Energy Harvesting - wireless power?

Since a wireless charger (RCA Airnergy) was announces at CES that harvests energy from wifi signals that are around the topic is everywhere in the (tech) news. It is an exciting prospective to imagine mobile devices that will recharge themselves from the environment they are in. However I am not sure how well harvesting energy from RF will worked in regular environments - not saturated with radio signals.

The topic is really exciting - and in the end people probably do not care much if the energy is harvested from their movement, from light, temperature or RF - as long as it works. There is a introductory article to energy harvesting by Joe Paradiso and Thad Starner [1] which is worthwhile to read.

[1] Joseph A. Paradiso, Thad Starner, "Energy Scavenging for Mobile and Wireless Electronics," IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 18-27, Jan.-Mar. 2005, doi:10.1109/MPRV.2005.9

Interesting articles in Wired Magazine

In Miami airport I picked up the current issue of the wired magazine - and Airberlin gave me plenty of time to read it - was nearly through when we finally departed after 2 hours without air condition in the plane :-(

Not really complaining as there is a set of inspiring articles about the digital economy:

• The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online
• Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability
• The New New Economy: More Startups, Fewer Giants, Infinite Opportunity
• Beyond Detroit: On the Road to Recovery, Let the Little Guys Drive

hope you find a more comfortable place to read them ;-)