Back at the end of July we reported that CBS, home of The Masters and March Madness, and Nielsen Media Research were betting on gaming’s future. Now ESPN is getting into the game mix.

Gaming coverage on television isn’t new, but it’s interesting to see big names like CBS and ESPN dipping their big toes into the gaming pool. ESPN, the grand daddy of all sports television, has entered into a multiyear agreement with Major League Gaming (MLG) to provide exclusive online coverage of upcoming video game competitions.

The agreement includes streamed matches, player interviews, scores, and stats. ESPN will be onsite for each 2008 MLG Pro Circuit competition and will include content from the games in short segments on existing TV programs.

The temptation is to say that ESPN’s MLG gaming coverage is only online and that the cable network is not committing much valuable air time to MLG events on one of its cable channels. But think of this as a precursor of what’s to come.

Simply put, improved battery life is the Holy Grail of consumer electronics. So far, advancement in battery technology for laptops, portable music players, digital cameras, and cell phones has been incremental and frustratingly slow.

Stanford University researchers, however, recently announced in Nature Nanotechnology a discovery that using silicon nanowires to recharge lithium ion batteries may increase battery life by 10 times.

The benefit to us, users of consumer electronics from laptops to cell phones, is greatly increased battery life, something we’ve been wanting — but manufacturers have not been able to deliver — for a long time. In theory, using silicon nanowires to recharge lithium ion batteries may mean that a two hour laptop charge could last for 20 hours.

“It’s not a small improvement” said Yi Cui, an assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, told CNet. “It’s a revolutionary development.”