Hello, my name is lensman and I am a rechargeable battery nut.

My main NiMH battery charger is a PowerEx MH-C9000 charger/analyzer. It has five modes of which I mainly use the following ones:
1. For new NiMH batteries that are not the low-self-discharge type, I use the Break-In mode. This applies trickles a "forming" charge but takes 2 days. Here is a thread in another forum that talks about the pros and cons.
2. Otherwise I mostly use the "Charge" function, which recharges batteries. This particular charger lets you pick the charging current. The experts recommend that you charge your NiMH batteries at 0.5C-1.0C. For your standard 2000mAh NiMH AA cells, that is 1A to 2A. For 800mAh AAA's, that's 400mA-800mA.
3. I will occasionally send my batteries through a "Refresh/Analyze" cycle. This refreshes the battery by deep cycling it in 3 complete charge-discharge cycles. The MH-C9000 will also display the capacity of your battery at the end of the refresh.

As an FYI, the MH-C9000 is the current gold standard for consumer-level battery chargers. It has four independent bays so you can charge one cell while refreshing another and doing a break-in on another, etc. You should be able to find one online for about $60.

Lithium ion batteries are actually fairly finicky and if it weren't the case that manufacturers were mandated to use charging and discharging control circuits on them I am sure that there would be hundreds if not thousands of battery charging "incidents" in the home. The best thing to do if you want to read up on it is to Google for Lithium ion battery charging FAQs on either RC forums or, in my case, various flashlight forums. But what gfunkdave says is correct. Li-ions don't like being deep discharged. Oddly enough, they like being stored at 40% charge. Actually, one key thing about Li-ion batteries is don't let them discharge below 2V. This means that you should recharge your camera or laptop battery periodically while it is in storage.