While traveling this weekend to Austin City Limits festival in Austin, Texas this weekend (more about that on my personal blog later, promise) I stumbled across this cool gadget charging station in the George Bush Intercontinental/Houston Airport (IAH) airport. The Charge Carte kiosk is brought to you by the same people who extort US$3 out of road-weary travelers to rent luggage carts in airports.

The concept is simple: insert US$3 in the Charge Carte machine and you get 30 minutes of gadget charging time. Many devices are supported, the top row of three is all iPod chargers, the rest are phone chargers for Treo (yay!) Motorola, Nokia, Blackberry, Nextel, LG and Samsung rides. The company claims that a 30 minute charge should provide up to 50 percent of the power capacity of a dead gadget and that their rapid charge technology will charge a cell phone or PDA up to twice as fast as a standard outlet charger.

I didn't have to use it (luckily) but it's a great idea nonetheless.