Nokia has its bicycle-powered mobile phone charger. And now Orange has its 'Power Wellies'; thermoelectric wellington boots that are perfect for summer festivals because they can charge a mobile phone by using heat from your feet.
The prototype footwear, created in collaboration with renewable energy organisation GotWind, uses a sole that converts heat from your feet into an electrical current. It's a phenomenon known as the Seebeck effect. Apparently 12 hours of walking generates an hour of talk time, with hotter feet generating energy more quickly.
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Satellite phone service Iridium has announced plans for 81 satellites that'll form its next-generation mobile phone service. It already supports more than 359,000 subscribers on its existing sat-phone network. The new service, called Iridium NEXT, was first revealed in 2007. It'll have 72 satellites in space and an additional nine spares on the ground.
This new announcement has confirmed the cost of the project - approximately $2.9 billion - and also reveals that the satellites will be built by Thales Alenia Space. They're expected to be launched from early 2015.
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This week's edition of The Fonecast is now online, taking its usual look at the week's mobile news headlines... from the Nokia/Yahoo! partnership and Google's AdMob approval... to the annoyance of one-sided mobile phone calls.
In addition there's an interview with Andrew Grieve and Paul Erickson from fSONA; a company that uses licence-free 'optical wireless' technology to relieve network capacity problems without the need for cables or microwave radio links.
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