Losing your keys, wallet, or kid can be a pretty harrowing experience. Take it from this editor who recently found a set of keys that had been missing for two weeks…in the most obvious place possible. No one will ever have to deal with that panic again once everyone is using the many smartphone-based electronic “tag” products that are either in development or currently on the market.

Another contender has thrown its hat into the ring: a San Diego startup called XY. Their product consists of a small $17 hexagonal tag that you can attach to nearly any physical object, even to your pet’s collar. The tag is tethered to your smartphone via an Android or iPhone app using Bluetooth Low Energy technology. Each connected tag is also registered on the XY website. The app pings the tags every 15-30 seconds; when your lost tagged item is within the 50-150 foot range, you can use the app to guide you to it. When you start to walk off without something important (or it walks off without you) the app will alert you.

But the real stand-out feature of XY is its user interface. You can snap a picture to go along with every tagged item, so when you’ve lost one of your items you have a simple visual cue to help you find it. You can look up the item’s last known location and go back to retrieve it, or if another XY user finds it they can alert you through the app. The only drawback seems to be the app’s lack of precise location. It will tell you when you’re getting warmer or colder in relation to the lost item, but it can’t pinpoint exactly where it is. XY’s Kickstarter campaign raised far more than its goal, and the team hopes to integrate competitors’ tag hardware in their app in the near future.

The post Getting Warmer: Inexpensive Tag Keeps Track of Lost Stuff first appeared on Gajitz.

Cellular phones being marketed as the “world’s smallest” are causing trouble in the UK, according to the BBC. These itty-bitty phones are meant to look like key fobs – those little devices you use to lock and unlock your car from a distance. They even feature real car company logos, further obscuring their real purpose.

The problem is that the phones are apparently being marketed toward prisoners. The sellers even point out the phones’ low metal content, implying that they will be easy to get through metal detectors. Because having a cell phone in a UK prison is a major violation, all kinds of government agencies are jumping into the issue and trying to ban the phones, which are made in China. The car companies whose logos are used on the phones say they are being used without permission.

The phones only perform the most bare-bones of features: sending and receiving calls and texts. But from inside a prison, even these simple features can facilitate crimes as prisoners call contacts on the outside to give orders. While the criminal aspect of these little phones is off-putting, they are kind of adorable – and since they fit on your key ring, they might even be handy as emergency phones.

The post Branded Car Key Remotes Are Tiny Cell Phones in Disguise first appeared on Gajitz.