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No free airplane lunch with iPod charger
July 9, 2007
Farhad Manjoo at Salon wonders whether an airplane iPod charger is a green breakthrough. He’s referring to “Inflight Power, a nifty device that plugs into the audio jack of an airplane seat and converts the music into electricity to charge up your iPod or other portable energy suck.” He continues, “It turns out that Inflight Power marks an intriguing new trend in power generation, something that folks call energy 'harvesting' or 'scavenging.'"
Of course, the gadget does no such thing. It might be said to do energy “filching” instead of “harvesting,” because it uses power that otherwise wouldn’t be dissipated. But the airlines might not mind. Manjoo quotes the inventor of the device, Tom Giannulli, as saying that Jet Blue and Virgin are considering adding to their audio programming a "charging tone" that optimizes energy transfer to the charger.
Posted by Rick Nelson on July 9, 2007 | Comments (1)
