Dragon's Den 2014 - Stuff We've Covered
At FrequencyCast, we like to sniff out new and exciting tech. Two years before Dragon's Den, we found two products that have now been featured. Find out more!
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Listen to FrequencyCast Show 97 - Slouchmat and Energy Egg
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Dragon's Den 2014:
Two of the products we've covered in the past have appeared on Dragon's Den. Here's our transcript from Show 97:
Pete:
Focus time, hello Kelly.
Kelly:
Hello, Pete.
Pete:
Just before we started recording, we've been talking about tv programmes, haven't we? – and we were just talking about Eight Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown – love that show.
Kelly:
It has to be one of my favourites. I'm glad we agree on this actually – it's got to be one of the first tv shows that we've both turned round and said, absolutely love it.
Pete:
And of course, it's got Rachel Riley in – what more can you say?
Kelly:
Well, that's true. I mean, I can't say that I watch it specifically for Rachel Riley, though I can understand why you would.
Pete:
Talking of tv shows, the show we really want to talk about is Dragons' Den. Now, did you see the show, I think it was last week?
Kelly:
I didn't, no.
Pete:
One of our discoveries was on there.
Kelly:
Oh, no way! – who?
Pete:
Do you remember the Slouchmat?
Kelly:
Vaguely, that was a long time ago.
Pete:
I think it was. I think that was me and Carl, spoke to a lovely lady called Nula.
Nuala:
It's a mousemat that you can use on the arm of your sofa or chair, or any uneven surface in your household, so instead of having to put your mouse on the arm of your sofa, or the carpet, or any magazine you can find in the corner of the living room, you've now got a dedicated mousemat that you can use anywhere in your home, and put it on any uneven surface. It grips and slouches, as we like to say, with it being our Slouchmat, onto any surface, so you've got a nice, even tracking surface for your mouse.
Pete:
Well, she was on. Unfortunately, she didn't get the investment, but nonetheless two years ago we discovered Nuala and the Slouchmat, and Dragons' Den finally playing catch up.
Kelly:
Yeah, I can't believe they were so far behind.
Pete:
Well amazingly, the following week's Dragons' Den had another product that we reviewed two years ago – the Energy Egg.
Energy Egg:
So it was invented by this guy Brian, who has three young daughters, and he was forever telling them to turn off things after they'd finished using them, and they never did it, and he got tired of telling them to do it, so he thought, why don't I just get something that will do it automatically. And so he did what any of us would have done, and invented something, and the rest is history. So it's essentially a motion sensor that can tell when you're out of room. The egg timer that you pointed out there can be set to between five minutes and half-an-hour. When it detects the room is empty, and that timer runs down, it will turn off anything connected to it.
Pete:
So that's two – you heard it here first, from FrequencyCast. And talking of Gadget Show Live, this year's show isn't that far away, the 9th to the 13th of April. Kelly, are you going this year?
Kelly:
Well, I think I should pay a visit – are you?
Pete:
Is that a date?
Kelly:
You can certainly take me for dinner afterwards.
Pete:
Talking of Gadget Show, it's all changed for the next series, of course.
Kelly:
Oh, go on.
Pete:
Well, Pollyanna Woodward ...
Kelly:
Oh, I see a sad face – she's gone, has she?
Pete:
Yep, she's decided to step down from Gadget Show, and the next series will have a slightly different line up. It's got good old Jason, your mate.
Kelly:
Yeah.
Pete:
And it's got Rachel Riley, of course.
Kelly:
Of course, your face has now brightened again.
Pete:
And Ortis is back. He's been off it for about two series now, but he's back, and of course John Bentley, and we'll see them all live at Gadget Show Live in Birmingham, from 9th to the 13th.
Kelly:
Well, it will certainly be interesting. You never know, I might be able to get a little nudge in for the female lead.
Pete:
Shall we have a word?
Kelly:
Wouldn't you miss me?
Pete:
Yes, I would. I'm coming with you, though.
Kelly:
Okay.
Pete:
Sticking with Gadget Show Live, at the Christmas show we met a couple of exhibitors, and we haven't actually got round to playing you their interviews yet. The first product relates to the good old doorbell. Now Kelly, when I went round to visit you the other day, your doorbell was a little bit inoperative. What's going on there?
Kelly:
It's still inoperative. I think it has been since we moved in, to be honest.
Pete:
What's your problem with doorbells?
Kelly:
I'd quite like a doorbell that works. At some point, I will get round to having a doorbell.
Pete:
You know they're not exactly high tech? – you can just go out and buy one, and stick it on the thing, and it works. It's not complicated.
Kelly:
I don't even think I need that. I think I literally just need new batteries. It's just one of those things that is forever on the list, that never gets ticked off.
Pete:
The plus one goes at the top, and you just plug them in.
Kelly:
Thanks very much, Pete. I still don't think I'm in need of a Smartbel.
Pete:
Well, the Smartbel is a rather interesting product. It allows you to answer your doorbell from anywhere in the world, so that's quite a range. We spoke to Richard from Smartbel, to find out more.
Richard:
Well, Smartbel is an intelligent doorbell. It means that you can pre-programme it with your mobile telephone number. If somebody comes to your front door, you can then talk to them via your mobile telephone. You can be on holiday in Mozambique, or wherever, and you can talk to the person at your front door. It's also a great security product, which means you don't have to open your front door.
The Smartbel Connected Doorbell - Available now from Amazon
Pete:
And just explain what we're looking at here – there's a doorbell unit that actually sticks on the front of the door, connected to a control unit with an antenna on. Presumably this has a sim card in, is that right?
Richard:
Yeah, it's got a sim card in here. Average calls, if you get five people coming to your door a week, it works out about £15 a year.
Pete:
So from the moment you hit the doorbell to the phone ringing, what kind of delay time are we talking?
Richard:
It's the same as a mobile telephone. It's between eight and twelve seconds.
The Smartbel Connected Doorbell - Available now from Amazon
Pete:
So what kind of price are we looking at, for the Smartbel?
Richard:
We're doing a special at the show at £120. It's normally £129. We've also got the Chroma version, which plays twelve different tunes. I can play some of those to you, if you'd like?
Pete:
Go on then, let's hear a tune.
Well, we're certainly impressed, aren't we, Kelly?
Kelly:
I really like it. I'd like to not to have to get up, and just answer my door. It would be quite luxurious.
Richard:
Are you going to buy your mum one, Kelly?
Kelly:
I think my mum would be a little bit upset, if I was trying to control her door, but I actually think she'd love it, because my mum does not get up to answer the door. She actually leaves her back door open, so that people can just wander in.
Pete:
Not good, Kelly, not good. So Richard, where can I get hold of one of these?
Richard:
If they go onto the website, Smartbel-Revolution.com.
Pete:
So there you go, the Smartbel, answer your front door from anywhere in the world.
Another product we saw at Gadget Show Live was a security product. Now, I don't know about you, but when I'm out for the evening, I tend to leave some lights on.
Kelly:
Yeah, I do actually.
Pete:
If you're out for longer than an evening, though, what do you do? Do you have any little timers for lights?
Kelly:
No, I mean ... no.
Pete:
So basically, that's a no, is it?
Kelly:
I've turned into that man from Vicar of Dibley – no, no, no, no, no, no!
Pete:
Look, don't avoid the question – do you leave a light on, or not?
Kelly:
I usually leave a light on, but not for any longer than one evening.
Pete:
Well, if you are slightly more security-conscious than Kelly, and you do want to leave a light on, of course what you normally have to do is get some kind of lamp thing, and plug it into one of these little mains timers, but we found a company called Switched-on Products, who really go some way to solving this problem, don't they?
Kelly:
Yes, they do actually.
Pete:
And what it does is, it clips over your existing wall light sockets, to turn your wall lights on. To find out more, we spoke to Nayeem from Switched-on Products.
Nayeem:
We've created and invented the first timer which fits over your existing light switch, which doesn't require any wiring to install.
Pete:
And this is what I've seen before. I've seen switches in places like Homebase and B & Q, where you have to dismantle the light switch and put in your own timers, but this thing, you loosen the existing switch, drop the unit in.
Nayeem:
You just need to loosen the screws on your existing light switch, and install the cradle. Once you've got the cradle in place, you can then control the switch using the control unit.
Pete:
This is the clever bit, is if you take the control unit off, you've basically got some slidey little switches in there.
Nayeem:
It's a simple control wheel, which is battery-operated. That's what makes it easy to operate the one, two or three-gang light switch. So when you're away on holiday, or working late, it just means you can programme your lights to come on and off when you're not there, so helping to save energy and keep your home nice and safe.
Pete:
How would it save us energy?
Nayeem:
The police always do advise to leave lights on before you go out, so at least this way you can programme your existing lights to come on and off, and it's the only timer which works with any light bulb, whether they're energy-saving or LED lightbulbs.
Pete:
Okay, so easy to install. It uses your existing light switches. No dangerous mucking about with electronics to worry about. What kind of price point are we looking at for these?
Nayeem:
So these are being launched at £27.99, available on our website. So it's competitively priced, still cheaper than some of the permanent light switch timers that you'd have to install, and offers many additional features.
Pete:
Wonderful. And if someone wants to find one of these, where would they go?
Nayeem:
So the product's called Light Switch Timer, and surprisingly the website's LightSwitchTimer.co.uk.
Pete:
So there you go, Kelly – no excuse for not leaving a light on when you go out.
Kelly:
Yes, yes, yes – I get it.
Pete:
And the next thing to talk about on today's show is courtesy of good old Peter Howav, one of our favourite listeners, who got in touch to send us a link to a rather unusual camera, and this is called the ... ?
Kelly:
Lytro.
Pete:
A very nice little camera, it comes in different colours. It's about eleven centimetres long. What does it look like, to you?
Kelly:
You know you used to get those Perspex things, that you'd look it at a seaside? – that's what it looks like.
Pete:
A kaleidoscope – yeah, you're not far off. It's sort of a square kaleidoscope. It's actually a digital camera, but it's a rather clever one. Now unfortunately, dear listener, this is radio, and this doesn't really translate very well, but we're going to look at some of the photos that this thing has taken. Now, the clever bit here, you've got a little model of the Eiffel Tower there, okay?
Kelly:
Okay.
Pete:
And what's that in the background of the photo there?
Kelly:
I'm not too sure. It looks like some buildings?
Pete:
Yeah, it's a slightly out-of-focus something. Now, if you tap on the photo, what happens now?
Kelly:
Ooh, now you can actually see the actual Eiffel Tower.
Pete:
Now, this is rather clever. Basically, the camera takes one photo, and it captures the entire light field, all in one photo, and you sort out the focusing later. Rather than a standard digital, that just takes a 2D photo, this is actually capturing everything, so if you click here on the tree, you see the tree comes into focus, and the tower in the background goes slightly out of focus.
Kelly:
Yeah, I can see that.
Pete:
You can even click on the clouds, and you see the clouds go sharply into focus, and the foreground object doesn't. It is the kind of thing that has to be seen to be believed, so what I would suggest is you have a look at the Lytro website. There'll be a link up on the show notes today. It is a stunning way of taking pictures. The beauty of this is, you go out, you snap something, and you can deal with the focus later, and there's special apps for smartphones, PCs, tablets, all sorts of other things. So there you go – thank you very much, Peter, for sending that our way. It uses something called perspective shift as well, so you can hold the image down and drag it, and you can see things moving around in the background a little bit, so it's very, very clever. It's definitely worth a look. These have been out in the professional market for quite a while, but it's only just hit the consumer market. They're not cheap though, are they, Kelly?
Kelly:
No, £400, if you want to get your hands on one of these. Before long it's probably going to end up on our mobile phones anyway.
Pete:
Thank you very much, Pete, and you will find more about that up on our show notes.
Pete:
Okay, do you Amazon, Kelly?
Kelly:
I do, yep.
Pete:
Everyone Amazons, don't they?
Kelly:
Well, I think so. I do think it has become one of those things now, that is in everybody's life.
Pete:
At the time of recording, in a day's time, Amazon is about to enter the online TV and video and film market, in quite a clever way.
Kelly:
Okay, go on.
Pete:
Now, when you order on Amazon, what's your normal postage and packing kind of arrangements?
Kelly:
Well, I'm quite good actually, because I'm very organised, so I tend to get my things ahead of time, do the standard delivery.
Pete:
By the standard delivery, do you mean the three working days one, or the free one?
Kelly:
The three working days.
Pete:
You don't go for the Amazon free stuff, then? – because if you're really organised, and do it a week in advance, you get stuff for free.
Kelly:
The majority of the time I manage that, but I don't think it's that expensive to do the three to five, if I'm late.
Pete:
Have you ever considered using Prime? – you must see these little Prime logos. Have you ever considered signing up?
Kelly:
No. It kept flashing up at me over Christmas. Again, I was really ahead, so there was no need really, for me to use it.
Pete:
Well, I was pretty anti it as well. I don't like paying for anything I don't have to, but I signed up at Christmas for their thirty-day free trial, and basically you get everything to your door next day, for free.
Kelly:
Well, that's probably good for someone like you, who would leave everything till the last minute.
Pete:
What's quite clever as well, have you got a Kindle?
Kelly:
I have.
Pete:
The beauty of this is, with Prime, you can borrow half-a-million titles.
Kelly:
Okay, any title?
Pete:
Not any title, but some of the ones I've wanted, they're slightly more obscure texts, and they tend to be free.
Kelly:
But you can get free books on Amazon anyway?
Pete:
Not as many as this, and this is a loan service. But what has got clever, is the Prime instant video service from Amazon will have launched. Now, that gives you 15,000 movies and TV episodes, and unlimited streaming.
Find out more about free unlimited video streaming: Amazon Instant Video
Kelly:
Okay, and are they your choice?
Pete:
Again, you don't get the latest and the greatest, but you do get a lot of TV series that are quite good, The Walking Dead series one for a start – I need to rewatch that.
Kelly:
Not really my cup of tea.
Pete:
Well, Downton Abbey's on there, if you're interested.
Kelly:
No.
Pete:
There's 15,000 shows – I'm sure you'll find something that you're into there. But the beauty there is, you can watch on your TV, on your games console, on your mobile device, on your Kindle Fire, on streaming players – all sorts of things, and again, 15,000 items, plus all the Kindle books, plus free next day delivery, actually makes this Prime thing worth a look. Am I tempting you yet?
Kelly:
Yes, you are, because I think, if you're going to use it, £50 a year isn't really very much at all. I reserve judgement on what's actually available.
Pete:
Just a quick update to this – since we first looked at this a few days back, the service has now launched, we've now heard the bad news – Prime's price will go from £49 a year to £79 a year – An extra £30, and it's upset of lot of people who want the cheap delivery, but not the video content service. Amazon's pointed out that the price of £79 is cheaper than Prime + LoveFILM Instant, but it's angered a lot of Prime users who'll see a 60% price increase. If you're into online content, Prime is still worth a look, but we'[re seeing lots of online comments from people who'll be cancelling Prime at renewal time in disgust at being forced to pay for a service they don't want. Got a comment on Amazon Prime? Get in touch.
Kelly:
Yes, do.
Pete:
Now Kelly, can I scan you?
Kelly:
Why?
Pete:
You'll find out in a minute. I wanted to talk about my app of the month, which is a rather clever little app, and this came about because of someone I was doing some work with a couple of weeks ago. I asked them to send me some wording to go up on a website, and what they did was, they typed it up, took a photo of it, and emailed me the photo. Now, it was a bit of a nightmare, because I had to then retype it to go up on the website.
Kelly:
That sounds very bizarre.
Pete:
It was, and it reminded me that, on my smartphone, I have an app called Doc Scanner, that is basically optical character recognition. So what I could do is, print out the photo, take a photo of the photo, and convert the photo to text. So it was a bit of a faff, but thanks to this free app, I could actually get the content of the photo converted to text, and upload it.
Kelly:
Well, that's quite impressive actually.
Pete:
Let's just give it a go. Just hold up our little show notes there for me. It's now letting me do a crop of the text, so I can drag to the body of the text there. Hit next, view document, OCR, and it takes a couple of seconds. Are you impressed yet?
Kelly:
Well, I'm not too sure what it's doing yet.
Pete:
So it's analysing a photo. It's about 90% done, wait for it, and there is the text, so it's converted the text on that piece of paper to text I can actually edit.
Kelly:
I am quite impressed that actually.
Pete:
And a little icon in the top right-hand corner, I can email it as text, stick it on Evernote, or open it in the Notepad.
Kelly:
Actually, that would come in handy for a lot of people on a day-to-day basis.
Pete:
The subject of scanning was on the news this morning. I was watching BBC News 24, and they were talking about scanning apps on smartphones, and I thought they were going to be talking about this optical character recognition, but they were actually talking about a 3D body scanner.
Kelly:
Like you get in airports?
Pete:
Exactly like that, but on the iPhone. Right, shall we give this a go?
Kelly:
Go on.
Pete:
Right, I have this little app here. I'm going to step back a little bit from you there. Right, just stand up against the wall there for me. Smile. Now, what this scanner will do is analyse you, and just check that you're not concealing anything you shouldn't be, and there you go.
Kelly:
What? – that doesn't show anything! That is ridiculous!
Pete:
Now, the reason this was in the news is, this was something that the Advertising Standards Authority picked up on. In the middle of a Hollyoaks ad break, there was an ad for the nude 3D scanner, which takes your photo, and lets you see what you're wearing underneath your clothes. It's been banned by the ASA. Of course, it isn't actually seeing through your clothing. What it's doing is just superimposing your head on somebody else's body, but yes, it's been done by the ASA – how sad is that?
Kelly:
I mean, I think it sounds like a pretty pointless app anyway. How is an app going to know if a woman's wearing Spanx, for example?
Pete:
Well, look at the back of my smartphone – you can see a little x-ray sensor there?
Kelly:
Ah, right, yeah – I'm sure, that's how it can tell.
Pete:
It is only a laugh, but evidently the ASA don't think so.
Kelly:
Well no, but also as well, you see how much abuse there is with online video content, photos. If you take a picture of somebody randomly in a bar, and start uploading them, looking like it's them in their underwear at the same time, there's actually quite a lot that can go wrong again with an app like this.
Pete:
Do you know, somehow I thought you were going to be negative about this one. One day, I'm going to find something dodgy like this, that you're going to be a fan of.
Kelly:
I'm sure one day you will find a really, really dodgy app that I just adore.
Pete:
I'll keep looking, and listeners, if you can think of something that's slightly on the dodgy side that our Kelly might not be quite so prudish about, do let us know.
Kelly:
Yeah, please do let us know actually. I'm quite intrigued to find out what it is that would tip me over the edge.
Pete:
Okay, and while you're composing your emails to Kelly, one final thing to mention in today's show is the amateur radio news we'd like to report. A new TV show has launched, all about amateur radio. It's got a rather clever name.
Kelly:
TX-Factor.
Pete:
The TX-Factor, for transmission – I think that's brilliant. Three guys are running it: Bob, Mike and Chris, and they've been all over the place. They've been at the Marconi Centre, looking at the first signals that went transatlantic; SOTA, which is where you climb up mountains, and send signals; and the Norman Lockyer Observatory radio group, with their repeaters. So if you're into your amateur radio stuff, a new TV show has just launched. It's up on YouTube, and it's well worth a look. Not enough girls in it for our liking though, eh, Kelly?
Kelly:
Not one.
Pete:
And of course, you are the ultimate amateur radio girl, aren't you? – according to YouTube, anyway.
Kelly:
Yeah, according to YouTube.
Pete:
Well, we went out to do a rally a little while ago, and a YouTube clip went up, and looking at the comments on the YouTube feed, we had one in from Phil Bridges – hello Phil, G6DLG. What did he say?
Kelly:
I haven't seen this one, this is brilliant. "So is this what the lovely Kelly looks like in real life? If so, eighty-eights."
Pete:
And what does eighty-eights mean?
Kelly:
Love and kisses.
Pete:
And the other one really got me. This was from Original Pickaxe in the YouTube comments. Go on, Kelly.
Kelly:
This is brilliant. This actually made my week, I think. "Stone me, what have we got here? Miss UK Amateur Radio 2013. That's the best-looking bit of totty I've ever seen at a radio rally."
Pete:
There you go, so that was last year's Kempton Rally, which explains the 2013 reference there. So Kelly, a nice bit of totty for amateur radio.
Kelly:
I'd quite like to see who the other contenders were, for Miss Amateur Radio 2013.
Pete:
Maybe Original Pickaxe had one of those nude 3D scanners – you never know.
Kelly:
That's true, or to be honest, you guys are so up with your tech, you could have just created a whole new woman.
Listen to FrequencyCast Show 97 - Slouchmat and Energy Egg |
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