It is interesting that the most important part of our cell phones is the one part we are trying to eliminate: the power cord.  This has come up so many times recently it is worth at least a few words.

How many times have you heard or read this:

"My phone's gonna die, call the other line."

"E-mail me phone is about to shut down."

Now we are at the point that everyone knows everyone else has their cell phones with them constantly.  The only issue is IF they have power or not.  Now losing power is about the only excuse left to drop off the grid without offense.  However it is also a legit issue.  I am a hard core user with the phone either being used for intercepting company e-mail, business calls, text messages, music, and navigation constantly.  I use it as a mobile internet WIFI hotspot when I go on live shots so I can still post weather stories from the field.  The most important part is the charger which plugs into the lighter which basically has turned my cell phone into a wall phone.  My phone heats up I use it so often, kinda like holding a glowing charcoal briquette connected to the information super-highway (powerful if I need to know about Ashton Kutcher's latest Tweet).

I am not alone here.  When I was at the Mid-State fair recently someone came up to the live van and begged to plug their phone in for a few minutes because it was dead and they needed to get a hold of their kids who were melting under the heat from the sun at some undisclosed other part of the fair grounds.

Of course, plenty of people don't have mobile chargers and at some point over the course of the day the phone just runs out.  I always wonder how much valuable information exchange actually drained the battery:

"I think I found the cure to a horrible disease"

"You did.  Which disease?"

"You know, the big one."

"Awesome, tell me about it."

"Sure, if you isolate the chromosome subset in the nucleus of a cell pertaining to the sequence...oh crap."

"What?"

"My phone is going to die, I will TTYL."

(I am sure almost all phones are drained this way.  The alternative is that they are drained texting about what other people think about various minor day to day activities, flirting and posting or reading them from social networking sites, but that is too depressing to seriously consider.  It is what Bell imagined with Watson for certain in their first texts.)

Bell:  "Watson, what u up to."

Watson: "Uh, nothing, what u doing?"

Bell: "Nothing.  It is 1875, what is there to do?"

Watson: "LOL, aren't you glad we invented this?"

Bell: "Well, we didn't really invent this, we invented voice telephone technology."

Watson: "Well, who has time for that? Lets invent a portable version of the teletype and call it texting?"

Bell: "That is ancient technology, or at least will be at some point, no one will go for it.  Who will type out basic conversations when they can actually hear someone's voice."

Watson: "Everyone, my dear Bell."

(OK, I leap around at the end and it gets wildly historically inaccurate and ludicrous at the end.  I am just saying those boys who invented the phone would not be impressed by the step closer to Morse code or by the kinds of 'information' we prioritize.)