A docking station is provided for a computing device. The docking station may be used by, for example, a mobile computing device, such as a cellular or wireless telephony/messaging device. The docking station includes a housing comprising a receiving surface top receive and retain the mobile computing device. An inductive signal transfer interface is included with the housing to inductively signal at least one of power or data to the mobile computing device. The docking station further provides an output component and processing resources. The processing resources are configured to detect placement of the mobile computing device on the receiving surface. The data is received from the mobile computing device, and an output is signaled to the output component based on the received data.