is also better for the environment than other types of rechargeable batteries, in particular those with NiCad chemistry (which is quite toxic due to the cadmium, a known carcinogen). It’s also inherently safer than lithium battery chemistry.

Technorati Tags: aa batteries, green technology, moixa, nimh batteries, rechargeable batteries, usbcell

Check it out:

William Yuan, a seventh-grader from Portland, OR, developed a three-dimensional solar cell that absorbs UV as well as visible light. The combination of the two might greatly improve cell efficiency. William’s project earned him a $25,000 scholarship and a trip to the Library of Congress to accept the award, which is usually given out for research at the graduate level.12-year-old Revolutionizes the Solar Cell, Sep 2008
Read the whole article for more info.

Technorati Tags: prodigies, science project, solar cells, Solar Power, three dimensional solar cell

Yesterday the site was working fine and then Yahoo must have made some change to one of their servers or software because suddenly my site was totally unavailable. After waiting on the phone for over 1 1/2 hours, and then discussing the errors with the tech support guy, he finally checked with the system people and found the problem was on their side, but they had no idea what had happened to cause it. (Big surprise.)

So my choice was to either wait until it’s fixed (which was supposed to be within 12 hours at the least!) or to finally move to Bluehost.com, which I’d been thinking of doing anyway. (Guess they helped make up my mind, eh?) I like Bluehost as I already use it for other things, and they have decent pricing, great tools, and handy tech support if needed. They also support more add-ons than Yahoo, and let you tweak things at a more advanced level so this should make future website handling quite a bit easier for me.

I’m glad I decided to move the files – 24 hrs later, and the original site at Yahell, I mean, Yahoo, still is giving out http 400 errors with no fix in site, er, sight…

So, I will be trying to restore or replace the articles that were previously here and add new ones along the way in the meantime. (It’s always something in the fun and fascinating world of blogging and website design.)

Unfortunately, if I try to restore my previous backup, the files lockup or some are missing (differences between Yahoo’s MySQL and everyone else’s?), so any and all previous comments have been lost. Sorry ’bout that…

BTW, the irony of the situation is, Yahoo sent me their annual ‘how do you like our Small Business Hosting’ service just a few hours before they killed mine. How’s that for timing? LOL

Technorati Tags: Hosting, SQL, Technology, WordPress, Yahoo

I just got an email notification from one of my favorite online ink cartridge retailers that they will be discontinuing most, if not all of their Epson compatible inkjet cartridges.

It appears Seiko Epson has been busy suing approx 24 makers of compatible cartridges pretty much saying that unless these companies are willing to pay for a license to use Epson technology – which would of course increase the cost and thus the price of compatible cartridges making them no better deal than the originals – then Epson is going to find a way to force them out of business to try to boost their own bottom line which has gone into the red recently.

Epson’s complained that they don’t make any money on actually selling printers and need to make all their money on the after-market cartridges and refilling used ones.  Note: I find that funny as none of my cartridges for either my CX88 or CX5800F are refillable and Epson has made them such that if you accidentally pull out one and try to use it again, it’s ruined and won’t work anymore, no matter how much ink is left in it.  Not to mention, Epson just got class-action sued for making their own cartridges trigger the “empty” signal long before they really are… (Detect a pattern there?)

It seems to me that the money they’ve spent suing these people (no doubt contributing to the loss they posted) would have been better spent on developing lower cost cartridges in order to compete better and make customers happy rather than pulling the rug out from people already using their printers.

Epson’s printer sales have dropped due to miscalculating the number of people wanting stand-alone printers versus multifunction units and they say they’ll have to sell current inventory at a loss in order to “realign” their inventory to the market. So, it seems, we consumers have to “fix” their business model by paying even more for supplies from only one source – them. Yeeesh.

The only reason I bought Epson this last time was they have separate cartridges for Magenta, Cyan, Yellow, (and Black) so I didn’t have to throw away 2 colors when the 3rd ran out (as you do in brands that have all 3 “colors” in 1).  Another reason I went with Epson was there were alternatives to their exorbitantly priced “brand” name cartridges. However, now that that’s changing and places like Office Max and Walgreen’s refill cartridges from brands like HP with quality ink, I definitely will probably switch printer brands as refillable cartridges are more ecologically-sound anyway besides less expensive than what Epson will be offering. (With NO competition, their ultimate goal, I can just imagine what price heights their own cartridges would reach.)

So I guess Epson won’t have to worry about losing money on selling me my next printer as I won’t be buying another given their latest business practices.

Technorati Tags: Computers, Technology

It appears that in the battle of the formats, Toshiba America has finally thrown in the towel, and announced that they will be discontinuing their HD DVD format players/recorders, giving the Blu-Ray format backed by Sony the match by default.

Quite a few people are upset given that they purchased player/recorders and XBox’s with HD DVD heavily last year and for Christmas in anticipation of many more titles to come, and now the big retailers such as Wal-Mart, Amazon, Best Buy, and movie studios like Universal and Paramount have said they will follow Toshiba’s lead, and drop providing new stuff in HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray. Owners of the pretty much now-defunct format are saying they would have gone PS3 instead if Toshiba could have admitted they lost the format wars way back when instead of making sure they were able to sell of existing inventory at full price for the holidays.

However, Toshiba has stated that no refunds will be in the offing. (Just as in the fight game, you don’t get your money back just because your boxer lost the match, eh?) Since the machines still work as intended and there are programs around, and Toshiba will provide ongoing support for existing hardware, purchasers will just have to be happy with what they got. (Sure, right, we know how well THAT works!)

I figured Blu-ray would probably win out in the long run since it holds 25GB in the single layer format and HD DVD holds only 15GB. Remember Beta and VHS tapes? Beta had higher quality recording, but because VHS could tape 6-8 hours instead of only 5, it eventually won out…

So what does this mean for movie and game-lovers? Well, for the moment, HD DVD titles are being blown out of inventories to make room for Blu-ray ones, so if you want to keep your HD DVD player fed, now’s the time to get the stuff you’ve been waiting on. (Amazon’s got HD-DVD stuff on sale for 50% or more off right now!) However, if you hadn’t purchased either type of player yet, you can now either get a really great bargain on an HD DVD player that will only have a limited amount of product for it or finally take the plunge and pick up a Blu-ray device. (That is, unless you want to wait and see what takes its place in the next 2-3 years. LOL)

Technorati Tags: Blu-Ray, DVD, GAMING, HD DVD, MOVIES, Technology

(Concept Pictures by New York’s Fxfowle architects)

Talk about an amazing feat of engineering – POPULAR MECHANICS has an article about the new arch bridge about to go in at Dubai in the United Arab Emirates:

It will be almost as tall as the Golden Gate Bridge at its highest (with the GG Bridge standing up to 746ft and the Dubai bridge standing 670ft). However, the mile-long Dubai bridge will be able to handle up the 12 lanes of traffic in EACH direction allowing up to 2000 cars across per HOUR on each side making it the largest arch bridge in the world when it’s completed in 2012!

Talk about amazing! And they even managed to make it very, very cool looking at the same time. And using the newest tech, this bridge should hopefully be quake-proof and stand up to quite a bit of beating, giving the Golden Gate and the new Bay Bridge Skyway runs for their money as some of the world’s greatest bridges.

Technorati Tags: Bridges, Engineering, Technology

Back in the day I used to sell computers. Imagine, then, when a computer that weighed over 14lbs was called “portable”! (First, the good old Kaypro with its CP/M operating system and then came the Compaq with its IBM compatibility – they called them “transportable” – luggable was closer to accurate, on a GOOD day.)

So when I saw the commercial for the new Apple MacBook Air, I thought, “Finally, a computer that actually is worthy of the name laptop!” It was so thin, you almost couldn’t see it. LOL Now THAT’s what I call portable.

Just check out these specs:

- .16 to .75-inch thickness on top
- 12.8 x 8.94 inches
- 3 lbs
- 5 hours of battery life with everything running

- Intel Core 2 Duo Processor at 1.6 or 1.8GHz
- 800MHz frontside bus.
- 2GB RAM 667MHz DDR2 standard.

- 13.3-inch screen, LED backlit.
- 1,280 x 800 pixels
- Micro-DVI adapter (for DVI, VGA, composite and S-Video output)
- Intel GMA X3100 Graphics processor with 144MB RAM shared

- 1.8-inch 80GB HD or 64GB Solid State Drive
- Multitouch trackpad with gestures. Pans, zooms, rotates, etc.
- 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1.
- Optional external HD for $99, USB-bus powered.
- Full backlit keyboard.
- One USB 2.0, one audio port, one Micro-DVI

It’s not the cheapest Apple computer by any means, but for anyone who’s toted around a “normal” laptop on a regular basis, the savings in chiropractor’s bills would more than make up for it. Not to mention not having your legs fall asleep all the time from the weight of other “portable” pc’s…

Check out the Apple MacBook Air when you get a chance to see the possibilities of truly portable computing.

For a product tour, watch the video or click here to see the Apple MacBook Air product page.

Technorati Tags: Air, Apple, Computers, Laptops, Mac, MacBook, Notebooks