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Wind-powered Wi-Fi Sensors
Glenn Fleishman writes "According to an article at Indolink a 10-centimeter diameter windmill can produce the 7.5 milliwatts needed for a wireless sensor. The paper was published earlier (available as a PDF), but Nature magazine has apparently picked up the tidbit. The process flexes piezoelectric crystals to create a current. Although flywheels aren't mentioned in this article, it seems like a windmill, a flywheel, and a solar cell could in combination produce effective power in a range of conditions for remote wireless devices, including network relays obviating batteries entirely."
First, these aren't wind powered sensors that transmit over wi-fi -- they're wind-powered sensors that detect a wi-fi node nearby. There's a big difference in power levels there. The first sounds really nifty, and with lower-power radio systems would be really cool. The second sounds like something ThinkGeek will have on clearance in about two years.
Will people stop applying this term to everything? Wi-Fi is referring to wireless LAN, not to any device that happens to use the radio spectrum. Use "wireless", or "radio", or "remote".