Are you a squirrel or a badger? A new British household storage website thinks you’re probably one or the other. Giles Turnbull reports

STORE Next Door (store nextdoor.com) is a new UK internet start-up that aims to put people who need more storage space (it calls them squirrels) directly in touch with people who have got room to spare (known as badgers).

Three friends (Dom Moorhouse, Rosie Bennett and Dan Hilton) found they needed spaces to store things. Dan needed to declutter before his first baby was born, so put stuff in Rosie’s attic.

Rosie inherited a sailing dinghy, and ended up keeping it in Dom’s empty garage. Over a pint in the pub, the threesome realised they had the beginnings of a new online business idea.

Store Next Door tries to make connections between squirrels and badgers who live near each other. The service is fully insured, and both parties have to sign legal documents to keep everything fair and square.

Squirrels must pay for the storage they use. Store Next Door takes its own cut from this fee, and the rest is paid to the badgers.

Everyone who signs up to use Store Next Door has to fill out a user profile, similar to the ones you might find on a social network.

Squirrels have to write an inventory of all the items they wish to store, and can ask to view listed storage spaces before using them.

Both sides can message each other through the website at any time.

The service has just gone live in west England (around Bath and Bristol), but plans are being made for a UK-wide rollout soon.

The whole thing has been built around mutual trust and respect.

The site’s makers hope that keeping connections local will help to build trust and forge better relationships between neighbours.

NOKIA’S MAPS ARE HERE

NOKIA might not be selling as many phones as it used to, but its digital mapping services remain better than most (especially Apple, since it arrogantly ditched Google’s maps in favour of its own, much worse, ones). Now Nokia is rebranding its maps under the name “Here”. You can browse them online at www.here.net, and very soon you’ll see Here mapping apps available on all the major smartphone platforms. The 3D satellite view is particularly impressive over central London. Here is where it’s at.

CHROME CLOSES THE BOX

THE latest version of Google’s Chrome browser is the most secure web browser you can get your hands on at the moment. Google’s engineers have worked out how to “sandbox” the entire thing, which means it’s less vulnerable to viruses and malware lurking on the web. Any nasties it encounters while you browse will be kept locked inside a single “process”, unable to expand their attack any further into your computer. Just close the affected tab and move on. To find out more, see the video at google.com/chrome/ security

HANDS-FREE

IF you were hoping that the public urinal might be the last refuge from the onslaught of screens that have invaded the rest of our lives, then this might be bad news: one company has come up with clever wallmounted consoles that sit above a urinal and can be controlled with a wave of your – ahem.

You get the idea. Suddenly you’re playing a video game in the very last place you ever imagined you would.

Find out more at captive-media.co.uk/product-overview