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Wireless power technologies are moving closer to becoming viable options.

The mat uses a conductive powering technique, which is more efficient than inductive powering but requires direct contact between the devices and the charging pad. Though most of the mats or pads on display are intended to power only a handful of devices at a time, WildCharge says the product design is certified for up to 150 watts — enough to power 30 laptops.

Across the room from WildCharge, PowerCast displayed Christmas ornaments and floor tiles glowing with LEDs powered by ambient radio waves. The devices harvest electromagnetic energy in ambient radio waves from a nearby low-power antenna. Because of the dangerous nature of electromagnetic waves in high doses, Pittsburgh-based PowerCast is targeting its application for small devices like ZigBee wireless chips, which require little power.

Perhaps the most promising wireless power technology was the latest iteration of WiTricity, the Watertown, Mass.-based brainchild of MIT physicist Marin Soljacic, on display in a private suite high in the Venetian hotel tower.

The technology uses a technique developed by Soljacic called “highly coupled magnetic resonance.” As proof that it works, an LCD TV is powered by a coil hidden behind an oil painting located a few feet away. Across the hotel room, WiTricity Chief Executive Eric Giler walks in the direction of another coil holding an iPod Touch in the palm of his hand. Power hungry, it starts to charge when it gets within two meters.

Soljacic has already earned a $500,000 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his work, but Giler said the technology is at least a year away. In the meantime, WiTricity has obtained an exclusive license from MIT to bring Soljacic’s idea to market and hopes to have an estimated 200 patents.

But because Soljacic published his academic paper in Nature magazine, companies like Intel have been able to replicate the effect in their labs based on his principles.

Elsewhere at CES, PowerBeam showcased wireless lamps and picture frames. Located in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company uses yet another wireless-powering approach. Its technology beams optical energy into photovoltaic cells using laser diodes. Although the company says it can maintain a constant energy flow across long distances, the difficulty of targeting a laser means that it’s not ideal for charging moving devices.

So, while 2009 may not be the year wireless electricity takes off, the nascent sector is certainly on its way.

Here’s what you need to know to get the cell phone and service plan that are right for you.

Nowadays, people divulge tons of private life details. But TMI can create covetous feelings that wreak havoc on self-esteem.

Telling people how much money you make or the number of orgasms you had last night used to be considered inappropriate. But in today’s confessional society, we’re encouraged to spill — or even brag — about all the good things that happen to us.

Trouble is, this oversharing has given rise to a new level of envy. “Status is much more important than it used to be, and we’re way more competitive,” says Jean Twenge, PhD, author of Generation Me. “People want others to know they’re living well. And since there’s more pressure than ever to keep up, hearing intimate details of someone’s life can make you feel envious.”

Adding to the problem is our heightened level of brand awareness. When people wear their financial prosperity on their sleeve (sometimes literally), you know how much their wardrobe cost without their telling you. And since no Cosmo girl should ever feel inferior, we’ve asked experts to explain why this new breed of envy is so toxic and how you can cope.

Who Works Our Envy Nerve
Not everybody has the ability to conjure up covetous feelings. “It may not bother you that an acquaintance or someone older has something you don’t,” says Linda Centeno, PhD, psychologist in private practice in New Jersey. But when it’s a friend or a person on your level, it can be harder to take, because you feel you deserve the same things. Kerri, 25, can relate. “My boss has lots of designer purses, and it doesn’t bug me because she’s reached a place where she should have them,” she says. “But when my friend got a raise and bought a Louis Vuitton bag, I was jealous because I can’t afford one.”

More often than not, envy stems from insecurity. And everyone has an Achilles’ heel — whether it relates to the size of their bank account or the size of their butt. So when another chick offers up that she was willed 10 grand from her great-aunt or that she dropped two pants sizes, it can magnify feelings of inadequacy. “Women tend to compare themselves to others,” says Polly Young-Eisendrath, PhD, author of The Self-Esteem Trap. “And how they stack up can affect their self-esteem.”

With some mental exercises and patience, living happier isn’t just a pipe dream.

Happiness isn’t a shapeless myth that hippies throw around like a Frisbee. Research shows that happy people not only have a better attitude in life but they tend to be healthier and live longer. One study from University College London showed that happiness improves certain bodily functions that help prevent cardiovascular disease and diabetes. And a Yale University study found that optimists live more than seven years longer than pessimists.

Being happier isn’t all about money, parties and social status. If you pay attention to doing things that make you happier, keep an open mind and put in the effort, you can be well on your way to loving your life in 30 days. So go ahead and smile, because you’re about to embark on a change that can only end in sheer delight.

Training Your Brain

Being happier starts with priming your brain to think happier or positive thoughts. “Whether you like it or not, facts are facts. You might not enjoy the fact you’re facing but you can control your emotional response to it. Do it with a positive attitude and you’ll get through it a lot quicker than if you agonize and lament over it,” says Michael Anthony, author of the e-book How to be Happy and Have Fun Changing the World.

Louise Bluth,* a 37-year-old sales manager, found it difficult to be happier after living through an abusive childhood. “I was always told that I was a failure and a loser, and that I was the shame of the family,” she says.

She decided she didn’t deserve to be that unhappy and started volunteering for a suicide helpline. Her training stressed the concept of getting into the mind of a suicidal person to be able to show them possible solutions to their problems. “This proved to me that your state of mind could be changed, and so you can become happier,” she says. Louise started taking Buddhist meditation classes, where she further learned how to prime her mind for happiness. “I learned that my happiness was up to me,” she says.

It’s hard to change your mindset overnight, so you might have to draw your positive brain waves out of hiding. One way to do this is by reciting a daily affirmation or a mantra. This statement can be repeated daily to get your brain ready to think happier thoughts.

Fear of Living Happier

There’s a fear of failure that people encounter when it comes to being happier. Fear can make you revert to some old, unhealthy habits and behaviors just to enjoy that comfortable feeling again.

“Recognize that fear, recognize that you’re human and just put it aside,” says Debbie Gisonni, author of The Goddess of Happiness: A Down-to-Earth Guide for Heavenly Balance and Bliss. “Don’t think about it. Instead of thinking about what could happen, keep focusing on what you want to happen.”

Another way to handle the fears of being happier is through volunteer work. As Anthony says, when you’re helping others, “you’re being very positive with your time and then there’s that satisfaction — the feeling of greatness that comes from helping others.”

When Scott Harrison decided to change his life to be happier, he never realized that he would question everything he held true. In 2004, the New York City resident realized that his work promoting nightclubs and fashion events was utterly unfulfilling. “I was one of the most miserable people I knew,” he says.

In order to live a happier life, Scott changed his life drastically. He re-examined his faith and volunteered a year of service as a photographer for Mercy Ships, a non-profit that offers free medical care to poor countries around the world.

“I had to see 5,000 people standing in a field with horrible tumors, cleft lips and palates, the blind, the lame,” he says. “I cried a lot, I prayed a lot and I doubted a lot, too. How could a God allow this stuff to happen?”

These tragedies didn’t stop Scott from continuing to pursue his dream of helping others. “I was lucky to be able to focus on what we could do — on the thousands of lives we could and did radically transform,” he explains. His change was so successful that he started his own non-profit called “Charity,” and Scott feels that he’s happiest when he’s helping others.

Helpful Happiness Tips

“Active gratitude — counting your blessings and actually taking time during the day to do so — is probably the single most important habit,” says David Leonhardt, known as “The Happy Guy” and author of Climb Your Stairway to Heaven: The 9 Habits of Maximum Happiness. “From the paperclip to our cars to our health to our freedoms — if we don’t actively appreciate it, then we’re not going to get all the happiness out of any other habit or any other change we make.”

Being grateful helped Katsuaki Tsukamoto be happier. The 35-year-old carpenter had always felt a bit of emptiness in his life. “I thought I needed to have something or own something to make me happy,” he says.

He had an epiphany while on a bike ride one beautiful day. “I suddenly realized that my bicycle was a gift, but more than that, I started feeling that everything was a gift in some sense,” he says. “I really felt appreciation for the miracle of the moment and was grateful that I could experience it.”

For many, this epiphany doesn’t come naturally in the first 30 days. A gratitude journal documenting everything you’re grateful for can often help remind you of all the good things in your life. Every day, simply write three to five things that you appreciated about that day.

Happier Living

Your success in the first 30 days and beyond will be dependent on how well you make time for the things that make you happy. Whether it’s completing a Sudoku puzzle, catching up with a friend or painting, you should always strive for a balance between the things you have to do and the things you want to do.

Your success won’t be measured in this month, but over your lifetime. For Scott, his charity work is so connected to his overall happiness that he no longer views them as mutually exclusive.

“I don’t really think about the word ‘happiness,’ but I guess I am,” he says. “It’s just what I do now. I love it and can’t imagine ever doing anything else.”

Part of human intelligence is learning from mistakes. The common example is when a child touches a hot stove for the first time. That child knows never to touch that stove again because of the physical pain it caused.

But why do we repeat so many mistakes when it comes to our emotions?

We learn at work when we make mistakes. We learn from horrible non-dating experiences in life:

One time I went to a concert when I was 15, thinking I had to get there as soon as the doors opened. But when a long-haired hooligan named Vinnie Moore opened for them with the phrase: “This one’s called Cinnabon,” before making my ears bleed with hellish guitar licks. I learned, at that point, never to attend the opening act portion of a concert.

I’ve learned to avoid saying stupid things to girls: Once you’ve complimented a girl on how great her outfit looks, don’t try to double-compliment her by saying it looks like she got a great deal at Target, too (only other girls can get away with that).

Emotional mistakes? Seems like we are gluttons for punishment. Here are some common emotional mistakes that people can make, and often repeat:

Taking them back: You broke up with him, but —even if he was a total jerk —there is still a soft spot in your heart. You remember the good times, and — hey — it’s not THAT fun being single. Often, we end up taking back people who have hurt us in the past or who just didn’t work out. Not sure how often this works out, but doesn’t it seem like we would be able to say “no”?

Believing this time, he or she is “The One”: I’m so guilty of this one — I get a number, I meet a girl, I feel like there is some kind of magical cloud hanging over me. I’m still single, so obviously I have been way off with these predictions. I mistakenly believe I’ve met “The One” about two times a year. You’d think that I’d learn not to get so ahead of myself at “Hello.”

Getting lied to repeatedly: Isn’t it terrible when someone stays in a relationship while they are being lied to? It seems like everyone on the outside knows what’s going on, but that person in the relationship believes everything to the point of blindness. In a perfect world, we’d learn from one lie, but often we think that lies are isolated incidents when in fact we could be getting lied to repeatedly.

Staying with someone wrong for you (a.k.a. “I can change him/her”): Why do we stay with people when they are jerks, and why do we keep thinking we can change people? It’s much better to be alone than to be dating a jerk. Why can’t we apply that common sense?

Mistaking physical intimacy for emotional intimacy: When we are in the heat of the moment, emotional closeness gets all intertwined with physical closeness. Sometimes we feel that if we get close physically, it will eventually lead to a close emotional connection. I can say I have never gotten into anything special that was sparked by a physical connection and, believe me, I’ve tried. The deeper relationships grow out of a gradual emotional connection. Nevertheless, sometimes we think if we have sex, then something might come of it.

Emotional pain is much more complicated than physical pain or a mistake at work that you learn from and never repeat. I guess Pat Benatar was right when she sang “Love Is a Battlefield,” but it’s a shame that we must go through pain and make multiple mistakes to get to where we want to be in the dating world. Humans naturally want to trust and love. We want to believe that the good in everyone will prevail, and it’s devastating to come to grips with the fact that you may have misjudged someone. This is why we are prone to repeat emotional mistakes.

We are left to choose between withdrawing from dating, or going through the mistakes until you find The One, because it’s almost impossible to know for sure that something will not be an emotional mistake until after it’s too late.

Sages going back to Socrates have offered advice on how to be happy, but only now are scientists beginning to address this question with systematic, controlled research. Although many of the new studies reaffirm time-honored wisdom (“Do what you love,” “To thine own self be true”), they also add a number of fresh twists and insights. We canvassed the leading experts on what happy people have in common—and why it’s worth trying to become one of them:

They find their most golden self. Picture happiness. What do you see? A peaceful soul sitting in a field of daisies appreciating the moment? That kind of passive, pleasure-oriented—hedonic—contentment is definitely a component of overall happiness. But researchers now believe that eudaimonic well-being may be more important. Cobbled from the Greek eu (“good”) and daimon (“spirit” or “deity”), eudaimonia means striving toward excellence based on one’s unique talents and potential—Aristotle considered it to be the noblest goal in life. In his time, the Greeks believed that each child was blessed at birth with a personal daimon embodying the highest possible expression of his or her nature. One way they envisioned the daimon was as a golden figurine that would be revealed by cracking away an outer layer of cheap pottery (the person’s base exterior). The effort to know and realize one’s most golden self—”personal growth,” in today’s lingo—is now the central concept of eudaimonia, which has also come to include continually taking on new challenges and fulfilling one’s sense of purpose in life.

“Eudaimonic well-being is much more robust and satisfying than hedonic happiness, and it engages different parts of the brain,” says Richard J. Davidson, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The positive emotion accompanying thoughts that are directed toward meaningful goals is one of the most enduring components of well-being.” Eudaimonia is also good for the body. Women who scored high on psychological tests for it (they were purposefully engaged in life, pursued self-development) weighed less, slept better, and had fewer stress hormones and markers for heart disease than others—including those reporting hedonic happiness—according to a study led by Carol Ryff, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

They design their lives to bring in joy. It may seem obvious, but “people don’t devote enough time to thinking seriously about how they spend their life and how much of it they actually enjoy,” says David Schkade, PhD, a psychologist and professor of management at the University of California, San Diego. In a recent study, Schkade and colleagues asked more than 900 working women to write down everything they’d done the day before. Afterward, they reviewed their diaries and evaluated how they felt at each point. When the women saw how much time they spent on activities they didn’t like, “some people had tears in their eyes,” Schkade says. “They didn’t realize their happiness was something they could design and have control over.”

Analyzing one’s life isn’t necessarily easy and may require questioning long-held assumptions. A high-powered career might, in fact, turn out to be unfulfilling; a committed relationship once longed for could end up being irritating with all the compromising that comes with having a partner. Dreams can be hard to abandon, even when they’ve turned sour.

Fortunately, changes don’t have to be big ones to tip the joy in your favor. Schkade says that if you transfer even an hour of your day from an activity you hate (commuting, scrubbing the bathroom) to one you like (reading, spending time with friends), you should see a significant improvement in your overall happiness. Taking action is key. Another recent study, at the University of Missouri, compared college students who made intentional changes (joining a club, upgrading their study habits) with others who passively experienced positive turns in their circumstances (receiving a scholarship, being relieved of a bad roommate). All the students were happier in the short term, but only the group who made deliberate changes stayed that way.

They avoid “if only” fantasies. If only I get a better job…find a man…lose the weight…life will be perfect. Happy people don’t buy into this kind of thinking.

The latest research shows that we’re surprisingly bad at predicting what will make us happy. People also tend to misjudge their contentment when zeroing in on a single aspect of their lives—it’s called the focusing illusion. In one study, single subjects were asked, “How happy are you with your life in general?” and “How many dates did you have last month?” When the dating question was asked first, their romantic lives weighed more heavily into how they rated their overall happiness than when the questions were reversed.

The other argument against “if only” fantasies has to do with “hedonic adaptation”—the brain’s natural dimming effect, which guarantees that a new house won’t generate the same pleasure a year after its purchase and the thrill of having a boyfriend will ebb as you get used to being part of a couple. Happy people are wise to this, which is why they keep their lives full of novelty, even if it’s just trying a new activity (diving, yoga) or putting a new spin on an old favorite (kundalini instead of vinyasa).

They put best friends first. It’s no surprise that social engagement is one of the most important contributors to happiness. What’s news is that the nature of the relationship counts. Compared with dashing around chatting with acquaintances, you get more joy from spending longer periods of time with a close friend, according to research by Meliksah Demir, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Northern Arizona University. And the best-friend benefit doesn’t necessarily come from delving into heavy discussions. One of the most essential pleasures of close friendship, Demir found, is simple companionship, “just hanging out,” as he says, hitting the mall or going to the movies together and eating popcorn in the dark.

They allow themselves to be happy. As much as we all think we want it, many of us are convinced, deep down, that it’s wrong to be happy (or too happy). Whether the belief comes from religion, culture, or the family you were raised in, it usually leaves you feeling guilty if you’re having fun.

“Some people would say you shouldn’t strive for personal happiness until you’ve taken care of everyone in the world who is starving or doesn’t have adequate medical care,” says Howard Cutler, MD, who co-authored The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World with the Dalai Lama. “The Dalai Lama believes you should pursue both simultaneously. For one thing, there is clear research showing that happy people tend to be more open to helping others. They also make better spouses and parents.” And in one famous study, nuns whose autobiographies expressed positive emotions (such as gratitude and optimism) lived seven to 10-and-a-half years longer than other nuns. So, for any die-hard pessimist who still needs persuading, just think of how much more you can help the world if you allow a little happiness into your life.