While just about everything else has cut the cord and gone wireless, the last remaining cable, the power cable, is trying to follow suit.  Recently, a few companies have come out with wireless inductive charging accessories, however,   the wireless part is a bit misleading.   I think a better term to describe the technology would be “plugless” since you still need surface contact to provide power for charging.

A few weeks ago Dell announced a new business notebook computer the Latitude Z.  One of the many new features offered with this high end business laptop is the capability to buy a separate stand that allows wireless charging.  The stand and the notebook have inductive charging capability which allows the user to simply place the notebook on top of the stand and wallah, it’s charging.  Truthfully, this is not significantly different than plugging in a power cable, none the less it’s pretty cool.

A couple of other companies are offering inductive charging accessories as well, with solutions for mobile devices.  Powermat and Pure Energy Solutions offer products for Smartphones and the Nintendo DS.  They are both similar in that the kit has a charging mat and a charging skin for the phone or DS.  Once the skin is on the mobile device, just set it down on the charging mat.  Both companies offer a charging mat that can accommodate 2  to 3 devices however you’ll need to buy a separate charging skin for each device.  The Powermat kit which includes the mat, a universal adapter and one skin retails for around $140.  Additional skins are $40.  The Pure Energy version retails for around $80 and additional skins are $35.  The Palm Pre also has an inductive charging kit available which is similar to these solutions.

So is plugless charging really that much easier than plugging in a power cable?  Not really, but once the cost comes down, the convenience is probably worth it.  Where this really makes sense is when it’s applied to multiple devices.  Rather than have 3 or 4 gadgets each charging overnight with their own power cable, you could use one mat with one cable to charge several devices.  I can imagine coming into the house and dropping my cell phone (or two), as well as my wife and kids phones onto a mat and them all charging from a single plug.  That truly does eliminate cables and clutter.

This week Netgear launched the Digital Entertainer Live product, the latest in the Digital Entertainer series of products, which has the capability of streaming internet video from YouTube and other popular sites as well as viewing digital media from your home network.  It has integrated support for VuNow which is basically a search engine that searches a limited number of internet content websites, and also allows some pay-per-view or download-to-own services such as Roxio CinemaNow.  The Digital Entertainer Live is a lower cost model than previous versions and presumably with  a lower cost point to entice consumers with fairly simple features.  I found it listed on Amazon for $149.99 and if you want to connect wirelessly to your Wi-Fi  router the Wi-Fi wireless USB adapter is an additional $39.99.  The connection to the TV is through HDMI and in order to keep the cost down it’s the only option.  The kit comes with a remote that can be used for searching internet content on the websites that are supported, with an on screen keyboard. This can be a bit arduous at times but none the less gets the job done.  The product supports a wide variety of media formats, so just about anything you have saved in your personal digital library should be viewable.  Setup is fairly simple IF you already have a home network with digital media sharing enabled.  It will automatically search your home network for digital content and even the wireless setup is relatively easy with an on-screen guide to help connect to your router.

Okay enough of the propaganda.  Overall I think it’s a pretty cool product with an attractive price point, but unfortunately that’s not enough to make this product a success.  So why will this product fail as Netgear makes another attempt to go beyond what they are good at?  It’s simple really.  The basis of this product as it should be for a Netgear product is the home network.  As we all know with Wi-Fi, results may vary depending on a wide variety of conditions.  The other challenge is that only a small percentage of consumers have the technical savvy to setup a home network with media sharing capabilities.  Lastly because you are not running a real internet browser, the content is limited to subset of internet websites.  VuNow also makes a disclaimer that some content from the available websites may not play properly.

So while the Digital Entertainer Live tries to address how we get digital media to our living room, unfortunately it falls a little short in too many areas.  While I am glad to see yet another attempt to provide a solution to view internet content and digital media on the living room TV, we deserve more than this.  Something simple that allows all possibilities of content without restrictions.  NoWire is coming, stay tuned……..

News Flash “Hard Drives Break”.  Especially when they are treated the way most consumers treat their laptops.  We are pretty careful when the drive is turned on but when it’s turned off and in your carrying case, well you know.  Despite all the improvements that hard drive manufacturers have made a hard drive is still a mechanical disk and at some point WILL FAIL. To use an old cliché, it’s not if, it’s when.  If you have been using notebook computers for more than a few years it’s probably happened to you.

Enter the external hard drive.  You can now buy a 1TB (1TB = 1000GB) external hard drive for $100. In a few years, yes a few years, we will buy a 10TB (10000GB) external hard drive for the same $100.  It is merely a matter of Moore’s Law and regardless of the obstacles and naysayers, you can bet on it.

While the hard drive manufacturers continue this race to a petabyte and beyond, we the consumer are trying to figure out ways to fill up all of that inexpensive storage.  As most of us have found, movies and TV shows do a pretty good job of this and as HD video becomes more prevalent 10GB chunks of storage will disappear quickly.

Now let’s get back to the laptop.  While most notebook computer users realize that they should backup their data, most do not or do it very rarely. When their hard drive does crash, the latest back up, well let’s just say some time and many gigabytes of data have usually elapsed. Now why should something so relatively simple be neglected or forgotten?  Convenience!  I know what you are saying, how hard is it to plug in a USB cable and back-up your drive?  Well apparently pretty hard unless it’s an absolute necessity.

Enter Wireless USB.  With Wireless USB those days of neglected backups can be gone.  Each time you walk into the room where your wireless hard drive is, it will backup any new files from your laptop automatically without you having to do a thing.   You won’t even notice the joy of your backup happening while you attend to more important tasks like updating your Facebook page.   If you have multiple laptops for the family everyone can use the same drive to backup their laptop hard drive and share data.  Now let’s take this one step further, would it be cool if you could use that same external hard drive and view or stream content from it to your TV.  I think so!  With Wireless USB and a NoWire™ adapter, you can do that.

Yes there are other wireless ways to backup your notebook computer and stream content to your TV.  Apple sells Time Capsule which is a hard drive and Wi-Fi base station in one.  Also, you can pay for remote storage but again you are relying on a network and do you really want all of your data in “the cloud”?  By the way, they use hard drives too.  You can also use a network hard drive.  Get the theme here.  For a few percent of the population any of these methods are fine, but for the bulk of laptop consumers these are just too complicated.  Not only is Wireless USB easier, but it will back-up your data 3 to 12 times faster than Wi-Fi.

So why can’t you go out and buy a Wireless USB drive now?  It seems while the cost of 1TB is $100 and going down by the day, adding a penny to the cost of a hard drive is forbidden even for the potential of convenience.  We, the consumer have greatly benefited from the race to a petabyte, so wouldn’t it seem like with that savings we could afford some added convenience.  So what do you think, would you pay a little more for easy back up wireless storage?

Okay enough self promotion.  I wanted to start this blog to share opinions on cool gadgets. I think there are a lot of great consumer products out there, some well known category changers like the iPhone but also some lesser known gadgets trying to change categories as well like Novatel’s MiFi™.  My plan is to write mostly about wireless gadgets and technologies but more importantly about applications that utilize and benefit from wireless technologies.

That’s also what Alereon’s NoWire™ family of products is about.  NoWire is a very cool technology which has the potential to be a category changer.  A SIMPLE way to wirelessly connect all of your mobile devices to your not so mobile devices like your TV.

So stay tuned to NoWire.  Let’s see how wireless technologies could change your life.