Monday, January 5, 2009

Which Mass. Companies Will Be at CES This Week?

The Globe's Hiawatha Bray wrote a piece over the weekend about some of the Massachusetts companies that'll take part in the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Vegas, including companies like MyVu, Tivoli Audio, and iRobot. Many smaller firms, like Zink Imaging and WiTricity (not mentioned in the piece), will have hotel suites instead of booths on the show floor.

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Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Delivering Electricity Like WiFi

Earlier this month, my Globe column profiled WiTricity, a relatively new MIT spin-out that's trying to bring to market a system for wirelessly transmitting electricity (and doing it safely.)

Here's the opening:

    In a brick building in Watertown where men's suits were once made, Eric Giler is running a company that seems to be defying the gravity of the current economic morass.

    Investors call to ask whether they can give him money. Customers request demos and suggest they're ready to commit to partnerships as quickly as possible. At January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Giler plans to rent a hotel suite in the Venetian (not a highly trafficked booth at the convention center) and schedule meetings selectively.

    His company, WiTricity Corp., is commercializing a breakthrough unveiled last year by MIT researchers: the ability to safely transmit power through thin air. Imagine electricity beamed around rooms the way Wi-Fi provides an Internet link. WiTricity could provide the power to keep a mobile phone's battery perpetually charged or operate a wall-hung flat-screen TV without cords.


Here's the video of CEO Eric Giler giving a demo of the system:



They don't yet have much of a Web site yet, but eventually it will be here.

Mass High Tech supplies more background on Giler; I provided an update on the company back in October.

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