Wireless Charging

I have always been an early adopter of new technologies. I've played the newest video games on the newest systems my whole life, sure, and I even had a CEO-quality PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) when I was in seventh grade. I still have that PDA, in fact, and honest-to-God it STILL holds up to modern smartphones and iPods. One of my proudest early adoptions, however, was of a technology that came and went in the span of a few years with little fanfare. Most people were never even aware of its existence.

That technology was Microsoft's Wrist.NET line of watches. These watches were only slightly larger than normal (although my special-edition Dick Tracy model stuck out obviously and made for fascinating conversations) and were capable of checking email, receiving IMs, checking the news, weather, sports, and stock reports, giving local movie times, and a laundry list of other life-related tasks. They could even tell time. In typical Microsoft fashion, the watches were actually built by third-party manufacturers such as Fossil and Suunto. All of them were more-or-less equals, but Fossils' stood out from the crowd (in my mind) for one key feature: the watches could be charged without wires.

This was not only handy - they had the battery life of an average cell phone - but just downright COOL in my book. It seemed magical that somehow electricity was being transfered from one place to another, and the only parts touching were made of PLASTIC.