A Brisbane crew of medicos and engineers are behind Audeara headphones, a handsome set of wireless cans that use an app-based hearing test to create a custom audio profile for each user. The idea is to maximise sound quality by tweaking frequencies to accommodate your personal hearing pattern. Audeara is another Kickstarter graduate.

With active noise cancelling built in and a claimed 35 hours of listening time, Audeara's price point of about $500 is pretty attractive, if the audio experience is as good as it aims for. We never board an aircraft without noise cancelling phones in our cabin kit bag, and next time we'll definitely be test flying these.

To boot, for when you're on the ground there's a built-in microphone for hands free calling via smartphone.

Not to be outdone, Sydney inventors GOFAR have offered their plug-in auto monitoring device online for a while now, but ioLife is the only place we've seen them in vivo. The monitor taps directly into the electronics of compatible vehicles and reports on performance, usage and maintenance issues in real time through a phone app.

The in-store eye-catcher is Plantui, a desktop indoor smart garden from Finland that was Kickstarted into life.

This hardware-software combo automates your business use logging for tax purposes, and even calculates the dollar value of your claim. It tracks fuel usage and efficiency and alerts you to maintenance requirements so you'll have a pretty good idea of what's really required next time you book in for a service. Guess what? GOFAR was funded through Kickstarter.

A smart watch out of Brisbane

Another couple of steps along ioLife's counter of wonders, we discovered TicTocTrack, a smart watch out of Brisbane specifically designed to keep kids safe and parents at ease.


Including a 3G wrist phone and GPS tracking, the device can report your child's location on Google maps every six minutes and speed dial up to six numbers. Of course, carers can dial in as well.

Carers can set up electronic boundaries and set SMS alerts if the watch wearer steps beyond. And critically, according to our specialist kid-tech consultant Miss Molly-aged-almost-nine, the device is available in pink. We can verify that, because pink's in stock at ioLife.

Sydney inventors GOFAR have offered their plug-in auto monitoring device online for a while now, but ioLife is the only place we've seen them in vivo.

Melbourne entrepreneurs aren't overlooked. Local outfit Moduware has developed a curious modular smartphone accessory platform that adds inputs and outputs to your handset. That might mean a small Bluetooth speaker to push audio out, but there are also input sensors for temperature, humidity and air quality.

There's a module that turns your phone into a laser pointer, and in the pipeline are tiny add-ons that sense for carbon monoxide, record your altitude, measure distance with a laser and let you use a second SIM card, simultaneously with your primary one.

While it's great to explore gadgets from distant lands, what we like best about ioLife is that it gives High Street exposure to Australian innovation. Owners Brett Burgess and Adam Proudlock say they'll focus on brands that don't have an entree into conventional retailing, and the number of indigenous products already on offer makes us smile. You know those cookie cutter tech and comms stores that offer near-identical stock lines in airports around the globe? Well, that's not ioLife.

For pictures, visit www.iolife.co. For the enhanced 3D version, rocket into 321 Little Collins Street.

TicTocTrack, a smartwatch out of Brisbane specifically designed to keep kids safe and parents at ease.

Peter Moon is a technology lawyer with Cooper Mills. peter.moon@coopermills.com.au