14/05/2016 Click

And the man who bought BHS for ?1 said that the retailer could have

conceived of his plans had been given more time.

Now it is time for Click. This week - running blind

in the Desert, literally. And fab, fun, flexi fairy

lights for your phone. For many, the ultimate test

of human endurance. A physically

and mentally draining feat that quite literally

changes your body. Now imagine doing one four times

in four days, in a desert. This is the Ultramarathon,

a 150-mile-long race through the Namibian desert, in some of the most

difficult conditions on the planet. And if you can't see,

you need a guide. And in this case,

the guide was a smartphone. You are experiencing

sensory deprivation. I had headphones in with the app,

so I couldn't really hear anything. All you've got is the feeling under

foot, you're never too sure Running through uncertain desert

terrain is what Simon Wheatcroft has spent

much of the past week doing. Simon has a degenerative eye disease

that has left him blind since he was 17 years old,

but he has never let himself be After proposing to his

girlfriend halfway up Simon took up running in the field

behind his house. He then moved to the path

and then the road, memorising a range

of objects, distances The things that you can't memorise

are the things that are moving. They probably don't

realise that you're blind, because you just wouldn't imagine,

if you were running towards me, What I try to do to sort of deal

with that is a lot of people are not willing to run as close

to the road as I am, so I am literally running

the curbs down. If you make a mistake,

you are running into the cars. A lot of people aren't

willing to be that close. To avoid people, I run the line that

other people aren't willing to run. I have been hit by a van

and stuff, but I carry on running. Stuff happens.

Get up, carry on running. His amazing feat has been made

possible by technology that helps him to keep his

amazing feet exactly Originally using a run-tracking

app called Runkeeper, the team here at the IBM

Bluemix Garage have helped to develop and adapt it specifically

for Simon's desert needs. The difficulty with the desert

is there is not a normal path. You can't just go along

the street with Google Maps, There's also no mobile

network in the desert, to make it work without mobile

network, just running on a GPS and help him not to get

off track and guide him If you go too far to the right,

it's a high-pitched beep, and to the

left it is a lower-pitched beep. the further left or right

you get off track. It beeps like crazy, because you're

too far from the desert. BEEPING

We're too far from the desert! We're too far to the left

of the desert now. Not right, because that would be

a high-pitched beep. We're too far to the left

of the desert. Simon actually trialled

the app earlier this year Except, Simon being Simon,

he went to Boston, ran Because, well...

Yeah, no idea. Developing such a specialised app

is not without a unique I had the idea, because he had

his cute dog, Ascot, with him at our office,

and I ask him, "Is Ascot And he said, "No, no,

it's the desert and the dog is not running with me

that far and that wrong, And I said, "OK, cool,

how about we do this app with the dog barking

if you get off track? But then he said he might be

scared to hallucinate because of the heat

and everything, so, yeah... Personally, if I started

hallucinating that dogs were chasing But, anyway, this app has

been a key component in allowing Simon to achieve his

dream of competing alone, without the aid of a guide -

or this lovely fella. When I was in the open-plain desert,

it worked fantastically. I got that real sense

of independence, it was the first chance I had to

run alone. There was one point where

I was running into a station and I just started to cry,

because I couldn't believe that, for the first

time in my life, I could It was thanks to this app and these

beeps that were guiding me Simon made it almost

100 miles into the race before having to pull out due

to the terrain and extreme heat. But, if anything, that

disappointment has made him even more determined

to succeed next time. As I finished, I was going to put

on Facebook that "I tried, I failed, I'm going back" -

but I deleted that bit because I thought, "If she finds

out through Facebook, So when I landed last

night and we went out for dinner, she said,

"You're going back, aren't you?" Otherwise you wouldn't be taking me

out for such a nice meal! Wow.

Simon, shake my hand. This is such a great story.

Thank you so much. My pleasure.

Good luck for next year. That time of year when you know

summertime's on its way. But, for many, that also means

the start of allergy season and, with allergies on the rise,

over 30% of people are suffering So I've been taking a look

at some of the latest Whilst much of our time may be spent

in environments we can't control, Sensio AIR hopes to improve

matters in your own home. This allergen- and air-particle

analyser closely tracks the quality of the air around you and,

at the same time, you can input any symptoms that you're

having into the app, which means that it'll

match up any data on how you're feeling with what's

going on in the surrounding

environment. Its sensors aim to identify allergy

triggers like dustmites or pollen, potential irritants such as acetone

or formaldehyde, plus mould spores, They work in conjunction

with harmful gases, temperatures, humidity, and these factors

have a direct impact on the way this

interacts with you and causes your We are able to tell you exactly what

was in the environment during your symptoms, and all these data

that we are exchanging today allows us to really personalise our

unique algorithms. The settings of

your home, if you have a home automation, or by giving new direct

advice on how to improve the air at home, whether it is by hoovering

your carpet, or by washing your cat, or by simply closing the windows

when it is allergy season. They are not the only

company hoping to This device is pitching itself

as a smart personal air purifier. And surprisingly,

indoor quality can be substantially worse

than that of outdoors. Or for a place to simply keep track

of your symptoms, then this app could help,

whilst at the same time you will be Input your symptoms

to their Britain Breathing app and they will match them up

to time- and location-based The aim is to better

understand common triggers and potentially learn why

allergies are increasing. are environmental,

though. If yours is a food allergy

or intolerance, then this app could

come in handy. Tell Spoon Guru the foods

you can't eat, or about any special diets, and it will help come

up with ideas and recipes for what

you can eat. For the purposes of testing the app,

I have told it that I am intolerant to gluten and

shellfish so that we can see what it

thinksI can and cannot eat. This is the best bit from me,

you can I was impressed by just how

many products It also came up with these clear,

easy-to-read ingredient lists and nutritional graphs,

which are handy for speed or if you struggle with the small

print on labels. The next stage could be devices

like this prototype. The Nima aims to test solid foods

or liquids for gluten. A small amount is placed

in this tube, where it is the device will tell you whether it

is safe to consume or not. Hello, and welcome

to The Week in Tech. InstaGram revealed a minimalist

new logo that induced a rainbow of

responses. Samsung also announced a micro

SD that is even more massive than the most

massive-ist one before it. And NASA treated us all to this

spectacular astronomical event - that tiny little

dot there is Mercury passing between us

and the sun. It was also the week that engineers

at Google unveiled a set of 13 emojis that they say

better represent women in the world

of work. The designs, which include doctors,

scientists and bussinesswomen have been presented to the

Unicode Consortium, that is the body charged with the incredibly

21st-century job of approving and

standardising emojis. And it has been

a great week for tech

billionaire Elon Musk. First, his company SpaceX

stuck another landing had its first public test

success. Hyperloop 1 ran this impressive,

albeit short, testable We visited Hyperloop

HQ back in January, and it is pretty cool

to And finally, in what some

are calling a major breakthrough, a robotic arm has

finally figured out how to spin a The robotic arm developed

by researchers at the University of Washington uses a combination

of delicate hand-like hardware and computer simulation in order to work

out how to complete the task. By learning from its

mistakes, the arm can gradually get better at handling

and manipulating objects. I never thought I would

see the day when a robot could spin coffee

beans like a real human.

Incredible. their head in a mobile

phone these days, don't they? it is the platform

to be on. And in developing nations,

many have skipped the PC altogether and gone straight to cheaper, $100

smartphones, to do their work and

shop online. So what if you wanted

to make your own mobile app? and how much it

would cost? mobile developers

are not easy to find. Both in places like London,

and in areas that are more remote In a moment, I will

talk to someone who is hoping to open up mobile apps

to anyone with a good idea. But first, Dan watched children

young as six build their own mobile apps

in his final report from Malawi in Africa.

Three, two, one. Go!

We think this is the first mobile app-building

contest for children to be held in Africa.

And it has been made possible because these kids have

spent just a few hours the day before learning how to use a mobile

phone app that builds mobile phone apps.

All you have to do is to decide what to create.

of things. different types

It might be an app about Malawi, and app about mhub, or an

The SnapApp builder works on smartphones, but it

This app is supposed to help raise awareness for those who do not know

I will also add a page where they can help, so I

can maybe tie in a link to Unicef, and they can help donate money to

these girls who do not have education.

This year, for the first time in Africa,

smartphones will outsell more basic feature phones.

Yet creating just a basic mobile app to work on that smartphone could

set you back $2000 to $3000 in development costs.

And that is if you can find a developer.

This new breed of apps could change that, and

they are getting support from some big names,

with providing food and water than tech.

What we're doing today is we are asking the children to

think for themselves and come up with innovative ideas

that will help other children.

Sometimes adults are not always best placed to think

about what the needs really are. Children think outside the box.

For those who are still put off doing it

themselves, the staff at the mhub, the technology

service so they can create one for anyone who walks in.

It is easy enough now to create apps.

I have built mobile appls in 27 hours.

And I can have something that is a good

Snap says that in nine months users in 197

countries have created 4000 apps which are all now available online.

In a few weeks, e-commerce services will

allow buying at the touch of a screen.

For these children today, it is all about winning a smartphone. But the

real prize will be the communities and transformed by the app which are

now becoming commonplace. Dan reporting on the first

competition of its kind, Since then, many more

app-building contests have I'm joined by Asaf Kindler,

who you saw in that film. You are the boss of SnapApp,

one of a growing band What has happened

since that first competition? We have seen competitions

happening all over the world, from Africa to Latin America,

India, and also the US. It is the impact on the people,

the people building an app. The kind

of app you can build is simplistic, the equivalent of a mobile website

where you can share information You can't build the next

Angry Birds using an app builder. At this stage, no,

but what you can build now is both on the builder of the app

and the user. With these type of app-builders,

you can build about 80% of the things you want to, and

the 20% left, the innovative part, could be later integrated into the

builder as we see them coming out. Asaf, thank you for your time.

Best of luck with it all. As you know, we love a good

world-first on this programme, Last year, we filmed

and edited an entire programme using just mobile phones and tablets.

These days, everyone is at it. But mobiles can be really useful

for journalists, helping them report

more quickly from more places. LJ Rich has been to the Mobile

Journalism Conference in Dublin to check out the latest

tools of the trade. It's not everyday you see mobile

journalists sitting still, but here are around 700

of them transfixed a convention

for those who want to improve their The exhibition in the next room

shows off the next generation of mobile gadgetry soon to be

snapped up by these early adopters. This prosumer accessory

ecosystem centres around one fact - many of the latest smartphones can

shoot at extremely high resolution but can't yield a polished result

without a bit of help. Simple things that elevate

smartphone footage include lighting. These flexible LED mats are easy

to control, though pricey unless Any kind of steady

light source improves your video. Even battery-powered fairy lights

are better than nothing. Simply holding a smartphone steady

makes footage look good, and many holders are on display to

give broadcasters a helping hand. Some solutions are more cumbersome

than others. Padcaster turns your iPad

into a mobile production studio, essentially a frame that connects

various accessories to your tablet, including lenses,

lights and microphones. Another holder has also caught

my eye, or should that be ear? A one-handed mobile grip

with an integrated microphone input. Getting decent sound so you can play

it back is a problem, and a lot of manufacturers are trying to address

that, including IK Multimedia, which means you can plug things

like radio microphones straight in. This works with any smartphone,

although sound records Mobiles just don't

like recording more than one channel As most broadcasters record both the

person speaking and background noise One company attempting to address

this is Sennheiser, who's betting on 360 video and VR

becoming more popular. This is their third prototype

of a fully 360-degree sound mic not The processing is done afterwards

from mono and stereo through to fully immersive 3D sound

depending on your preference. The company told me it

will probably cost around ?1500. More affordable is this app, Mavis,

which puts a pro-camera experience inside an iPhone,

including the complexity a pro camera offers, which may be

off-putting to novice users. Far from a simple point-and-shoot,

the app gives access to manual controls like white

balance, focus-pulling Being able to tweak settings can

make for arty and therefore polished shots for those who fancy

climbing up the learning curve. but cheap compared to

a new manual camera. There is currently no

single solution to filming broadcast-quality footage

with a mobile phone, although if the appetite

for digital storytelling continues to spread, it won't be long before

smartphone manufacturers themselves want a piece of the prosumer

accessory action. I wonder whether you spotted

the fact that that entire report Good.

Now, can a machine make art? The first annual robot art

competition aims to discover

if they can. Teams from

around the world have entered and have one simple task - to create

the next robotic Rubens - and I'm The founder

of the competition is Andrew Conru. We know robots can perfectly

recreate an image What is the point

of a robot art competition? First, it is very difficult to get a

robot to paint something perfectly. An inkjet printer can create

something stunningly precise, but when it comes to using

a physical brush and paint, it is a lot more tricky

and there is a lot more nuance. The idea behind it is trying to see

what is the process between an

artist's creation and the execution. and artificial intelligence

behind that, is the core. I'm sure there will be those

around who say is this art if it is entirely created

by a machine? The key part is whether or not

the artwork itself creates something

that gives an emotional response. If you look at when cameras

came around, we went from people who were painting portraits to

basically taking a photo. We have photos now worth hundreds

of thousands of dollars because they are able to capture something

that is inspiring and gives

an emotional feedback response. There are different teams and robots

using different pieces of software. Can you give us

an idea how they work? How are the robots creating

these images? We have 15 teams

from seven countries, and each of them have taken a different approach

on how to create an artwork. Perhaps the majority of them start

with some sort of photograph that Then the software tends to parse

the image, find different regions it wants to have for different

colours, figures out what layers it needs to do first,

then sends those commands to the robot arm that will try to

paint them in sequence. It is a whole spectrum in terms

of complete automatic software to something that is more teamwork with

a human designer. Where do you go from here?

What is next for the competition? We have been loose

on the rules this year. Our goal was to have every robot

have a physical brush and dip it But we realised art has evolved

in which there is anywhere from an inkjet printer

to a plotter system all the way to what was

originally intended with a brush. in terms of what constitutes

the execution side of the artwork. In future years,

we will be more stringent and try to keep all of the teams

using a similar type of materials. We will bring you the results

of the competition Follow us on Twitter

for more fun during the week. And they serve persons and me would

not remain jailed just how warm things were last