Future Shock

I came across a site as today's Dogmark.net Cool Site of the Day (don't forget to vote for Pappy as November's cool site). At first glance the product at Sniflabs.com seems pretty amazing. If you watch their flash animation, it's fantastic.

This little gizmo on the dog's collar senses the dogs physical activity, senses which other dogs with gizmos are in proximity giving you a social network, flashes lights under different situations, wirelessly transfers all this information to your computer, and logs it on their site. Then you read around a little and realize they aren't selling them, they are asking you to "reserve" one. In other words they haven't actually built much of anything yet.

So, projecting out, with all these great features the gizmo will be the size of a cigar box and have a battery life measured in minutes. Let's say you buy the fifth one off of the production line... it should be about seven years before you actually encounter another dog wearing one to test out the social features. And it doesn't actually have a GPS, just motion sensors (like those Wii remote controls that people are throwing through their TV sets) and proximity sensors. Mmmm, I pass.