The strangest tech to come out of Utah in June: On parent-approved cellphones, geofenced natural wonders, and insects delivered to your doorstep.

• Author: Stone, Zara

WALK INTO ANY UTAH bar/coworking space/Dairy Keen and it won't be long before one of the following topics surfaces In conversation: NFTs, the blistering heat, or whether you know who went on a spa weekend or an aya-huasca trip. Hopefully, you're self-aware enough to know we create our own echo chambers--or do we? With Google Trends as our guide, let's clear a few things up for the State of Deseret.

Despite the never-ending NFT buzz, the "metaverse" is the clear conversational winner. The search term received a 1,000 percent increase in searches compared to an 850 percent rise for "NFTs" at the time of this writing. Crypto is another red-hot topic, but think red alert instead of red-letter day. Google Trends has seen a 4,750 percent spike in searches for "Why is crypto crashing?" and a 1,750 percent rise in "Why is Ethereum dropping?" Yowza.

Groan away--you'll fit right in with the theme of this month's Two Truths and a Lie, the Utah Tech Edition: Puns. Out of the following three punnily-named startups, which is the fake one? You'll find the answer at the end of this article.

* Ontray: a marketplace startup that sells and delivers home-cooked entrees to hungry diners

* BuzzKill: a pest control startup that humanely rids your home of bee nests

* Lazorback: a startup that designs a laser-equipped wearable that gamifies correcting poor posture

CREEPING ON YOUR KIDS JUST GOT EASIER

There's a point in every parent's life where they have to allow their little ones to leave the nest and scavenge for themselves. The fear is real: will they flourish or flounder? Will nasties prey on them? Luckily, the wonders of today's technology allow children to contact parents at the push of a button, and phone GPS even pinpoints their location. But according to MTV's "Catfish" and its ilk, that same mobile device can also be an entry point for the aforementioned nasties.

Enter Troomi Wireless and Gabb Wireless, two Lehi-based startups that hope to solve this problem. These companies arguably make owning a phone a joyless experience--no games, no social media, no porn (OK, fair enough)--and, with Gabb Wireless, no Internet.

This is part and parcel of a broader issue of parents micromanaging their kid's interactions. The desire to add extra spyware to kids' phones has resulted in attorney general Sean Reyes placing Snapchat and TikTok on his hit list. Reyes recently co-signed a letter with 43 attorneys general demanding the social networks embrace parental control...