People started using it because it is cross platform, when lots of people had Symbian phones, and it pulled in all your contacts from your address book, so you didn't need to manually add all your friends like some other services. Now there's no real reason to change.

The power isn't radiating over a sphere, they're using a phased array to make it directional. (in theory)

Okay, so they are going to use a phased array transmitter to focus energy on the receiver. But what if my phone's charging in my pocket, and I have a small key or something that's a half wavelength long? Is it going to resonate and burn my dick?

The dude says he used it in a coffee shop. I can just imagine the joy he brought to his fellow patrons.

Guys like that are usually hiding incompetence behind aggression

Really opens up the sluices at both ends.

If not for the announcement of Mir, this would have taken at least 5 years

I think the easiest way is an arduino and bluetooth. An arduino nano clone and bluetooth-serial board will set you back $20 from dealextreme. Then pick up of those emergency USB charger battery packs while you're there, and you've got yourself an easy to use 5V power source. Then maybe write some generic firmware to read/write the GPIOs, ADC, I2C, SPI etc, and you'd never need to touch the firmware on the arduino again. Obviously the bandwidth is limited. I can't get my cheapo bluetooth-serial board to work reliably above 115200 baud (~12KB/s). ...And this way your phone stays electrically isolated from all the ill-advised hacks you can think of!