The wireless brigade

If you are on social media long enough, at some point you will come across a sardonic meme about trees giving off WiFi signals, thereby saving themselves from destruction. Now that may happen yet — the day pigs fly — but what if you could actually recharge all your electronic devices the same way you consume WiFi? What if there was a device that institutional and individual users could install at one place and use to charge their phones, tablets and laptops wirelessly? Meredith Perry is working with her team to bring that idea to life.

With $750,000 in seed funding, Perry and her team are looking to create uBeam, which will use ultrasound transmitters to wirelessly charge devices. Investor interest went through the roof when a prototype was debuted at a tech convention two years ago. Though there has not been any news since then, the buzz is that the device is on its way to completion. This one is definitely a wait and watch innovation.