A backpack that converts a plodding gait into electricity could soon be charging up mobile phones, navigation devices, and even portable disc players. The backpack design converts mechanical energy from up-and-down movement of the backpack’s cargo to electricity during normal walking. The simple magnetic coil generator is similar in principal to those seen in hand-cranked radios, flashlights that work after a rhythmic shaking and other devices.

TidBits takes a quick look at ShowMacster, a utility for adding photos and movies to iChat video chats.

Palm and Movistar are offering the latest Movistar corporate solution, Oficina movistar, on the Palm Treo 650 smartphone in the Mexican market. Oficina movistar, which was introduced in February, provides companies with a mobile office solution on a portable handheld device, enabling professionals to access corporate emails, contact lists, calendars, to-do lists, and the Internet while out of the office.

Samsung has announced its latest NAND memory device, which has 16-gigabit density. NAND flash memory is widely used in consumer devices like digital cameras, cell phones, USB flash drives and portable music players such as Apple’s new iPod Nano.

Oxygen Software announced the release of version 2.8 of Oxygen Phone Manager II for Nokia phones. You can now manage the content and settings of your cell phone from a personal computer. The program is compatible with almost all models of Nokia cell phones from 1100 to 8910i and can communicate with the phone through different types of connections.

This is nothing short of earthshaking. eBay is huge and is one of the few companies that could likely make an incredibly strong impact in the voice-over-IP world. We suspect the traditional telcos will be feeling the impact of this purchase for years.

Andrew Kantor, in USA Today, talks about how we’re losing our rights to Fair Use. Important read.

Well, we don’t know what to think. According to this Reuters report we pulled from Engadget, an Asian phone software company called Access just bought out PalmSource, the Palm offspring that produces the Palm OS. WTF? Yeah, this’ll take a while to figure out, and even then, we can be pretty well guaranteed it’ll make no sense. Supposedly, Access scooped up Palm’s crown jewels for $300M. Go figure. We’re bettin’ there’s some dancin’ over at Microsoft, Nokia, and anyone else who might have been threatened before Palm decided to sell off the one thing that defines their company.

In doing some maintenance, I came across some news items that fell through the cracks. With the dust now brushed off of them, here they are for your perusal.-JB

Belkin introduced its next-generation Easy Install Wizard with new features designed to make your wireless networking experience–from setup to enabling security to web-surfing–easier and more accessible. Belkin’s Easy Install Wizard will include the “Strong Security Made Simple” setup feature, a quick and easy-to-use interface for setting up wireless security on routers. Because this security feature is standards-based, any Wi-Fi certified wireless client could securely associate to the network.