Smart pacifier among best of British startups (pictures)

The best of British startups are vying for a place in the Smart UK Project, the winners of which will be shown off at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month. We took a look at some of the entrants.

First up is the 5-Tiles keyboard, that has -- you guessed it -- five tiles. It relies heavily on gestures, maximizing screen space, making it well-suited for small-screen devices like smartwatches.

Viewranger meanwhile allows you to map out routes you've walked, together with photos you've taken on the way. You can even publish the routes as guidebooks.

Trekking in the jungle? The SATCase will be right up your street. It equips your existing phone with satellite links, giving you a signal anywhere you need it.

The Smart Pacifier links to your phone over Bluetooth and records your baby's temperature over time. If your little nipper becomes ill, you can give accurate readings to your doctor to help. It's a prototype for now, but the finished product -- with teat -- will cost around 20 British pounds (about $33).

Blue Maestro, who makes the Smart Pacifier also makes a Bluetooth-enabled room temperature reader letting you monitor how hot or cold your kid's room is getting.

23 Snaps is a private social network for families. You can add family members, share posts and photos, and message each other, without any intrusion from the hustle and bustle of Facebook.

You can easily put in important life events of your children and even print out photobooks of holiday snaps.

For the busy professional, Lowdown tells you not only when your meeting is, but where it is, how to get there, which of your clients you're meeting, and links you to their LinkedIn and Twitter profiles so you can do some last-minute research on them on your way. Want to secure the Collins account? Lowdown could help.

With RouteShoot, you can record footage of your journey on your phone along with GPS data, allowing you to see both map and video on a computer later. Handy to either record your ski run and show how far you went, or for business owners to keep close track of where staff members are driving in the company cars.

It records on your phone, so expect the battery to take a hit, but the data it captures is very cool to look back at.

TriggerTrap meanwhile connects your phone to any digital camera, letting you shoot remotely as well as take sequences of photos automatically, to combine into gorgeous time-lapse videos.

You can also use it to take selfies. Not that I need any help with that.

Among the exhibitors was an improved voice-recognition tool for commerce sites from Capito. Here, we see it being used to pull up football (or soccer, if you prefer) results, and place bets on the matches.

Movirtu meanwhile allows you to virtually separate your phone number from your SIM card, letting you take calls from devices like your tablet or laptop without needing to touch your phone. It's not a service you can buy now however -- Movirtu is hoping mobile networks will buy into its system and offer it to the customers.

And last but not least, we have PeachInc. Brilliant name aside, this company uses tiny QR codes to send tickets for sports games or concerts to your mobile. While that's not new, PeachInc uses QR codes so small that they can be sent over SMS to old feature phones like the Nokia 3210.