Vodafone unveils phone-charging sleeping bags and shorts

Vodafone has unveiled unique sleeping bags and shorts for charging mobile phones in this summer’s Isle of Wight festival in the UK. The Sleeping bag and shorts have a technology that charges your mobile devices while walking, sleeping or even dancing. The devices harvest body heat and movement to increase the battery life of your mobile device.

The sleeping bags and short pants launched by Vodafone are called ‘Recharge Bags’ and ‘Power Shorts'. They contain special printed circuits that convert the user’s body heat or any movement whether sleeping, dancing, walking in to power for their mobile phones.

The technology for the Recharge Bag and Power Shorts was developed by Vodafone in collaboration with the University of Southampton’s Electronics and Computer Science Department. The technology called "smart fabric" is ideal for campers in outdoor events and can become a 24-hour power source for the users.

According to the company, if you sleep in the Recharge Bag for eight hours it will generate battery life that will give the user 11 hours of standby time, or 24 minutes of talk time; whereas walking in the Power Shorts will give the user over four hours of battery life. It uses thermal energy from the sleeping bag to create energy and kinetic energy from the shorts to power your mobile devices.

Google's Project Loon explores balloon-powered Internet access

The pilot program, Project Loon, took off this month from New Zealand's South Island, using solar-powered, high-altitude balloons that ride the wind about 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) - twice as high as airplanes - above the ground, Google said.

Like the Internet search engine for which Google is best known, Project Loon uses algorithms to determine where the balloons need to go, then moves them into winds blowing in the desired direction, the company said.

By moving with the wind, the balloons form a network of airborne hot spots that can deliver Internet access over a broad area at speeds comparable to 3G using open radio frequency bands, Google said.

To connect to the balloon network, a special Internet antenna is attached to buildings below.

The Mountain View, Calif-based company announced the project on its official blog here, and its website www.google.com/loon/.

The 30 balloons deployed in New Zealand this month will beam Internet to a small group of pilot testers and be used to refine the technology and shape the next phase of Project Loon, Google said.

Google did not say what it was spending on the pilot project or how much a global network of balloons might cost.

Google has also developed self-driving vehicles, which the company says could significantly increase driving safety.

Those vehicles are beginning to gain support from lawmakers in places like California, where a bill legalizing their operation on state roads was signed into law last by Governor Jerry Brown.