Google will begin to offer browser-based offline contact to its Gmail Webmail application

Google announced the release of a new system which allows users to access their accounts offline.

Google Delivers Offline admittance for Gmail

Google will begin to offer browser-based offline access to its Gmail Webmail application, a much-awaited feature.
This functionality, which will allow people to use the Gmail interface when disconnected from the Internet, has been expected since mid-2007.
That's when Google introduced Gears, a browser plug-in designed to provide offline access to Web-hosted applications like Gmail.
Gears is currently used for offline access to several Web applications from Google, like the Reader RSS manager and the Docs word processor, and from other providers like Zoho, which uses it for offline access to its e-mail and word processing browser-based applications.
Rajen Sheth, senior product manager for Google Apps, said that applying Gears to Gmail has been a very complex task, primarily because of the high volume of messages accounts can store. "Gmail was a tough hurdle," he said.
Google ruled out the option of letting users replicate their entire Gmail inboxes to their PCs, which in many cases would translate into gigabytes of data flowing to people's hard drives. It instead developed algorithms that will automatically determine which messages should be downloaded to PCs, taking into consideration a variety of factors that reflect their level of importance to the user, he said. At this point, end-users will not be able to tweak these settings manually.
"We had to make it such that we're managing a sizable amount of information offline and doing it well in a way that's seamless to the end-user," he said.
For example, in Gmail, users can put labels on messages, as well as tag them with stars to indicate their importance, and Google can use that information to determine which messages to download. Sheth estimates that in most cases Gmail will download several thousand messages, preferring those that are more recent as well. Depending on the amount of messages users have on their accounts, they may get downloads going back two months or two years, he said.
Google will begin to roll out the Gmail offline functionality Tuesday evening and expects to make it available to everybody in a few days, whether they use Gmail in its standalone version or as part of the Apps collaboration and communication suite for organizations.
While the feature was "rigorously" tested internally at Google, it is a first, early release upon which Google expects to iterate and improve on. That's why it's being released under the Google Labs label. Users are encouraged to offer Google feedback.
Users have been able to manage their Gmail accounts offline via other methods for years, since Gmail supports the POP and IMAP protocols that let people download and send out messages using desktop e-mail software like Microsoft Outlook and others.
However, the Gears implementation will let people work within the Gmail interface without the need for a separate PC application. When offline, messages will be put in a Gears browser queue, and the desktop and online versions of the accounts will be synchronized automatically when users connect to the Internet again. This will come in handy for people who travel a lot and often find themselves without Internet access, Sheth said.
To activate the offline functionality, users of standalone Gmail service and the standard Apps edition should click "settings" after logging on to their Gmail account. There, they should click on the "Labs" tab, select "Enable" next to "Offline Gmail" and click "Save Changes." A new "Offline" link will then appear in the right-hand corner of the account interface. Users of the Education and Premier Apps versions will have to wait for their Apps administrators to enable Gmail Labs for everyone on the domain first.
Google is also rolling out Gears-based offline access for its Calendar application. However, it will be for now read-only and exclusively available to Google Apps account holders. Previously, Google introduced read-only offline access to the Spreadsheet and Presentation applications in Google Docs, which is also part of Google Apps.

release of offline Gmail.

The early version of the app is available now to users with the U.S./U.K. English version of Google Labs.
Pegged as an "experimental" feature, the app is aimed at maintaining Gmail's functionality even when you're not online. Built on Google's Gear's platform, once enabled the feature downloads a cache of your mail to your PC. When you're logged on the Web, it syncs the cache with the Gmail servers.
While you're offline, you can read, star, and label messages. If you send a message when you're offline, Gmail places it in your outbox and sends it as soon as you log back in. A special "flaky connection" setting splits the difference between on and offline modes ("when you're 'borrowing' your neighbor's wireless," says Google), utilizing a local cache while syncing it with the online version.

UCLA researchers have reprogrammed human induced pluripotent stem cells

For the first time, UCLA researchers have reprogrammed human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into the cells that finally become eggs and sperm, possibly opening the door for new treatments for sterility using patient-specific cel

The iPS cells were coaxed into forming germ line precursor cells which include genetic material that may be passed on to a child. The study appears today in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Stem Cells.
“This finding could be important for people who are rendered infertile through disease or injury. We may, one day, be able to replace the germ cells that are lost,” said Amander Clark, a Broad Stem Cell Research Center scientist and senior author of the study. “And these germ cells would be specific and genetically related to that patient.”
Theoretically, an infertile patient’s skin cells, for example, could be taken and reprogrammed into iPS cells, which, like embryonic stem cells, have the ability to become every cell type in the human body. Those cells could then be transformed into germ line precursor cells that would eventually become eggs and sperm. Clark cautioned, however, that scientists are still many years from using these cells in patients to treat infertility. There is still much to be learned about the process of making high quality germ cells in the lab.In another important finding, Clark’s team discovered that the germ line cells generated from human iPS cells were not the same as the germ line cells derived from human embryonic stem cells. Certain vital regulatory processes were not performed correctly in the human iPS derived germ cells, said Clark, an assistant professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology.
So it’s crucial, Clark contends, that work continue on the more controversial human embryonic stem cells that come from donated, excess material from in vitro fertilization that would otherwise be destroyed.
When germ cells are formed, they need to undergo a specific series of biological processes, an essential one being the regulation of imprinted genes. This is required for the germ cells to function correctly. If these processes are not performed the resulting eggs or sperm, are at high risk for not working as they should. This has significant consequences, given that the desired outcome is a healthy child.
“Further research is needed to determine if germ line cells derived from iPS cells, particularly those which have not been created by retroviral integration, have the ability to correctly regulate themselves like the cells derived from human embryonic stem cells do,” Clark said. “When we looked at the germ cells derived from embryonic stem cells, we found that they regulated as expected, whereas those from the iPS cells were not regulated in the same way. We need to do much more work on this to find out why.”

Humanitarian goals, science get new life

PRESIDENT Obama's inauguration has led to the resumption of aid to international groups that perform or give information about abortions and should open the door to important scientific research. Both developments are a boost to humanitarian and medical advances that should expand during the Obama administration.
The new president signed an executive order on Friday that ended the ban on giving taxpayer money to international family groups that offer abortions or provide related information. The assistance was available from the Agency for International Development during the Clinton administration but banned during the Reagan and both Bush administrations.
Obama also is expected to restore funding for the U.N. Population Fund, which George W. Bush had rejected on the contention that it supported a Chinese family planning policy of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization, an allegation that the agency vehemently denied. In fact, the lifting of the bans will reduce unintended pregnancies, abortions and the deaths of women from high-risk pregnancies.
The signing came a day after the Food and Drug Administration allowed the world's first clinical trial of a treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells for spinal cord injury. The therapy uses an old embryonic stem cell line that was allowed under the latest Bush administration but the approval might have been delayed until Bush left office.
The Bush administration restricted federal financing for embryonic stem cell research because creation of the cells entailed destruction of human embryos, even though they had been destined for the trash. President Obama has pledged to remove some of the financial restrictions.

Flow cytometric analysis of Stem and Lineage Cell Markers

Research on stem cells is the subject of intense investigation, both from a basic science point of view, as well as a basis for cell-based therapies to treat disease. The ability to study and characterize stem cells has been aided by the identification of specific markers which allow researchers to characterize and enrich these cells. The use of immunophenotyping is an important technique to distinguish one population of cells from another. eBioscience is dedicated to providing you with a choice of innovative primary antibody reagents and flurochromes to accelerate your stem cell research using multicolor flow cytometry.

"Camera Phone Predator Alert Act" to protect citizens from being photographed illegally, without us knowledge

Congress Intros Bill to Force Cell Camera Sounds
The Camera Phone Predator Alert Act (H.R. 414) is the real deal. Fresh off the legislative desk of New York Representative Peter King (R), the bill--currently cosponsored by goose egg--would require an audible tone to accompany all cellular phones with an installed camera that are created in the U.S. This tone, likely a clicking noise of some sort, would sound, "within a reasonable radius of the phone whenever a photograph is taken with the camera in such phone." And don't think that evildoers would be able to conceal their predatory ways by flicking an iPhone-style audio toggle switch. Any mobile phones built after the bill becomes a law would be prohibited from including any way to eliminate or reduce the volume of said noise.
Camera Click Sound to be Legal Requirement
The draft of the legislation also mentions that the click sound should be audible within a sensible" distance.

The US is reportedly readying the "Camera Phone Predator Alert Act" to protect citizens from being photographed illegally, without their knowledge.While the topic has been mulled over for years, it is only now that the country is planning to put forth a legislation to make the camera click sound audible when a picture is clicked. While some cell phone manufacturers already have compliant devices in place, there are others where simply putting the phone into silent mode would let voyeuristic photography go undetected. Even for those phones on which the camera click sound cannot be turned off, users have been able to hack into the phone's firmware and remove the sound.The proposed bill would fall under the domain of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and is expected to be provided the status of a "safety requirement". Additionally, the draft of the legislation also mentions that the click sound should be audible within a "reasonable" distance.Similar laws are already in place on countries like Japan and Korea and most device manufacturers have been able to comply with the same.

Micro Camcorder - 'World's Smallest'

Things are getting ever smaller. If you doubt this, just check out the Micro Camcorder - a spy camera developed by Spy Gadget. The camcorder has claimed the spot for the 'World's Smallest Camcorder'.

The camcorder is so small that it can be hidden in a chewing-gum pack. It's a one touch record function and records videos at 15 fps (frames per second). The captured video is stored on a flash microSD card. It has built-in batteries and charges via USB. The camera can record video for over 30 hours with a 1GB card installed. The price quoted for the taking is USD 295 (Rs.11,800).

The world's best coolest ear buds

Skullcandy veered away from standard-issue black and white headphones - and struck gold.

Skullcandy is using fake alligator skin and rhinestones to shake up the headphone market, giving Philips and Sony a run for their money.

The half pipe tucked in a corner of the office is the first clue that Skullcandy is not your average company.
Other clues: In the teeth of the worst recession in generations, the five-year-old private company is growing like a weed. And it just scored a round of funding, from private-equity shop Goode Partners, at a time when investment dollars are scarce.
If the name Skullcandy doesn't register, it will with your kids (so will the term half pipe, which is a ramp, in this case for skateboarding, shaped like a pipe cut in half lengthwise).
Skullcandy's business is headphones, and they dominate the 12- to 25-year-old demographic with a line-up of gear covered in faux gator skin, gold foil, rhinestones and hip hop-inspired graphics. Pull back the hoody on any kid riding a snowboard in Park City, Utah and chances are pretty good, a pair of Skullcandy headphones, probably the top-selling "Smokin' Buds," will be pumping music into their ears.
Making electronics cool
From a distant No. 10 three years ago, Skullcandy is now North America's third-largest manufacturer of headphones by unit sales, behind consumer electronics giants Philips Electronics (PHG) and Sony (SNE), according to NPD Group. "We'll be No. 2 soon," predicted Skullcandy president Jeremy Andrus, legs dangling from the office half pipe. "My guess is some time next year."
After that, Skullcandy and the band of snowboarders, skaters, surfers and DJs that founder Rick Alden has assembled in Park City, will be gunning for No. 1. That is, if Alden, the CEO and creative madman to Andrus' operations guru, can figure out a way to do it without diluting the company's cool factor.
Skullcandy didn't invent headphones; what the company has done is make them into a fashion item. Kids don't want one pair, they want five. "We're like sunglasses," Alden said. "Except we sit on top of your head, and you wear them a lot more."
Skullcandy headphones are not the type you will hear audiophiles gushing about. They are mostly solid-sounding pieces of affordable gear that, unlike Sony's grey and black headphones, or Apple's white, don't disappear into the background. On the contrary, they make a statement. The snowboard, surf and skate inspired graphics and colors ask for attention, and speak to a lifestyle, or in most cases, a wannabe lifestyle.
Successful clothing brands are able to evoke that lifestyle magic, but it is the rare consumer electronics company that does it. Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) with its iPod is the obvious and most successful current example. Skullcandy has pulled it off so far, and in doing so sent revenue from essentially zero to approaching $100 million in just a few years. Sales more than doubled in 2008.
To put in perspective Skullcandy's momentum, when many consumer electronics companies saw sales fall off a cliff in November, Skullcandy's quadrupled year over year, according to Andrus.
That success is obviously gratifying to Alden, but it also has him worried about overexposure. "I was at the mountain riding with my son the other day, and everyone I saw was wearing Skullcandy headphone, I mean they were everywhere," Alden said. "I may go back to wearing black Sony's just to be different."
He's kidding, but his concern is real. Alden and his design team need to keep Skullcandy fresh, so it doesn't fall out of fashion and black becomes the new black. Fortunately the Skullcandy team has a secret weapon when they seek inspiration, design-wise and business-wise.
"We head to the mountain," Alden said, checking for the latest snowfall report on his laptop. "No good ideas ever come from sitting in an office, not around here at least."

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The Potential of Earbuds
There is great disagreement about:
Whether earbuds could potentially sound good, given their small size.
Whether any actual earbuds sound good, or whether the whole idea needs further development.
Which earbuds sound good and which sound bad.
Which of the expensive ($40-$80) earbuds sound so good that the extra cost is justified.
After testing many headphones and earbuds and applying my extensive experience tweaking equalizers, I think that earbuds actually have the potential to sound even *better* than standard headphones. In any case, all headphones and earbuds need a new approach: a calibrated equalization curve built into the player, to yield flat response. Megabass is a step toward such a compensation curve.
Like the Etymotics, earbuds have the potential to have smoother response than even the best popular standard headphones, such as the Sennheiser 580's. I've dialed in some truly vibrant, open sound using equalization together with $10 earbuds. It is easy and straightforward to equalize earbuds; just do anti-rolloff to a greater or lesser degree, and leave the rest flat; there aren't mysterious jags hidden along the entire spectrum that need unique shapes of compensation. I'd rather trust my ears than the common assumption that earbuds are inferior. If the conditions are right and the appropriate, ordinary EQ compensations are made, earbuds can be superior, rather than inferior, to good standard headphones. It's simply a matter of starting with a decent earbud driver, and providing the inverse of the earbud driver's frequency response.
If someone shows me a measured response curve of an earbud and it's rough and jagged, I will change my view somewhat, but in any case, I think that eq-compensated earbuds at least *can sound* unusually smooth and natural. Players need more fancy curves to compensate for specific earbud models.
"Though I like the R3 stock earbuds even better than the 888's, I can't stop seeking for even better sound, as I believe it can be a lot better. If I press against an earbud I get very powerful bass, so it is possible. I will keep on looking, and if I find something interesting I will let you know. Please let me know your findings on this matter." (from a private email to me)
Some people haven't been lucky and haven't heard the one or two models that are really good. No wonder they think earbuds are a poor packaging and sound poor. I was starting to suspect that *some* Sony stock earbuds (included with the player) sound great, and some sound lousy.

Internet Explorer 8 Focuses on better Security and Privacy

Some of the features of liberate Candidate 1, now existing to the public, are similar to functionality that’s already included in Firefox 3.
Microsoft's updated browser, Internet Explorer 8, promises an assortment of new features designed to help make Web browsing with IE safer, easier, and more compatible with Internet standards. We looked at the first release candidate of the new browser released to the public today, Release Candidate 1 (RC1). On the surface, IE 8 seems to be a lot like IE 7, but Microsoft has made a number of changes under the hood. You may have seen some of these new features already, however, in IE's no-longer-upstart competitor, Mozilla Firefox 3.
Tabbed Browsing

If you accidentally close a browser window in IE 8, you can opt to restore it when you reopen the program (just as you can in Firefox). IE 8 will use color coding to group related tabs together. If you open a link from pcworld.com in a new tab, for example, it will open adjacent to the original tab, and the tabs themselves will have a matching color. You can move tabs from one group to another, but if you have three unrelated pages open, you cannot create a group out of them.
Perhaps the most novel addition in IE 8 is what Microsoft calls tab isolation. The feature is designed to prevent a buggy Web site from causing the entire Web browsing program to crash. Instead, only the tab displaying the problematic page will close, so you can continue browsing.
Of course, IE 8 RC1 retains some of the features introduced in the first beta, including WebSlices and accelerators; see "Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best?" for more details.
Searching

IE 8 can use multiple search engines besides Windows Live Search, and you can add other search engines to the mix. Also, IE 8 will give you search suggestions as you type. For example, I can type in 'PC World' into the search field, and IE 8 RC1 will give me Live Search suggestions such as 'pc world magazine' or 'pc world reviews'. In addition, IE 8 lets you switch between search engines on the fly by clicking an icon at the bottom of the search field's drop-down menu. IE 8 can search Yahoo and Ask.com, and you can install add-ins that give IE 8 the capability to search Wikipedia, Amazon, and the New York Times, among other sites.
Improved Security
Microsoft touts IE 8 as its most secure browser to date, and Microsoft has indeed added a good number of security features to the mix, ranging from phishing detection to private browsing, plus a new feature to prevent clickjacking, an emerging data theft threat.
IE 8 RC1 includes two security features under the 'InPrivate' label: InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering. Both existed in earlier prerelease versions of IE 8, but IE 8 RC1 lets you use the two features separately, whereas before each relied on the other.
If you enable IE 8's InPrivate Browsing feature, the browser will not save any sensitive data--passwords, log-in info, history, and the like. Afterward it will be as if your browsing session had never happened. This feature is very similar to Private Browsing in Apple's Safari browser, except that an icon in IE's address bar makes InPrivate Browsing's active status more obvious.
InPrivate Filtering--called InPrivate Blocking in earlier IE 8 builds--prevents sites from being able to collect information about other Web sites you visit. This feature existed in IE 8 Beta 2, but you could use it only while using InPrivate Browsing. In RC1, you can use InPrivate Browsing at any time.
The browser's phishing filter--called SmartScreen--improves on its predecessor's filter with such features as more-thorough scrutiny of a Web page's address (to protect you from sites named something like paypal.iamascammer.com) and a full-window warning when you stumble upon a suspected phishing site. SmartScreen relies largely on a database of known phishing sites, so new, unknown phishing sites may slip through the cracks.
IE 8 displays sites' domains in a darker text color, so you can more readily see whether you're visiting a genuine ebay.com page, say, or a page simulating an eBay page on some site you've never heard of. Microsoft could still put a little more emphasis on the domain name (using a different color background, for example), but the highlighting is a welcome addition.
Finally, IE 8 RC1 includes a feature designed to prevent clickjacking, a method in which Web developers insert a snippet of HTML code into their Web page code to steal information from Web page visitors. When you use IE 8 to view such a page, IE 8 can identify an attempted clickjacking and will warn you of the attempt.
Web Compatibility
Creating a site that looks identical in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari can be a challenge. IE 8 Beta 2 offers better support for W3 Web standards--a set of guidelines developed to ensure that a Web page appears the same in all browsers. The downside is that IE 8 will break some pages designed for earlier Internet Explorer versions.
To counteract this problem, Microsoft has added a compatibility mode: Click a button in the toolbar, and IE 8 will display a page in the same way that IE 7 does. In my testing, I found that most pages worked fine with the standard (new) mode, and that most errors were minor cosmetic ones. Unfortunately, the Compatibility Mode toggle button may not be obvious to most users, because it's pretty small; a text label would have helped.
Though it probably won't convince many Firefox users to jump ship, Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 shows promise, and may be worth considering for people who have not yet solidified their browser loyalties. (Keep an eye out for our report on the final release of IE 8.)
See more like this: internet explorer, browser security, online privacy.

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Microsoft on Monday released a near-final "release candidate" version of Internet Explorer 8, the next version of its Web browser.
The software maker plans to say more on its Web site around noon, but, as noted by enthusiast site Neowin, the code is already available from Microsoft's download center.

With IE 8, Microsoft is hoping to regain some lost ground by adding features such as private browsing, improved security, and a new type of add-ons, called accelerators.
On the security front, Microsoft is adding a cross-site scripting filter, as well as protections against a type of attack known as clickjacking.
In an interview, IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said there will be little change between the release candidate and the final version, though he declined to say when the final version will be released.
"The ecosystem should expect the final candidate to behave like the release candidate," Hachamovitch said.
Internet Explorer 8 will work with Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or later) and Windows Vista. A version of IE 8 is also being built into Windows 7.
However, the IE code in Windows 7 is a pre-release candidate version.
"Windows 7 enables unique features and functionality in Internet Explorer 8 including Windows Touch and Jump Lists which require additional product tests to ensure we are providing the best Windows experience for our customers," the software maker said in a statement. "Microsoft will continue to update the version of Internet Explorer 8 running on Windows 7 as the development cycles of Windows 7 progress.

The future 3D holographic television to become realism

Picture this: you're sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the "Sex and the City" movie and you're watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.

It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don't be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.
The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier this year by researchers at the University of Arizona.
Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university's Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.
"This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images," he said.
The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

To create television sets the images would need to be changing multiple times each second -- but Peyghambarian is very optimistic this can happen.
He said the University of Arizona team, which is now ten-strong, has been working on advancing hologram technology since 1990 -- so this is a major step forward. He believes that much of the difficulty in creating a holographic set has now been overcome.
"It took us a while to make that first breakthrough, but as soon as you have the first element of it working the rest often comes more rapidly," he said. "What we are doing now is trying to make the model better. What we showed is just one color, what we are doing now is trying to use three colors. The original display was four inches by four inches and now we're going for something at least as big as a computer screen."
There are no more great barriers to overcome now, he said.
The breakthrough has made some long-time researchers of the technology believe that it could now come to fruition.
Tung H. Jeong, a retired physics professor at Lake Forest College outside Chicago who had studied holography since the 1960s told NJ.com; "When we start talking about erasable and rewritable holograms, we are moving toward the possibility of holographic TV ... It has now been shown that physically, it's possible."
And what might these holographic televisions look like?
According to Peyghambarian, they could be constructed as a screen on the wall (like flat panel displays) that shows 3-D images, with all the image writing lasers behind the wall; or it could be like a horizontal panel on a table with holographic writing apparatus underneath.
So, if this project is realized, you really could have a football match on your coffee table, or horror-movie villains jumping out of your wall.
Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. He said progress towards a final product should be made much more quickly now that a rewriting method had been found.
However, it is fair to say not everyone is as positive about this prospect as Peyghambarian.
Justin Lawrence, a lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Bangor University in Wales, told CNN that small steps are being made on technology like 3-D holograms, but, he can't see it being ready for the market in the next ten years.
"It's one thing to demonstrate something in a lab but it's another thing to be able to produce it cheaply and efficiently enough to distribute it to the mass market," Lawrence said.
Yet, there are reasons to be optimistic that more resources will be channeled into developing this technology more quickly.
The Japanese Government is pushing huge financial and technical weight into the development of three-dimensional, virtual-reality television, and the country's Communications Ministry is aiming at having such technology available by 2020.
Peyghambarian said there are no major sponsors of the technology at present, but as the breakthroughs continued, he hopes that will change.
Even if no major electronics company commit themselves, there is hope that backers could come from outside of the consumer electronics industry, he said.
"It could have some other applications. In training it's useful to show people three-dimensional displays. Also it would be good to show things in 3-D for defense command and control and for surgery," he said.

Wireless power technologies are moving closer to becoming feasible options.

PowerMat Wireless Charging Plate

A vision of our wireless future, courtesy of PowerMat. The company teamed up with Michigan-based HoMedics to introduce more than a dozen products at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

This year probably won't be the tipping point for wireless electricity. But judging from all the new techniques and applications of this awe-inspiring technology, getting power through the airwaves could soon be viable.
Fulton Innovations showcased blenders that whir wirelessly and laptops that power up without a battery at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this month. The devices are all powered by electromagnetic coils built into the charging surface, and there's not a plug in sight.

Fulton's wireless electricity technology is called eCoupled, and the company hopes it can be used across a wide rage of consumer devices. Fulton was one of half a dozen companies that wowed consumers at CES.
10 Wireless Electricity Technologies
ECoupled uses a wireless powering technique called "close proximity coupling," which uses circuit boards and coils to communicate and transmit energy using magnetic fields. The technology is efficient but only works at close ranges. Typically, the coils must be bigger than the distance the energy needs to travel. What it lacks in distance, it makes up in intelligence.
In conjunction with the Wireless Power Consortium, Fulton, a subsidiary of Amway, has developed a standard that can send digital messages back and forth using the same magnetic field used to power devices. These messages are used to distinguish devices that can and can't be charged wirelessly, and to relay informtion like power requirements or how much battery is left in a device.
Using this technique, an industrial van parked outside the Fulton booth at CES charged a set of power tools from within its carrying case. The van was tricked out by Leggett & Platt people )--a diversified manufacturing company based in Carthage, Mo., and an eCoupled licensee--and is designed to solve its customers' biggest headache: arriving at the job site with a dead set of tools. Fulton, which teamed up with Bosch to design the setup, already has test vehicles rolling around in the field and plans to sell them to utility and other industrial companies by the end of the year.

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Bosch Wireless Powertool Set The eCoupled setup uses a technique called close proximity coupling, so the devices can remain in their case while charging. Generally, the efficiency of the wireless-electricity transfer decreases with distance.

In another area of the vast CES show, cellphones, videogame controllers and a laptop charged wirelessly on a silver and black mat created by Boulder, Colo.-based WildCharge.
The mat uses a conductive powering technique, which is more efficient than inductive powering but requires direct contact between the devices and the charging pad. Though most of the mats or pads on display are intended to power only a handful of devices at a time, WildCharge says the product design is certified for up to 150 watts--enough to power 30 laptops.
Across the room from WildCharge, PowerCast displayed Christmas ornaments and floor tiles glowing with LEDs powered by ambient radio waves. The devices harvest electromagnetic energy in ambient radio waves from a nearby low-power antenna. Because of the dangerous nature of electromagnetic waves in high doses, Pittsburgh-based PowerCast is targeting its application for mall devices like ZigBee wireless chips, which require little power.
Perhaps the most promising wireless power technology was the latest iteration of WiTricity, the Watertown, Mass.-based brainchild of MIT physicist Marin Soljacic, on display in a private suite high in the Venetian hotel tower.
The technology uses a technique developed by Soljacic called "highly coupled magnetic resonance." As proof that it works, an LCD TV is powered by a coil hidden behind an oil painting located a few feet away. Across the hotel room, WiTricity Chief Executive Eric Giler walks in the direction of another coil holding an iPod Touch in the palm of his hand. Power hungry, it starts to charge when it gets within two meters.
Soljacic has already earned a $500,000 genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his work, but Giler said the technology is at least a year away. In the meantime, WiTricity has obtained an exclusive license from MIT to bring Soljacic's idea to market and hopes to have an estimated 200 patents.
But because Soljacic published his academic paper in Nature magazine, companies like Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) have been able to replicate the effect in their labs based on his principles.
Elsewhere at CES, PowerBeam showcased wireless lamps and picture frames. Located in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company uses yet another wireless-powering approach. Its technology beams optical energy into photovoltaic cells using laser diodes. Although the company says it can maintain a constant energy flow across long distances, the difficultly of targeting a laser means that it's not ideal for charging moving devices.
So, while 2009 may not be the year wireless electricity takes off, the nascent sector is certainly on its way.