You Can Now Charge Your Cell Phone By Dancing

A company called Orange announced today that they have made a mobile phone charger prototype that is powered by dance energy. The ultimate in go green strategies has arrived. I do admire what they've done. In this day and age when gasoline and oil prices are just soaring. Alternative power sources are truly a dire need.

The Dance Charge prototype weighs only 180grams and measures 4¼” x 2½”, approximately the same size as a pack of cards and the same weight as a mobile phone. The Dance Charge unit comes encased in an elasticated, black, neoprene strap with Velcro attachments which is attached over the wearer’s bicep in a similar fashion to a runner’s arm-mounted mp3 player according to the press release

As users move their arms along with the music, a specially designed system of weights and magnets creates an electrical current that gets stored as charge in a reserve battery. That energy can then be used to recharge a mobile phone. Reportedly, Orange tested the Dance Charge out at Glasto by employing a "Dance Charging Man" at the festival who was on duty to dance (for free) with those in need of some recharging.

Do You Want A $10 "Anti-iPhone" Disposable Cell Phone?

Hop-on just released a $10 pre-paid cell phone. I was pretty interested when I heard about it because that is dirt cheap, imagine paying only $10 for a cell phone and having talk time of up to 4 hours and a standby time of 150 hours - that's decent if I do say so myself. It's dual band as well. Plus although the phone is considered disposable, the company Hop-on is offering a $5 rebate for returning the phone to encourage recycling the phone to “Keep it Green”.

It actually looks like a pretty good product until I started to do some research. And I found this on Techdirt

Hop-On's "disposable phones" were really Nokia phones with their own plastic casing put around them. At first Hop-On tried to get around this, but finally admitted that they were repackaging the Nokias - but just for the prototypes. Their "real" phones would show up soon enough. Hop-On also has some legal problems. A few years ago they were associated with a venture that was charged with "fleecing investors out of as much as $20 million". The company also recently lost their corporate status for not filing a tax return for the past two years.

That's quite scary. Their phones still look good, but now I doubt the credibility. But I do still think it may be worth a shot if you've got an extra $10 to burn. The phone is available now “to retailers such as drug and convenience stores, big box retailers and to businesses looking for a unique branding opportunity,” so you may see this around town if you haven’t already.