The accidental rise of the universal power adapters: USB and Firewire

Martin Tobias over at Deep Green Crystals mentions this morning his geek fetish for a new device called the Firepod.

He then goes on to say that this is cool because it is a cigarette plug in that breaks off to a USB and a Firewire cable, each of which can be used to charge his cell and his iPod.

That made some synapses fire and connect (perhaps more slowly than everybody around me?) and I realized that the need for the old cigarette adapter with all the funny ends may be at the end of its life. Most new portable funky devices are connected somehow and usually by either USB or firewire as in the example above. So as long as you have a small cigarette to USB/FW and an AC to USB/FW adapter with you, you can charge all of your devices no matter where you are. That’s a very tiny, but very cool thing. Less power adapters floating all over the place.