Results tagged “charging”
Infra Assumptions
Dec 14, 2009
14 hours from Lhasa to Golmud, one power socket in the carriage alternately occupied by the guards laptop and the guards printer. Infrastructure is: what you expect to have sufficient access to when you're out and about.
China » Golmud
Kabul Street Phone Charging Norms
Nov 09, 2009
See the thread on charging.
Afghanistan » Kabul
Vending Limitations
Jun 15, 2009
It's worth asking why, in a city of electric devices and vending machines this is not prevalent?
Rhetorical, by golly.
Location:Japan » Tokyo » Daikanyama » back of
Mobile? Tethering? Yeah But..
Jun 10, 2009
The need to charge, the need to call.
To what extent are you likely to find similar mobile-but-tethered scenes playing out in other countries around the world? In Japan - the length of time spent outside the home; high levels of intensive mobile phone use; and a power connector that is standardised over almost all mobile phone manufacturers have combined to enable a market for top-up batteries that simply slot into the device (available from any convenience store). In India - fast food joints and longer distance buses offer charging services, in China it is more the domain of restaurants.
There's a lovely form of tethering in Ulan Bataar - where mobile phone kiosks (the white phone ladies) walk alongside customers making a call - with the jangly phone cord stretching between them. Having someone carry the thing you're tethered to is obviously doing it in style. Saunter over to Ulan Bataar here.
United States » Irvine
Public Charging Norms
Apr 28, 2009
Charging station for entrants in a 24 hour cycling race - adopting similar naming strategies to car-battery recharging station in rural Uganda; and
In a mass production society - the likelihood that someone owns the exact same object as you; increasing the need to identify, personalise. The public contexts in which object's can be left without fear of theft; the means by which objects are identified. And how these practices evolve.
Related: charging options around the world.
Location:United States » Hurkey Creek
Power Independence = Location Independence
Mar 12, 2009
A solar compactor with "up to five times the capacity of a normal waste receptacle", the ability to function off the grid enabled by increased solar efficiency and a drop in price.
Distribute the power source, distribute the task flow.
Location:United States » Palm Springs
Power, Accountability II
Dec 20, 2008
Received a parcel from the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China this week - for a granted patent on fuel cell payment (the US filing of the same patent is here) . Most patent agencies send an email or terse note when a patent is granted, this was a nicely bound, officially stamped document - elevating the glamorous/sordid (delete as appropriate) patent process into something aspirational. An unsurprising goal in a country with probably the world's most laissez faire intellectual property environment.
It's not uncommon for inventors to not recognise their own patents once they've gone through legalese, what does this patent cover? it enables someone with a fuel cell equipped device to use a compatible public fuel cell station to top up said device, ensure the right amount of the right fuel is transferred and automatically settle payment. There are many reasons why consumer fuel cells are not going to be mainstream anytime soon, but as and when they do the the charging (and payment) process will be reduced from tens of minutes to seconds.
Delve into the patent databases EU, US.
Location:Japan » Tokyo
Reassurance Behaviours
Nov 04, 2008
How you know whether something is really, absolutely working as planned?
And if you're offering a service - how to communicate to suspicious customers that you are actually in a position to offer that service? Hand over a DC toaster above and light bulbs on the front of a mobile phone recharging stall in Kabul.
Afghanistan » Kabul
United States » Washington DC
Volts Stabilised
Aug 06, 2008
Or not.
Afghanistan » Kabul
(Quality of) Service
Aug 05, 2008
For any given service - how to reassure the customer that they are getting what they paid for?
Or conversely to fool customers into believing they have received a service they are in fact not getting?
Mobile phone charging services in Kabul using low watt light bulbs to highlight that the stall indeed has access to power. Wonder if this was triggered by people offering spurious 'charging services'?
Related - two presentations on mobile phone street charging in Kampala and car battery charging services in rural Uganda.
Location:Afghanistan » Kabul
Uganda » Kampala
Power is Power
Aug 01, 2008
And the destruction of power infrastructure is a power play.
Location:Afghanistan » Kabul
Conversion Tools
Apr 12, 2008
How do you keep electronic objects charged with limited access to mains electricity?
In countries like Uganda we’ve seen solutions ranging from car batteries to street charging services and a relatively small amount of solar. One potential solution is the pull-cord charger - demonstrated by the Potenco team shortly after the Street Hacks talk - billed as generating enough power for 20 minutes of talk time from one minute of pulling. The design is still evolving - based on feedback from the field. In retrospect given the mechanical nature of the solution and the likely geography of its deployment perhaps it should have been part of the talk?
United States » San Francisco
United States
Infrastructure, Discoverability & Speed of Adoption
Feb 05, 2007
At what point does infrastructure become, well, infrastructure - the stuff you can rely on being out there?
Would you buy an electric driven vehicle when there are only a few public recharging points scattered around your regular stomping ground? To what extent do technologies such as personal access to accurate location positioning and real-time status updates mitigate the need for blanket coverage of infrastructure such as this Elektrobay charging poing in London's Covent Garden? (This charging point is aimed at council workers not the general public so the argument is moot in this exact context).
Knowing a charging point's location, availability, quality and cost can go some way to support early adopters. Being able to reserve it ahead of time takes some risk out of the process - though it could introduce a hedge market for access to that particular power stand. Value added? Self driving vehicles that hook themselves up to the nearest power source will remove the end user hassle of having to remember (in the same way that in the domestic context keeping personal devices charged and otherwise maintained is something that can be delegated to autonamous machines).
And yes you could argue that to maintain a higher degree of consumer environmental awareness you don't want to make the re-charging process seamless. Will we see the fuel equivilent of warning signs on cigarette packets?
Location:United Kingdom » London
United Kingdom
Power Up: Street Charging Services in Uganda
Jan 12, 2007
Uganda is a country coping with a severe energy crisis resulting in frequent power cuts. In addition, access to mains electricity in rural locations is limited. Given that mobile phones require power, and access to power can be unpredictable - how do people keep their mobile phones and other electrical devices charged? Last July a Nokia research team travelled to Uganda and explored this issue as part of a more in-depth study into shared phone use.
There are two forms of mobile phone battery charging services in Kampala - either offered as an additional service by phone kiosk operators or as a stand alone service. It costs 500 Ugandan Shillings (0.2 Euro) to have a battery recharged similar to the price of 2 or 3 phone calls. Whist both services appear to thrive there are a number of barriers to use: customers cannot use their phone whilst the battery is being charged; the customer risks, or perceives the risk that their battery being swapped for an inferior one; a perceived risk of phone theft - signs that suggest service providers are not responsible for loss or theft are evident.
For many Ugandan rural communities with no access to mains power car batteries are the primary means of providing electricity to the home. Businesses such as bars also run off car batteries but they are more likely to have their own power generator. A used car battery costs 30 to 40 dollars and can keep a household powered for a month, though in a bar the same battery might last a week. The homes we visited ran electrical items included radios, CD players, television and domestic lighting.
It can take 3 to 5+ days to have a car battery recharged at the process involves delivering the car-battery to a charging service often tens of kilometers away the nearest town that has mains electricity access. The battery is taken and returned by a trusted and friendly taxi driver or trader. It takes 3 days to charge a battery, longer if the town where the service is based itself experiences power cuts. The cost of charging a battery is around 1,000 Ugandan shillings (0.4 Euro), not including delivery. (As a comparison a mobile phone battery costs half as much to be recharged using one of the mobile phone street charging services mentioned above).
How does people's behaviour change when there is intermittent or limited access to power? How can we better support users with limited and intermittent access to power?
Two short presentations co-authored with my colleague Indri Tulusan are available for download from research.nokia.com. The first entitled Power Up: Street Charging Service in Kampala as PowerPoint or PDF [3MB] and Rural Charging Service, Uganda PowerPoint or PDF [2MB].
Readers may also like the related research into shared phone use as well as the full list of presentations and downloads.
Location:Uganda » Kampala
Japan » Tokyo
Uganda
Charging Larger Objects
May 18, 2006
In a city where garage parking is not common, how to charge personal vehicles, such as this motorcycle above?
In this Xiamen street a power cable leads from an upstairs apartment, circles a collumn, is wrapped around the handle-bars (detail in above photo), in part so the converter is supported, before being plugged into the frame. A simple example of a technique for coping with the real world.
China
China » Xiamen
Public Charging Facilities
Mar 03, 2006
Electricity sockets in Vancouver Airport targeted at laptop users but also widely used to charge mobile phones. Infrastructure extending the feasibility of power hungry tasks such as watching video.
More adhoc charging at Narita Airport, below.
Canada
Canada » Vancouver
Phone Recharging
Feb 12, 2006
Public phone recharging in London - with an emphasis on security.
Location:United Kingdom » London
United Kingdom
The Power of Not Charging
Jan 12, 2006
Next to my desk at work I have a fine collection of photos of power sockets from homes and offices around the world - the result of rummaging around under desks, peering behind cabinets and following cables to their source. In user studies I'm always intrigued to see how people tackle the problem of keeping their mobile phone charged - after all a phone without power is largely useless as a tool for solving life's little emergencies, and above everything else this is the reason that people consider the phone a mobile essential.
It is possible that technologies such as bistable displays will means that devices will have functionality without power, but for now our daily/weekly rituals include remembering to charge, and once charged - remembering to take the object when next leaving home. But does it need to be this way?
In the near term usage patterns will change when the two or so hours it currently takes to charge your laptop/phone/iPod is shortened to 10 or 20 seconds. That's a sufficiently short time to be able to pause a conversation and top up power if it were applied to a communication device, for example using fuel cell or capacitive charging.
The challenge of keeping electrical devices powered up can be tackled from a number of different directions. It's possible to make a mobile phone which has sufficient power to last as long as the device itself. The obvious (but wrong) starting point is a massive battery/fuel cell pack - it would make the product impractical to carry and the consumer market impossibly small. The opposite approach has potential - shortening the lifetime of a mobile phone to last as long as today's battery life. This is not as far fetched as it may first seem considering use cases around mobile phones bought from vending machines, a method for storing personal data off the device, combined with a system for recycling and re-circulating 'used' products to new users. As with most tasks (except entertainment and bodily functions) delegation is another solution - simply delegate the act of remembering to charge a device to someone or something else. Asimo needs something to do whilst you're sleeping right?
Usage patterns are currently constrained (or in some ways anchored) by the need to leave a device in a fixed location for a length of time. As that length of time is drastically shortened, or indeed eliminated our current notions of how we charge objects will all seem rather quaint.
Location:Japan
South Korea » Seoul
South Korea
Japan » Tokyo
Japan » Tokyo » Shibuya » back of
Emotional Charging
Jan 11, 2006
When is the last time you smiled inserting a plug into a power socket? What would it take to make that happen?
Location:Japan
Japan » Tokyo » Sakura Shinmachi
Japan » Tokyo
Source of Power, Activities Related To
Dec 07, 2005
Charger as a suggestion of presence. What activities are implied by the kind of charger? Cable? It could be so much more.
Knowing that use is affected by whether or not something is plugged in - the plug works itself loose when someone tripped on it, the door opened and a quizzical/annoyed face looked out.
Mongolia » somewhere in