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Walk, don't run: charge your cellphone while on the go

battery

That less than stellar battery life on your newest gadget may be less trouble than you thought, due to researchers at the Division of Mechanical and Information Engineers at Korea Maritime University. They've successfully figured out how to recharge a cellphone just by walking around, through a kinetic-to-electrical energy converter in some shoes, managing to get 5mW of electricity every few steps. Of course they're trying to improve on that, with plans to charge an MP3 player in 5 to 6 hours, which seems like a bit more walking than we do on our average day (but then we arewriters, so what do we know). Still, it'll give us an excuse to get off our rears and actually walk to work.