You can charge mobile devices by placing them on a pad. The Palm Pre had this out of the box. You can retrofit other phones like the iPhone to have this ability also.

The Pre has inductive charging? That's very interesting... I wonder if I can buy a pad for my Desire HD.

Kinda. The Touchstone charging system is an optional-- and not terribly cheap-- (US$50) accessory.

I use it, it's pretty neat. There's an advantage beyond the obvious: the charging puck is always stuck to a surface[1], and the phone should always be stuck to the puck, (using magnets built into the back of the phone) so I tend to lose the phone a lot less often. The OS can also tell if you're using the induction charger, if you pull it off the puck while the phone's ringing, it'll automatically pick it up, and switch to speakerphone if you put it on the puck during a call.

There's also disadvantages. It can't transmit as much power as the USB cable, and it's quite inefficient, getting fairly warm in use. If induction chargers ever became popular, presumably the hippies would get upset about the pointless waste of electricity.

[1]: There's double sided foam tape on the bottom of the puck that's actually the first application I've ever seen of the gecko setae "superglue" that various tech sites have been banging on about for the last decade. It never loses its stickiness, but also gets dirty astonishingly easy.

I see, thank you. Too bad about the energy waste.

If you just used a non-metallic container with a piece of metal inside, you can heat your soup via induction. Nothing fancy.

"Now this is what I call a thousand years of progress: A Bavarian cream dog that's also self-microwaving!"