A small British company is working on software that could ease the trauma caused by your phone or handheld computer being stolen or going missing.

Cognima is creating a system that looks after all your vital information, and passes it on to any and every device you use.

If any of your gadgets go missing or get stolen, it will be able to restore the information instantly to any new gadget you buy and use.

Cognima hopes to be carrying out trials by the end of the year.

Information everywhere

Often it seems that the more gadgets you have, the more time you have to spend ensuring that they are carrying the most up-to-date versions of your address book, calendar and e-mail contacts.

But now British technology company Cognima is working on a way to make this synchronisation headache a thing of the past.

Once deployed, its system will mean you only have to maintain information about phone numbers, addresses and diary dates in one place.

Gadgets fitted with Cognima software will automatically consult this source, ensuring you have access to the latest version of that vital information no matter where you are, or what you are using to communicate.

"Consumers do not have to choose where to save data," said Simon East, founder and chief executive of Cognima. "Their information appears to be everywhere."

The network knows

Cognima is planning to put software on phones, handheld computers or smartphones that can find your information no matter which network you are connected to.

This small on-phone program works with smart software sitting on networks that recognise which device you are using, and feeds that gadget with your essential information.

The service is likely to be a boon for anyone that loses their phone or has it stolen because the Cognima service will be able to instantly restore all the key information lost with the gadget.

Cognima is likely to face competition from the efforts of technology standards bodies, which are working on ways to get gadgets talking to each other and swapping information via networks. Efforts such as the Session Information Protocol, or Sip, are working towards similar ends.

Future competition

Mr East said Cognima was getting a lot of attention from network operators who were looking for ways to make future gadgets easier to use and were keen to get their customers doing more with them.

Mr East said the software was being designed to work with any device because it was unlikely that any one operating system or device would dominate in the future.

Before founding Cognima, Mr East was vice president of technology at software company Symbian, which is developing operating systems for mobile devices.

He left Symbian in May last year to start work on the technology that Cognima is developing and commercialising. Cognima itself was created in February, and this week got $1million from Atlas Venture to fund development of the technology.