“Desk Of The Future” Will Automatically Charge Your iPod & Cell Phone
Posted January 19, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
On Thursday we told you about an advancement in mirrors that could change the way you shop for clothes.
Now technology is looking at making another alteration to something you probably never thought needed it – your lowly desk at work.
If you’re like many gadget crazy people, you probably carry around an iPod, a cell phone, a PDA, a BlackBerry, or a combination of all of them.
They’re wonderful devices – until the batteries run out. Then follows the hunt for a charger, a place to plug it in and a tangle of wires while the device absorbs the power.
But a new piece of office furniture will have the ability to charge all those necessities and more without you doing anything more than simply putting it down on the desk itself.
It’s called ‘eCoupled’ and it uses a magnetic field to charge all the gizmos without anything but the eCoupled device itself having to be plugged in. When your gadget runs out of power, you just lay it on top of the desk surface and let the technology do the rest.
The company that makes the charger, Fulton Innovation, believes that in our portable world, this invention could make a big difference.
It expects to see it start on your desk and eventually translate into powering or recharging other bigger devices, like a lamp, a laptop or even a can opener in your kitchen.
And it could also soon land in your car, making it possible to both use and charge your electronic extras without those annoying cigarette lighter plugs.
It’s not on the market yet but it’s coming. An office furniture manufacturer named Herman Miller has licensed the technology and expects to incorporate it into new models it’s currently building.
It doesn’t really sound like much, but those who support the idea think it could make a financial difference.
“Hallelujiah!” proclaims Jim Lynch of the Association of Professional Office Managers when he heard of the innovation. He believes it will help his members save money on all those adaptors that are taking up space in many workplaces.
“Those things are 30 bucks each and if you have 50 people in your office the cost really adds up,” he explains.
Which is another way of saying he expects to get a charge out of it. And you may , too, when it hits the market in the coming months.
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