Progressive Wednesday

Geeks getting green, cell-phone style.

Okay, let me start by saying that Eric and I are geeks. And we’re geeks not because we dig Star Wars and poetry, respectively. No, we’re geeks because, in case you haven’t noticed (which seems impossible), we run a website. And geeks, therefore, are good (thank you first-order logic!), so we mean no disrespect with the title of this entry.

(Now please excuse what seems like a non sequitur.)

My cell phone is my fiftieth love and the bane of my existence, it’s my connection to the world beyond my own borders and an annoying beeping machine-thing that boggles my stupid mind when I try to figure how on earth it works. But I suppose I dig it more than I want to ditch it. Right before I go to the land of snoozes and dream of penguins riding around on chocolate ponies, I plug in my aforementioned phone. It recharges. It fills with energy generated, most likely, from the burning of fossil fuels. But in a galaxy not that far away (in other words, our galaxy), we’ve got a brand-spanking new reason to cheer: the first solar cell phone.

A company called HiTech Wealth is starting to crank these suckers out, but… only in China. This will change soon, though. Here’s the skinny:

The [solar] panels trickle-charge the battery in any amount of light, including indoors (or even by candlelight), and the battery life is 2.5 times longer than it would be without the panels. An hour of direct sunlight will give users 40 extra minutes of talk time.

While this first model is pretty exciting, HiTech Wealth will be releasing six more solar phones within the year and has promised 30 solar models before 2009.

So the gadget-loving geeks amongst us won’t be the only ones getting even greener. You can read more about the product by clicking this sentence.

Oh, and in case you’re thinking of making a cell phone switch any time soon, please consider donating your old phone to Cell Phones for Soldiers (for those of you in the Western New York area, we thought we’d let you know that Jim Kelly is a big supporter of this organization).