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Presenter: Simon Rose
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Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: AI music for bots, Trump's mobiles & solutions for underarm odour and baldness

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: AI music for bots, Trump's mobiles & solutions for underarm odour and baldness
Steve Caplin discusses more to do with AI: researchers have discovered that relying on it makes you stupid; an engineer found it can't play chess; AI-generated music is mostly listened to by bots; Meta's AI is making people's searches for advice public; and Meta itself is apparently offering $100m sign-up fees. Google's new videoconferencing system is now available. Donald Trump is selling gold mobile phones. There's a new source of gold – but it's impossible to get at it. And scientists have found solutions to underarm odour and male pattern baldness.
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published:
Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: Next generation email tool, automatic bike gears & AI art restoration

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: Next generation email tool, automatic bike gears & AI art restoration
Steve Caplin is unsure about DeepMind's forthcoming "next generation email tool" which will answer emails in your voice. The rooftop garden of Google's new London HQ is plagued by foxes and rats. BIC celebrated 75 years by having a pen write Romeo & Juliet in the Bard's handwriting. Shimano have come up with automatic bike gears. There's a coffeemaker that does not need water – it sucks it from the air. AI now appears to be able to restore artworks without risking the original. However, AI also claims that the word "Welsh" is offensive. And Amazon says it will now punish companies that use fake reviews. But how do you punish bots?
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published:
Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: Albert Einstein's business card, concrete coffee makers & the world's smallest violin

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: Albert Einstein's business card, concrete coffee makers & the world's smallest violin
Steve Caplin is excited by Jony Ive's new venture, even though nobody yet knows what it is. He wonders how much Albert Einstein's business card will fetch. There's a face sticker that can monitor employees' tiredness, but there's a catch. Living tattoos have been developed for buildings. The UK's first flying taxi has had a real world flight over the Cotswolds. Who might want to buy a concrete coffeemaker? Loughborough University has created the world's smallest violin. Knee pain might be reduced with in-ear treatment. And you will soon be able to buy your own spaceplane – for a mere $30m.
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published:
Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: AI resorting to blackmail, see-in-the-dark contact lenses & cyborg cockroaches

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: AI resorting to blackmail, see-in-the-dark contact lenses & cyborg cockroaches
Steve Caplin says that the Vienna Tourist Board will be celebrating Strauss's bicentenary by beaming The Blue Danube to Voyager 1. Google's 3D meeting platform is almost here. Claude AI has taken to blackmailing engineers who try to turn it off by scouring their emails for indiscretions. Could our phones soon tell us if we are dehydrated? Dyson have a new vacuum with all the gubbins in the stick. The Chinese are developing contact lenses that enable you to see in the dark. Scientists have worked out how to steer cockroaches. And in Japan you can pay for a shoplifting experience, without breaking the law.
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published:
Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: Google's new AI stuff, beard trimmers, gene-edited spiders & train cleanliness

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: Google's new AI  stuff, beard trimmers, gene-edited spiders & train cleanliness
Steve Caplin is bowled over by Google's new AI which can produce videos with incredibly realistic speech in 24 languages with any accent, though perhaps not Geordie. The much-awaited unifying parking app may be about to happen. 3D beard trimming-guides are here. A gene-edited spider can make red fluorescent silk. A new jet is far more efficient by removing the passenger windows. There's a tennis-serving AI robot. Northern Rail's environmentally-friendly cleaning agent turns out to be water. Cambridge has found a solution to cows falling into the Cam. And US solar farms could be turned off by the Chinese.
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published:
Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: Fish doorbells, turning lead into gold & speeding ducks

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: Fish doorbells, turning lead into gold & speeding ducks
In Utrecht, says Steve Caplin, they've installed a fish video doorbell so the lockkeeper can open the lock for spawning fish. Scientists have managed to turn lead into gold but, even with the Large Hadron Collider, they only produced 29 picograms. There's a way of adding three extra screens to your laptop. Audible are to use AI to narrate audiobooks. Fusion scientists think they can cut the time taken to get to Mars by two-thirds. A dead man testified at the trial of his murderer in Arizona. And a duck has been caught speeding by a radar trap in Switzerland, for the second time in seven years.
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published:
Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: A robotic cake, Spielberg's Duel becomes a reality & tattoing tardigrades

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: A robotic cake, Spielberg's Duel becomes a reality & tattoing tardigrades
Steve Caplin wonders why scientists have developed a cake with pneumatic robotic dancing bears on top, rechargeable but also edible. Amazon have a new budget service – Haul. DVD anti-piracy warnings were piratical themselves. Spielberg's film Duel is about to become a reality in Texas. Delivery robots will soon be able to climb stairs. EEGs are to be considerably less intrusive. Agatha Christie is now helping budding detective writers – from beyond the grave. And Chinese scientists have worked out how to tattoo tardigrades.
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published:
Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: Junk food affects the brain, T-Rex handbags & the weight of Earth's trees

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: Junk food affects the brain, T-Rex handbags & the weight of Earth's trees
Steve Caplin explains the research showing how junk food inhibits the brain. There's a tailor-made Bugatti watch costing a mere $340,000. British scientists plan to weigh the world's trees with a newly-launched satellite. A Newcastle company hopes to grow dinosaur hides in their lab. Urinals could soon be made a little less splashy. Google are trying to talk to dolphins. And Chocolate Digestives are 100 and we've apparently been eating them wrongly for a century.
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published:
Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: A new colour, flu gum instead of jabs, energy from water & robot runners

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: A new colour, flu gum instead of jabs, energy from water & robot runners
Steve Caplin says there's a new colour, "Olo", but you need a laser blasted into your eye to see it. Instead of flu jabs, you may soon be able to chew a gum made with Egyptian kidney beans. There's a new high-tech stethoscope monitor you can wear at home, a folding colour ebook reader, AI-powered gloves to help the near half million deaf-blind people in the UK, augmented carpentry, a motorised tape measure and a weapon to take down drones. Singapore scientists have found a way to get energy from rain. And in Beijing, robots competed in a half marathon, with varying results.
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published:
Simon Rose

Gadgets & Gizmos: Robot horses, electric skateboards and a robot chess player

Simon Rose
Original Broadcast:

Gadgets and Gizmos

Gadgets & Gizmos: Robot horses, electric skateboards and a robot chess player
Steve Caplin is desperate to buy the Kawasaki robot horse which can do everything a horse can but is powered by hydrogen. Sadly it's still only a beautifully-realised CGI concept. But there's a renewable energy motorbike with a roof covered with solar panels and a wind turbine. Or a WalkCar the size of a laptop. Or even an electric skateboard that goes at 45mph. Ford have patented a gear stick for electric cars, for drivers that miss them. There's an aircraft that can land itself, a weird-looking robot chess player, a trial postbox with a barcode reader to scan parcels, a Sardinian beach you'll need an app to visit and a tip on how to hear better in noisy rooms without spending a penny – though it ought to mean domino players can hear brilliantly.
Guest:

Steve Caplin


Published: