Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Share Radio's tech supremo Steve Caplin wouldn't touch personal AI assistant Clawdot with a bargepole, useful though it might seem. However, Just Eat's "personal food concierge" is another matter entirely. There's an app to help identify dinosaur footprints, though Steve has clocked a problem with a drone intended for firefighters wanting to check inside burning buildings. Chinese scientists have come up with a tooth powder to keep teeth white and there's a crowdfunded holographic display which can create talking relatives or even pets from a single photo. Beekeepers may get stung less often with a portable harvester while the Chinese are clamouring for stuffed horses with the smile the wrong way up.
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin is intrigued by a robot that the University of Columbia has been training to lip-sync to make it more lifelike. He discusses the history of the laser, originally called a death ray and yet which is only now apparently worthy of the name. There’s also an airbag for cyclists, a cycle helmet that protects more than just head-on crashes as current helmets do, while the Australians have come up with a semi-recumbent electric trike. Peugot have tried to reinvent the steering wheel, which they claim will be the “future of driving”, and there’s a Norwegian sewing app that may defeat any non-Norwegians trying to find it.
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin returns to Las Vegas's Consumer Electronics Show, marvelling at AI lawnmowers, air conditioners, saunas, showers and even an AI robot triceratops for the lawn, though it's rather a small one. We are promised a single-seat eVTOL for around £30,000 very soon from China, whose BYD EV car company has now overtaken Tesla for sales volume. Amazon has entered the TV business with a set resembling a framed artwork. Matthew McConaughey has trademarked himself to prevent AI cloning him. Apple is to use Google Gemini to power Siri and Nike have taken a decade to develop shoes that apparently stimulate the wearer's feet.
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin highlights the first week of the Consumer Electronics Show, salivating over Lego's new smart bricks, packed full of features but currently only available to those buying two Star Wars models. There's also a ridiculously large TV, a rapid icemaker, a trifold Samsung phone, a clever charging smart lock, a robot vacuum that can climb stairs and lollipops that play music via bone conduction while you're devouring them. Kawasaki are to make the robot horse that before was only a CGI video. AI art creators are complaining about their work being stolen, ironic since they stole it in the first place. Video business cards are looking for crowdfunding. And very precise 3D printing is going to be possible thanks to the use of mosquito proboscises.
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Steve Caplin rounds up his favourite gadgety stories of the year. Learn how best to let oral meds work, to grow your own teeth, to hear in a noisy room, write a detective story, stop cows falling in the river and what to do if a velociraptor is chasing you. He explains why it can be cheaper to go from Cornwall to Manchester via Malaga, the over-complicated scientific way to boil eggs, the eyebrowing-raising slip-up on those old DVD piracy warnings and Google London's problems with foxes and rats. Among the inventions highlights are a giant hamster wheel for skiers, a remote-controlled coffee table with 12 legs, the WalkCar Segway and an electric skateboard that will do 45mph. All this and more in the round-up of the stories on Gadgets and Gizmos in 2025.
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin is intrigued by a ring for your index finger which will capture audio to take notes or set up timers or reminders. Dutch students have invented a modular electric car which has parts you can swap out yourself, including the battery, motors and even body panels. Wacky inventor Colin Furze has come up with a bicycle that has magnetic suspension. There’s a personal AI chef, an AI monitor for your cat’s litter tray, a way of harvesting lithium from dead rechargeable batteries, an expensive portable sauna you can take camping with you and, in Hangzhou in China, they have wheeled out a robot traffic policeman.
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin says it's been a bad week for Elon Musk. X has been fined €120m for breaching EU digital laws, his Optimus robot demo was disastrous and X's new location facility may help Iranian authorities identify dissenters. He discusses the researchers hoping to make robot hands from lobster shells, the glasses that change focus automatically, a crowd-funding project redesigning a loose-leaf teapot, a printer for children's drawing ideas, an LED light from Ikea and a biodegradable coffin made of mushrooms. He also strongly recommends https://everythingiknow.online, his own new website.
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin plays Santa with Simon his little helper as he unveils his 2025 gadgets Christmas gift guide. Many inexpensive stocking fillers come from AliExpress, like Apple Watch chargers, car phone holders, rechargeable fans and micro wire cutters while, from Amazon, you can get contact cleaner and USB extension cables. Steve even explains where to get winter strawberries. More substantial are portable monitors, bike helmets and iPad cases with keyboards. For the well-heeled, what about a Japanese "human washing machine", a box to display your Rolexes, a hypercar or a James Bond DB5 replica?
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin says the new location feature in X shows that thousands of pro-Trump accounts aren't US-based. The Grok chatbot has been bigging up Elon Musk. Avoid cheap Fire Sticks that offer free streaming services: they can steal your bank details and identity. Voyager 1 is now a light day from Earth. Plans are afoot to launch things into space with a 6-mile-long space gun. The 200-year-old Stirling engine might finally have a use – in the desert. There's progress in getting drinking water from the air. And it seems that the best soldiers for modern warfare are those who have spent many hours playing video games.
Guests: Steve Caplin
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Original Broadcast: Gadgets and Gizmos
Steve Caplin discusses the way the University of Vienna got details of 3.5 billion people from Whatsapp in the largest data leak in history. He was mystified by the in-built questions for Laura, Skoda's in-car AI. More worrying is the misleading financial advice AI has been giving about ISAs and travel insurance. Among gadgets Steve does not recommend are a tiny Kodak camera for a keychain, a Swiss Army knife for baristas and an acoustic camera that detects the source of a sound. And, disconcertingly, he reports that one in five teens apparently find it easier to talk to chatbots than they do to people.
Guests: James Cameron-Wilson
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