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Wireless Power Consortium Pushes for "Qi" Standard
The Wireless Power Consortium (comprised of Samsung, Sanyo, Olympus, Philips, Texas Instruments, and others) has started a push towards a wireless charging standard under the moniker "Qi" (pronounced "chee"). "Members of the Wireless Power Consortium are reviewing version 0.95 of its technical specification which defines a proposed standard for charging devices, using up to 5Watts power, delivered by electromagnetic induction. The spec could evolve into a standard — and will be demonstrated by multiple vendors on September 15th to 16th. ... It is less ambitious than the system demonstrated this summer by Witricity, which operates at a distance of a few meters, using resonance, which the company claims has green benefits through replacing disposable batteries."
I am very familiar with qi, since the Fourth Edition Scrabble Dictionary made it the most life saving play at the end of the game when fate deals you a Q.
My work here is dung.
Well, this is offtopic, but most Western practitioners of Tai Chi engage in what amounts to a rip off of the real thing. I practiced proper Tai Chi (Wu style; teacher of my teacher was an old dude from China who originally learned for decades at the temples there), and it's extremely different than what they teach most people here. They often don't practice the martial aspect of the movements, and often mutate or altogether change many of the health-related movements. It's kind of sad really. Actually becoming adept at Tai Chi and properly learning how to control your "Qi" requires decades. It's amazing what you can do once you actually figure it all out, as my teacher demonstrated over and over again (*on* me for the other students unfortunately). I never met his teacher (he died in a car accident at the age of 80 something a few years previous... was the other guy's fault), but from what I was told by other students he was far more skilled than my teacher, who was amazing in his own right.