A new mobile phone charger that will work with any handset has been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body.
Industry body the GSMA says that 51,000 tonnes of redundant chargers are generated each year.
Currently most chargers are product or brand specific, so people tend to change them when they upgrade to a new phone.
However, the new energy-efficient chargers can be kept for much longer.
The GSMA also estimates that they will reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 13.6m tonnes.
“This is a significant step in reducing the environmental impact of mobile charging,” said Malcolm Johnson, director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau.
“Universal chargers are a common-sense solution that I look forward to seeing in other areas.”
The charger has a micro-USB port at the connecting end, using similar technology to digital cameras.
It is not compulsory for manufacturers to adopt the new chargers but the ITU says that some have already signed up to it.
“We are planning to launch the universal charger internationally during the first half of 2010,” Aldo Liguori, spokesperson for Sony Ericsson told the BBC.
“We will roll it out with new products as they launch.”

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We’ve been told pretty often to unplug our devices from the main power outlet whenever they are not in use just in case of an electrical surge that might just kill off whatever devices connected to the grid, as well as these gizmos sipping power unnecessarily even when they’re just idle. The Pocket Power Switch aims to change that by removing completely turned off if it isn’t plugged in properly.

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Have you ever thrown your hands up in frustration because you simply want to use the Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse of a laptop to access a server or other standalone device? I have, but never know what product could help…now I do.

The Portable Laptop KVM Adapter from StarTech is specifically designed to turn your notebook into a portable KVM station. Simply connect the adapter between your standalone [or GUIless device] and notebook and you’re off and running.

I would think the biggest market for such a product are large data centers where they need to access any number of servers without a full KVM installation.

“Aside from a rack mount LCD console, which can be expensive, server administrators and technicians would typically have to use a server room ‘crash cart’, which is a cart comprised of a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Although a typical ‘crash cart’ is somewhat mobile, it lacks the portability of our Laptop KVM Adapter, which provides identical but more convenient control”.

The NOTECONS01 USB 2.0 Laptop KVM Adapter offers immediate BIOS-level access to the connected computer from the laptop control point, as well as the ability to handle full configuration of the attached PC, server, or other headless machines such as ATMs, kiosks and VLTs.

But the portable USB KVM station doesn’t come cheap, the MSRP starts at $470.

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A clock made of old hard disk drive.

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