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Yogen's ripcord-powered portable charger hands-on
What do you get when you cross an Energizer EnergiToGo portable charger with a hand crank? If you answered the Yogen Charger for Life, you'd be correct. Easy Energy is demoing the battery-less battery charger, and sadly for us, it didn't work exactly as advertised. While the other demo models seemed to be working without a hitch, when we started pulling the rip cord, instead of getting a lightning bolt indicating that our BlackBerry Tour was charging, we got a reboot. It's probably an isolated incident, as every other device we tried worked, but we'd be doing you, our trusted reader, a disservice if we didn't let you know. %Gallery-82169%
YoGen ripcord charger available for the fidgety and eco-friendly
Green lovers have been patiently waiting for the commercialized version of OLPC's pull-string laptop charger, but in the meantime Easy Energy's YoGen should tide yank-happy hands over. Pulling the charger's lawnmower-style ripcord generates enough power through its patented alternator technology to charge up phones, iPods and a slew of other handheld gadgets. According to YoGen charging time is similar to that of standard AC adapters and gadgets can be brought back to life with just a few pulls -- as can be seen in the incredibly realistic videos below where YoGens magically appear to save the day, jump start an iPhone and help a man lie to his wife. Formal launch is due at CES, but those that can't wait to strengthen their hand muscles can preorder one now on YoGen's website for 40 bucks.
Easy Energy Yogen Max foldable, man-powered laptop charger prototype complete
Charging your laptop could start to feel a lot more like work in the near future, if the folks at Easy Energy have it their way. They've just completed a protoype for the Yogen Max laptop charger, and though details are particularly spartan about the actual workings of the device, as you can see from the mock-up, it's going to involve a human foot pumping juice directly into your laptop. Unlike some other devices we've seen, the Yogen Max has no external battery, plus it's way more foldable and boasts a totally awesome font. The spokesperson from Easy Energy says they hope to bring the product to the consumer market sometime in 2009. If that girl in the background of the photo is any indication of how outlandishly fun the human-powered charger is to use, we sure hope it's available soon.[Via Coolest Gadgets, thanks Ink Master]
