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| Way cool charging thingy. |
It's not a new idea that technology created for the developing world might find its way back to the United States. It was true of the so-called $100 laptop -- which actually cost $200, but who's counting? It might happen with MRI machines developed for China market at half the cost. What's to keep them from being sold here?
Well, here's a bit of encouragement for cell phone users and others. Chargers proliferate around my house like weeds. The phone companies will happily sell you a car charger for their phone for $35. It won't work with anything else. Pretty good work if you can get it.
Now a company called Fenix International has developed a charger for use in Uganda and other developing world countries.
It's part of a whole suite of products Fenix designed to help local people to become one-stop electricity providers. But you can use it yourself, too.
Here's how the device works. Instead of using some proprietary cord conversion system, the charger just has little contacts that can clip onto almost any Li-Ion battery.
The charger can plug into any computer or USB wall adapter, but Fenix designed it specifically to be plugged into the ReadySet, an all-in-one "intelligent battery" that can take in power from a variety of sources (bicycle generator, solar, the grid), store and smooth it, then spit it back out to charge phones or other appliances.The one downside to the Fenix charger is that it requires you to pull the battery out of your gadget to charge it, which means that you can't use it with your iPhone.
Get with the program, Apple.
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| Way cool charging thingy does a camera battery. |
