5 Gadgets to solve your every tech need

If you’ve ever spent an evening pacing up and down your driveway, shaking a pack of biscuits while calling for your cat in a strained falsetto (while said cat is happily asleep in your underwear drawer), this will save you time: a collar-mounted location device that uses radio frequencies and a beeping handset to pinpoint your furry friend within 2.5cm, even through walls.

Although it has a relatively short range, it’s easy to set up, comfortable for your cat and fun to use (hide-the-cat is a great game). 

I have a plethora of portable speakers scattered about, but sometimes—mainly when I’m making meatballs and there’s grease on my fingers—I crave the convenience of an old-fashioned radio set, which simply switches on and pumps the room full of sound without the need for syncing or charging.

Step forward Pure’s intuitive all-in-one: it has FM, DAB and 20 presets, yet is future-proofed with Bluetooth and AUX connections, and even retro-fitted with a built-in CD drive.

About the size of a shoebox, clad in walnut casing with classy chrome knobs, it’s stylish and substantial, a stand-alone device that screams quality. And, huzzah, there’s a remote control for those greasy fingers!

We’re led to believe this is the year of wearable tech, but perhaps the most useful wearable tech product has already existed for centuries: spectacles.

Now Oxford-based company Eyejusters have added a mechanical flourish: with a twiddle of an adjuster on the side of their specs, users can reset the focus of each lens.

So instead of requiring a separate pair of reading glasses for, say, reading, using your computer and driving, you can use the same pair for all three—and they’re available in fashionable frames too.

The blockbuster app behind the “face swap” craze can also layer live video selfies with impressive computer graphics.

Swipe right to adorn your face with a thick bristly beard, or make your eyes cartoonishly pop out of your skull, while face-tracking technology ensures the animations remain in the right proportions even as you move the around the room. It’s hours of fun.

Ever enjoyed a song on the wireless, then forgotten what it was? This app could be your saviour—by browsing the playlist of every BBC national station by day, time and station, you can click through to add clips of your favourite tunes to a playlist, then stream them in full via Spotify, Deezer or YouTube.

An (imperfect) algorithm also provides audio and video-clip recommendations.

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