I love gadgets. I hate wires. I’ve said it numerous times on this blog. And when I travel, I have take along enough chargers to probably alert TSA on multiple levels.

Inductive charging, when one device is designed to receive power from another device that sends power (think of the connections on a Sonicare Toothbrush) and do so without the need of wires. It’s not a new technology, but to finally see folks like Energizer get into the act, it’s definitely something I can get behind.

Designed in cooperation with WPC co-founder ConvenientPower, the first generation of the Energizer Inductive Charger is designed to conveniently charge up to three devices at one time. It features two large inductive charging zones that don’t require locking the device into a precise position, so consumers can simply set down their phone and be sure that it will be charged and ready to go. It also has a USB port so it’s easy to charge an additional device such as a phone, headset, mp3 player, camera or GPS. Two LED charge lights indicate that the device is charging.

The Energizer Inductive Charger will be introduced with a Qi Sleeve for the iPhone 3GS/3G and a one-time replacement Qi Door for the BlackBerry Curve 8900, so consumers can enjoy the convenience of Qi right away. Soon, consumers can expect to have Qi built right into many of their devices.

With the addition of the Qi standard, any Qi-enabled device (the list is growing daily) will charge without incident. I just can’t wait to see this for more devices that I currently own take the hint, Energizer.

The Energizer Inductive Charger will be available at retail starting this October with a suggested retail price of $89. The removable Qi sleeve for the Apple iPhone 3GS/3G and the Qi door for the BlackBerry Curve 8900 will be sold separately for $34.99 each.

[ Links: Energizer Inductive ]

If you don’t recall, I’m a huge fan of Bento 3 for the Apple iPhone and Apple OS X platforms. It’s the one program that got my typical cluttered mess into an organized mess situation. Which… is pretty darn amazing to me. Filemaker has added a new option to make Bento 3 even more useful:

FileMaker, Inc. today announced the Bento 3 Project Manager, a brand new set of templates designed to make it easy for Mac users to track their personal projects and manage their time within one integrated, intuitive place. The Bento 3 Project Manager includes a free 30-day trial of the popular Bento 3 personal database for Mac, plus two professionally designed, ready-to-use templates.

Templates in the Bento 3 Project Manager include:

• Project Dashboard, with forms for project overview, milestones, tasks, communications, related files such as photos and presentations, and time sheets.
• Time Sheets, with pre-defined Smart Collections for hours billed, hours to be billed, and amounts due. All of this detailed information can be located quickly using iTunes-style searching.

The FIleMaker Bento 3 Project Manager also works with Bento for iPad and Bento for iPhone.

Bento 3 syncs up with your Apple iCal Calendar tasks and events, your Apple Address Book contacts and phone numbers and the Bento 3 Project Manager templates are a free download.

[ Links: FileMaker Bento 3, Bento 3 Project Manager Template Download ]

At the Apple Keynote today, Steve Jobs pulled out the oft-rumored $99 Apple TV (finally) and the long awaited update to the Apple iPod Touch that brings the best parts of the Apple iPhone 4 to the music player. Think about all of the good parts of prior Apple iPhone 4 announcements:

• Facetime – forward facing camera
• Retina Display – 960 x 480 high-density pixel display
• 720p HD Video Recording via improved, 5mp back camera
• Apple A4 SoC chipset for improved performance and battery life
• 40 hours audio playback, 7 hours video playback
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz only)
• Bluetooth

And the inability to also make phone calls! har har

Showing up at 8, 32 and 64GB sizes, at $229, $299 and $399 respectively, the Apple iPod Touch just upped the ante for the mp3 players with extended abilities. Not bad at all Apple. More on the Apple TV later.

[ Links: Apple, Apple iPod Touch ]

It comes out tomorrow, July 27th… BUY IT!!

Ok, fanboy love aside, the original StarCraft is a killer game. It sold 12 million copies in the 12 years since its original release. It brought real time strategy to folks that normally wouldn’t have liked real-time strategy (myself included) and the long-awaited sequel comes out July 27th.

Some other parts that you might not know is that this StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty cost over $100 million dollars in development to produce. That’s right… it’s more expensive than Polyphony’s Gran Turismo which (to date) has cost over $60 million so far to develop.

Perhaps you can celebrate owning StarCraft II alongside National Scotch Day.

[ Links: StarCraft II ]

Promising to be faster and stricter with the current and upcoming web standards, as well as adding the new WebM video standard that’s been put in place by Google, Mozilla Firefox 4 is the new face of competition from the Mozilla Foundation for what will be your next version of your favorite web browser.

What’s New in Mozilla Firefox 4.0 Beta 1:

• Tabs are now on top by default on Windows only – OSX and Linux will be changing when the theme has been modified to support the change.
• On Windows Vista and Windows 7 the menu bar has been replaced with the Firefox button.
• You can search for and switch to already open tabs in the Smart Location Bar
• New Addons Manager and extension management API (UI will be changed before final release)
• Significant API improvements are available for JS-ctypes, a foreign function interface for extensions.
• The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac and Linux.
• The Bookmarks Toolbar has been replaced with a Bookmarks Button by default (you can switch it back if you’d like).
• Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.
• CSS Transitions are partially supported.
• Full WebGL support is included but disabled by default at this time.
• Core Animation rendering model for plugins on Mac OS X. Plugins which also support this rendering model can now draw faster and more efficiently.
• Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format.
• An experimental Direct2D rendering backend is available on Windows, turned off by default.
• Web developers can use Websockets for a low complexity, low latency, bidirectional communications API.
• Web developers can update the URL field without reloading the page using HTML History APIs.
• More responsive page rendering using lazy frame construction.
• Link history lookup is done asynchronously to provide better responsiveness during pageload.
• CSS :visited selectors have been changed to block websites from being able to check a user’s browsing history.
• New HTML5 parser.
• Support for more HTML5 form controls.

Above is my screenshot from my attempt on the Mac. There are no add-ons that directly work with this beta besides Adblock Plus out of my many add-ons. It did seem to run off less RAM, seemed to be a bit faster than Firefox 3.6.6. And for that fancy looking UI upgrade, give it a try on Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7.

[ Links: Mozilla Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 Release Notes ]

Months after announcing that it was “coming”, Motorola finally has unleashed the Motorola Endeavor HX1 [ site here ] for sale in the US and perhaps the Aliph Jawbone Prime [ site here ] first true competition.

With features like true bone conduction via an in-ear sensor and CrystalTalk™ Noise Reduction to make your calls all nice and clear, the Motorola Endeavor HX1 almost makes it worthwhile to stick that huge earpiece in your ear. You’ll still look like a half-Borg and invariably confuse people that are on the other side of your face that won’t see the earpiece and assume you’re talking to them; but the fact that you can use both hands while in traffic or in Starbucks makes it all worth it. Right?

• Talk Time: Up to 7 hours
• Standby Time: Up to 10 days
• Bone Conduction
• CrystalTalk™ Technology
• 2-Microphones
• Voice Prompts
• Dimensions: (L) 47mm x (W) 18mm x (H) 12mm
• Weight: 13 grams

Currently on sale for $129 initially as a Sprint exclusive, however you can surely pair it with any phone that supports Bluetooth 2.0 and higher.
[ Motorola Endeavor HX1 ] [ Sprint: Motorola HX1 Purchase ]