For years, gadget experts have tried to solve the age-old hunt for misplaced keys and wallets. Could a new high-tech invention solve a common problem?
Most people probably spend hundreds of hours of their lives looking for glasses, television remotes, keys and other personal possessions.
And as CD collections and Rolodexes give way to MP3 players and personal organisers, there are an increasing number of household items ideally sized to be mislaid down the back of the sofa.
A new electronic gadget called the Loc8tor uses radio waves and multiple aerials, plus some fancy software, to locate postage stamp sized transmitters which can be attached to almost anything, within a range of up to 600 feet.
The Loc8tor is the brainchild of Anthony Richards, a former sales and marketing executive who got fed up with wasting huge swathes of his life searching for everyday items.
"I have three kids who were constantly losing the television remote controls and a wife who couldn't find her car keys every single morning," he says.
"The last straw was when I lost my wallet and cancelled all the credit cards, then found it under my car seat a week later. I thought 'this is ridiculous - technology must be able to provide a solution'."
So Richards put together a team of boffins to work on the problem and came up with a device which looks similar in size and shape to a mobile phone. It displays a list of all the tags that it is monitoring, which can be assigned easy-to-use names like keys, TV remote or wallet.
BBC:
.... so something else to be mislaid down the back of the sofa (c:=
