Summary: Need help with PR? If you are looking for a great PR firm, you've found one. Walker Sands is a leading Chicago PR firm with a strong track record that makes it one of top national PR agencies..

LAS VEGAS -- Behind nearly every sleek, portable gizmo introduced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show is an annoying tangle of cables and power adapters.
(article continues below useful links)  

But in the age of Bluetooth, Wi Fi, and cellphones, a number of companies also unveiled solutions to help cut those cords, with everything from batteries that charge using solar energy to wireless power.

"Somewhere in your home, you've got a drawer filled with adapters. And if you lose the adapter, you lose the value of your device," said David W. Baarman , director of advanced technologies at Fulton Innovation. He demonstrated a new technology that can power an iPod or a Motorola Razr phone by placing them onto a car cupholder. Our "concept is, you can take your phone and just set it down and charge it."

Baarman's technology, called eCoupled, uses inductive coupling, which transfers energy through a magnetic field. Ultimately, the company foresees a generation of appliances and electronics that don't need cords at all, but can simply sit on a pad on the dashboard or a tabletop to charge.

Fulton Innovation showed a mock-up of a kitchen counter of the future, where an electric hot plate placed on the surface began heating within a few seconds.

Eventually, a person could just set a blender, mixer, or hot pot onto the counter and begin cooking without messing around with cords, Baarman said. One day, people could power a laptop, digital camera, or a lamp just by placing it on a desk.

The basic idea is more than a century old and uses the work of scientists Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla. Faraday discovered that a changing magnetic field can induce an electrical current, and Tesla expanded on his ideas, experimenting with wireless energy transmission.

Fulton's base station builds on those concepts, creating an electromagnetic field that then generates a current in the device, battery, or adapter sitting on top of it.

Companies like Splashpower Ltd. and WildCharge Inc. offer wireless charging products that use similar ideas.

But Fulton Innovation hopes to move forward by forming partnerships with companies like consumer electronics maker Motorola, automotive systems maker Visteon Corp., furniture maker Herman Miller, and technology developer Mobility Electronics to make the system compatible with digital music players, cameras, and laptops .

In order for devices to receive power, they need to have a special battery or an add-on module. Baarman said the company was working with both device and battery manufacturers to integrate the technology.

At the Visteon display in Las Vegas, a cellphone and iPod sat in a nook in a car dashboard charging. In another demonstration, a cupholder device that plugged into the cigarette lighter showed how it will one day scale up to be able to charge digital cameras and laptops.

"We've been looking at wireless charging for about four years, making it more convenient and simpler to interface with devices you bring into the car," said Mel Sarnowsky , program manager for wireless charging at Visteon. He described a "wireless charging ecosystem" using the same technology in both a car and a home office that would be necessary for the technology to succeed.

The cupholder charger should become available this year, and the charging systems should begin to be built in to vehicles in 2008.

Other companies looked to cut the cord by improving batteries.

Sanyo Energy Corp. demonstrated its rechargeable Eneloop Nickel Metal Hydride batteries, which last three times longer than alkaline batteries in devices like digital cameras. A small solar panel will recharge the batteries in the same amount of time it would take to plug them into the wall, according to Sanyo marketing analyst Howard Lim .

Other companies are using more conventional means to increase power when an outlet isn't close by.

The Charge 2 Go Power Station uses AA batteries and special connectors to recharge a variety of devices. The ECOSOL Powerstick is a pocket-sized gadget that plugs into a USB port on a computer to power up, and then it fuels a variety of cellphones, PDAs, and mp3 players. A new line of iRecharge portable power supplies from ESI Enterprises Inc. can be used to charge Motorola, Blackberry, and Nokia cellphones, adding to products that already charge camcorders, the Sony PSP, laptops, and portable DVD players.

"I believe most people can relate, when they're in the middle of an important conversation on their cellphone and they run out of juice, or they hop on a plane and they use their laptop and they run out of power," said ESI spokesman Keith Pillow . "For people who are constantly on the go, [it's valuable to] simply have an ongoing source of power."

Copyright © 2007. Boston Globe.