The strangest tech to come out of Utah: June Edition: On ghost-radar apps, "GIF your grandmother" tools, and tattle-telling on illegal poachers.

• Author: Stone, Zara
• Position: TECHNOLOGY

SILICON VALLEY TENDS TO take top billing when it comes to the weird and wonderful world of tech, but Utah is busily closing that gap, one ghost-radar app at a time.

Over the last year, Utah's startup scene has undergone a seismic shift, but really WGAF about SaaS news when you have Miakomo, the Darth-Vader-esque mask-startup shutting up shop, and genealogy startup MyHeritage releasing a "GIF your grandfather" tool?

The wackiness extends to the lifestyles of the state's techfluencers; for example, the Post-It note apocalypse discovered inside recently deceased Tony Hsieh's Park City mansion. The former Zappo's co-founder used thousands of color-coded Post-It notes in lieu of financial ledgers, creating a headache for the people parceling out his estimated $700 million estate.

With this in mind, as our post-pandemic future looms promisingly on the horizon, it's time to get reacquainted with Utah's wacky tech space. If you're looking for the lowdown on buyouts or benchmarks, feel free to skip ahead, but if you're craving an explainer on ex-Mormon TikTok or fossil-free skis, well, you've found your people.

To get you in the right frame of mind for a romp through this ridiculousness, I'd like to start with a little game of Two Truths And A Lie, the Utah tech edition, as cribbed from my college party days, but with a techtastic twist.

Out of the following three eye-focused startups, which one is the fake one?

(Head to the bottom of this article for answers)

* A startup that uses eye detection to tell if someone is lying

* A startup that produces lab-grown tear glands

* A startup that uses AR and AI to produce personalized eye disease simulations

THE VIRTUAL SUPERMODEL'S NFT COLLECTION

It's likely that the term "non-fungible token," a.k.a. NFT, may not have been on your radar till Christie's auction house sold Beeple's digital art for $69.3 million this March (TLDR, NFT's refer to unique Blockchain tracked digital assets).

The term quickly became commonplace in crypto vernacular, and NFT's traded include William Shatner trading cards, New York Times articles, as well as Jack Dorsey's first tweet (purchased for $2.9 million).

In Salt Lake City, Daz3D, a 3D content startup, has listed an NFT collection for supermodel Shudu. You know, the mysterious model that rocketed to fame via Instagram in 2017, who turned out to be a virtual avatar designed by British artist Cameron-James Wilson?

Shudu's resume Includes Balmain, Fenty Beauty, and Vogue...