Gadgets: Wireless Niceness

January 15, 2009 12:38 PM

By Jay Garrett

We've got used to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth making us wire-free but we're still cabled up for recharging our gadgets and transferring big chunks of data.

Why? This is 2009 for crissakes! We should all be in jet-cars by now so let's at least free ourselves from these ties that bind!

Well, emancipation is almost here folks!

For the data stuff Toshiba brings the 'Transfer Jet' and Powermat brings up the charging....errrr...'Powermat'.

The Transfer Jet allows ridiculously swift data transfers without wires, and is activated simply by moving two gizmos close together in a near-field stylee.

It was displayed by Sony last year but Tosh says it’s ready to shove the wireless transfer technology inside laptops and TVs launching this year.

But be prepared for the wizardry to appear in camcorders, cameras, PDA's and all manner of things after that.

When it’s really, really here all you’ll have to do is plonk a couple of enabled devices within 3cm of each other, and then they’ll blast information between them at up to 560Mbps!

When all that cleverness needs powering back-up, the reality of charging your gadgets wirelessly as well could almost be here!

Powermat reckons it will have docks capable of charging three devices at once and sleeves for common gadgets available by the summer.

The technology is based on magnetic induction, and is claimed to be over 90 per cent efficent.

It has a crunch-friendly price as well for new tech.

The charger will initially cost $100 in the US, with adaptors priced at $29.99.

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Jay Garrett is a a professional bass player and gadget junkie. Check out his blog at idleparis.co.uk