By Andrew Liszewski

Sony continues with their ‘me too!’ mentality with last week’s announcement of their new Portable USB Power Supply Adapter. It’s apparently available now, though a 20-minute search of Sony’s various sites around the world returned no indication of its existence besides this vague press release on the Sony Europe site. But from what I can tell, it features a modular design with one half serving as a charger/ac adapter, while the other features a rechargeable Li-Ion battery and a USB port for topping off any gadgets that can charge over USB. Unfortunately I’ve no idea what the battery’s capacity is or just how many devices it can recharge, or even how much it will set you back.

[ PR - Never run out of power with the new USB Portable Power Supply from Sony ] VIA [ Newlaunches ]

By Andrew Liszewski

There are many benefits to biking instead of driving a car or even taking public transit, but just because it’s a fairly low-tech mode of transportation doesn’t mean you still can’t enjoy your electronic amenities. The BioLogic ReeCharge from Dahon is another dynamo powered charging solution for bikes that features a 1600 mAh lithium polymer battery and a single USB port allowing you to charge your cellphone or even power a GPS device.

The electronics that buffer the “incoming and outgoing current so it’s safe for all electrical devices” and the battery are all housed in a splash-proof silicon case so you don’t need to disconnect it when you get caught in the rain (your other electronics are another story) and for reference it’s able to fully charge the iPhone in about 3 hours. The BioLogic ReeCharge should be available next month for $99, but you’ll already need to have a dynamo system installed on your bike since that’s not included in the price.

[ Dahon BioLogic ReeCharge ] VIA [ Bike Hugger ]

By Chris Scott Barr

With the sheer number of wireless devices in my house, rechargeable batteries are a godsend. Unfortunately, they’re also rather expensive. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just take those old, cheap batteries and stick them in a charger? Apparently with this new ReZAP charger, you can.

According to the company, you can take any regular battery and with this magic device, recharge it up to 10 times. This is done by using intelligent microprocessors and software to regulate the charging process. It can detect what type of battery has been inserted (AA, AAA, AAAA, C, D or 9-volt) and automatically determine the right charging algorithm to give it a fresh charge. If you’re wanting to get the most out of your cheap batteries, then this $60 gadget might suit you when it comes out next month. However, if the quality of the product is anything like the company’s website, I’ll definitely pass.

[ PC Treasures ] VIA [ Coolest-Gadgets ]

By Chris Scott Barr

I know you guys are pretty excited about the HP Touchsmart that we’re giving away, but as we all know, there can be only one winner. Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t have a shot at winning something else. This week the folks at RichardSolo wants one of you to get their new 1800 battery backups that we mentioned a little while back.

The RichardSolo 1800 will charge up your mobile device at least once, with a little juice to spare. It’ll also give you a flashlight and laser pointer when you need them. Just drop us a comment and next Friday I’ll pick one of you at random to take home the prize.

(The giveaway is only open to US residents)

[ RichardSolo ]

By Evan Ackerman

I’ll be honest… I usually carry around three (yes, three) different mobile charging apparatuses when I know I’m going to be out with my gadgets all day: one of these, one of these, and this. Is it overkill? Probably. But being a ::cough:: professional journalist, running out of batteries is simply not an option. Even I, however, would not wear a universal wrist charger. It’s just too dorky, and I’m really more of a geek. Or I like to think so, anyway.

If you just look at the numbers, this universal wrist charger is actually pretty decent: it has a 1500 mAh battery, weighs 82 grams, and will charge anything that only needs 5 volts (same as a USB port). Since most of your gadgets are probably hand-held, it’s a convenient way to be using something and charging it at the same time. Problem is, there’s really no getting around the utter dorkiness of this thing. If it also had a little LCD on it or something, you could at least pretend that it was some kind of ridiculously fancy watch, but as it is, it just has 4 little lights to indicate what level of charge it has. Wait a sec… Random lights? Weird design? I’ve got it! Just tell everyone that you’re sporting the latest and greatest from Tokyo Flash, and wear the universal wrist charger in anonymous pride. Problem solved!

The universal wrist charger is available now from ThinkGeek for $35.

[ ThinkGeek ] VIA [ Craziest Gadgets ]

By Evan Ackerman

Remember the Airnergy WiFi power harvester that we showed you last January at CES? You know, the thing that charges your gadgets out of thin air that several commenters pointed out was (mathematically speaking) at best impractical and at worst impossible? Well, it’s now called AirPower, and while RCA still won’t provide details on how it actually manages to pull substantial amounts of electricity out of the air in what seems to be a violation of the first (I think) law of thermodynamics, they have designed some new cases for it.

So, yeah. Looking good. But does it actually work? RCA reiterated that the AirPower will charge itself “with around five to six hours of Wi-Fi exposure” by “regurgitating and converting the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi signal,” which is the same sort of thing we heard at CES… I really want to believe that RCA wouldn’t keep showing this thing off and making the same impressive claims if they didn’t have a working one in a R&D bunker somewhere, but at the same time, here’s a quote from a commenter on our original article:

“By my calculations, 100% efficiency and absorption at 5 feet away from a 100mW home router, (reasonable figures), it would take 34.5 years to charge that blackberry battery.”

Also, the release date of the AirPower charger has been pushed from this summer to the holidays, and the pricing has gone from $40 to “has yet to be determined.” C’mon RCA, laws of physics be damned, I want this to be real.

VIA [ DVICE ]

By Evan Ackerman

Lithium ion batteries are way, way better than nickel metal hydride batteries or (shudder) nickle cadmium batteries. But still, batteries are batteries, and they have a way of going from cool to sucks in a matter of only a few hundred charging cycles, whatever their supposed lifetimes are purported to be. The six cell battery on my netbook, which incidentally cost about a third as much as the entire computer, was advertised as being able to last six hours, lasted four brand new, and is now (a year later) down to three on a good day.

By doing something clever involving keeping tin particles bonded together, a Japanese company called Eamex is saying that they’ve been able to develop a battery that can be charged and discharged some 10,000 times, which means that they should last about 20 years if you recharge them about 1.3 times a day. Also, they’re talking about having a battery with a power density of 10,000 W/kg by the end of the year. Most of this stuff is probably headed for electric cars and such, at least initially… Guess it’s time to go buy one of those, then.

Oh, and I spent 20 minutes looking for an interesting picture of a lithium ion battery. I couldn’t find one, so instead here’s a picture of a bunny with a pancake on his head.

[ Eamex ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Evan Ackerman

This looks, at first glance, like an incredibly useful charging accessory: it plugs into a USB port and has adjustable teeth to charge any of those blocky, unfriendly, proprietary custom camera batteries. Any maybe it still is an incredibly useful charging accessory… But when we wrote about it last July, we were hoping that it would come along with some of Energizer’s universal power packs. Why? Because the 5 volts that comes out of your USB port isn’t enough juice to charge DSLR batteries, which generally need something like 7.4 volts.

It doesn’t look like that’s how it’s going to go down, since Brando is selling this, not Energizer. Oh well.

If you have one of those wimpy cameras that takes 3.7 volts or whatever (not that you should be ashamed of that), this accessory could certainly come in handy, since in addition to being able to charge many different kinds of batteries from a USB port, it’ll also work with all of those portable USB charger gadgets out there. At only $12, it’s a pretty good deal, just not as good of a deal as it could have been.

[ Brando ] VIA [ RFJ ]

By Evan Ackerman

If you’re one of those uber-hip hipsters with the solar panels on your roof, I envy you and your free electricity. But until somebody invents a solar panel that generates electricity in the dark, there are always going to be times when you’ve got more electricity than you need (high noon) and times when you’ve got less electricity than you need (low noon, aka high moon). If you’ve been generating excess energy, you’ve probably been selling it back to your energy company at a tidy profit, but that doesn’t exactly help you achieve grid independence… The way to do THAT would be through some kind of energy storage system, which lets you store up excess energy and use it when you need it. This is just what Panasonic would like to install in your house, in the form of a giant lithium ion battery.

This household battery, which Panasonic says should be able to power the average home (whatever that means) for a solid week, will be available sometime in 2011. It will be somehow hooked up to your TV, which will allow you to monitor energy usage. We don’t yet have any information on how much this thing will cost, but I bet it’ll be hard to justify in terms of storage benefits and cost savings (and possibly convenience) versus the up-front cost of the system. As with most micro-energy generation systems, it’ll probably end up being more of a feel-good measure than an actual boost to efficiency, but at least it’ll keep your computer on for an extra week when the revolution comes and there’s no more grid power.

VIA [ Physorg ]