Lisa Katayama

Birdhouses made from modded roof tiles

These birdhouses were made by combining reclaimed terracotta roof tiles cut by water-jet and laser with wooden boards etched with Victorian facades. Usually, roof tiles aren't recycled, but a team of artists led by Japan's Tomoko Azumi wanted to change that.

[via Designboom]

Lisa Katayama

These are not just ugly stuffed animals

This pack of stuffed dog toys with giant mouths from Japan are actually functional gadget accessories. Can you guess what they are?

Answer is here.

Steven Leckart

Tick Removers: Which Do You Use?

"Uh, I think I snapped it..."

I got my first tick on the BBG camping trip. I was lucky. I didn't even know it was there until it was gone. I brushed it off in the shower somehow without leaving any of the tick in my body *knock wood*. My completely uneducated guess is the hot water must have shocked the little bugger, and when I inadvertently passed my hand over him, he backed out and/or fell out because he had yet to burrow? (if you're a tick expert, feel free to weigh in).

Next time, I won't be so lucky, which is why I'm going to: a) use bug spray, and b) pick up a legit tick remover just in case. Cause there's no way I'm going to try the above method.

Here's a series of tick removers, including one that uses cryotherapy. I'm tempted to buy the one with a mini-lasso and just call it a day. Before I do, though, please feel free to chime in with any suggestions, experiences or links to videos of yourself removing ticks.

Lisa Katayama

Camping gear for dogs

My dogs Ruby and Malcolm came with us to Lake Mendocino on the BBG camping trip. Outward Hound and Ruffwear are both excellent brands for outdoor gear for dogs &mdash Ruffwear's lightweight Flophouse foam pad has a waterproof base layer and a fast-drying comfy top layer that Ruby loved to lie on, and Outward Hound makes things like carriers, life vests, and waterproof dog bowls with loops for hooking onto backpacks or belt loops.

Malcolm carried his own kibble, cookies, and poop bags in Ruffwear's Approach Pack. The only problem: the bottom buckle strapped right across his weenie, so he we had to take it off before he could pee.

Lisa Katayama

Pictures taken by Malcolm and Ruby using the Pets Eye View camera

For our routine late morning walk today and at a neighborhood BBQ on Saturday, I put Uncle Milton's Pet's Eye View cameras on Ruby and Malcolm's collars. They're lightweight, mini cameras that clip onto collars and snap 640x480 photos at 1, 5 or 15 minute intervals. I set them on 1 minute intervals, and we were off!

Photo: Ruby Keilana

The above is Ruby's photo stream. Most of the pics were blurry shots of the grass or of my legs, but she took several solid nature photos. I especially love the one of the gravel &mdash nice, isn't it? The shot of Malcolm's butt is lovely too. The camera only stores a maximum of 40 photos for up to 5-6 hours &mdash after that, the 8MB SDRAM internal memory erases itself and you lose everything. Most of the pics ended up pretty blurry, which made me wonder why this thing doesn't have motion sensors or at least some kind of basic blur reduction mechanism.

Photo: Malcolm Keilana

Malcolm took a lot of pictures of my legs &mdash he must have wanted cookies from my treat bag. I expected to see a lot more of other dog's butts, or maybe even their faces because he likes to sniff muzzles, but one major flaw of this cam is that it takes pictures not necessarily of what he sees, but what his neck is pointing to. Also, the camera just takes pics randomly every minute, so it's likely they're either sleeping or running around &mdash neither of which yield quality photo opps. These were the best six shots out of two rolls of 40 each.

These cameras are $40 apiece &mdash it's super low tech and doesn't take great photos, but could be a fine gift for crazy dog moms and dads, maybe.

Product page [Uncle Milton]

Steven Leckart

Retro Robotix Robo-Dog: More Canine Than Canine

Man's best friend just got even better! A dog you don't have to walk or feed, and you control its every move!

Runs on 4 C batteries and 1 9V. Only $200 from the Electronic Eclectic Company.

Or you could go 21st Century with HPI's G-Dog, a $700 mutt that runs on a 7.2V Ni-MH and can do a break dancer's headstand (00:20!):

Steven Leckart

Review: A Few Days with a SNIF Tag

My pug Gus is a lazy sack. No disrespect, but it's true. Which is why I'm not at all opposed to putting him to work and/or keeping more rigorous tabs on his extreme indolence so that I can hold it over his head.

Enter the SNIF system, an accelerometer built into an RFID tag that logs and transmits motion data to an Ethernet base station that plugs into your router. In addition to streaming real-time, online status updates (sleeping, sitting, walking, etc.), the SNIF web site creates a browse-able history of your pets activity or, in Gus' case, inactivity.

Check out my pug's data, and observations after the jump...

READ THE REST

Lisa Katayama

Geek dog t-shirts

Zazzle.com has a collection of fun, geeky dog t-shirts. Ruby used to have a Fake Steve Jobs t-shirt, but I think she was too embarrassed to wear it.

(Thanks, Brannigan M!)

Joel Johnson

Robotic Pets and Children: A Developmental Study

From ISAZ Newsletter, Number 29 [pdf]:

Robotic Pets and Children: A Developmental Study

Gail F. Melson, Alan M. Beck, Peter Kahn, and Batya Friedman (University of Washington) All data has now been collected for our study of children across three age groups (7-8, 10-11, 13- 14 years) as they separately interact with a live specially trained dog and with a robotic dog (Sony's AIBO). The analysis is now underway and international presentations of the data are scheduled. Children aged 7-9 yrs. (n=26), 10-12 yrs. (n=24), and 13-15 yrs. (n=21), half boys, participated. After a 5-min. play session with AIBO, each child completed a 20-min. interview, with AIBO present and "on." The same play session and interview was conducted with "Canis," an Australian Shepherd. As part of the interview, each child was asked whether or not the target dog possessed biological properties, social companionship, and moral standing. Most dog type comparisons were significant.

For 23 of 25 questions, fewer children affirmed AIBO's (as compared to Canis') biology, psychology, companionship, or moral standing. However, more children endorsed punishing Canis (80%) than AIBO (51%) for breaking something expensive. Children unanimously affirmed Canis' biology, at least 70% of children affirmed all mental state and companionship questions about Canis, and at least 80% stated it was "not OK" to cause Canis harm (5 questions). However, over 50% of children also affirmed AIBO's mental states (4 of 6 questions), companionship (5 of 6 questions) and moral standing (6 of 7 questions). In summary, while children sharply distinguish living and robotic dogs, most children attribute psychological, companionship and moral standing (but not biology) to a robot dog, even after a brief exposure. Preliminary data were presented at the Tenth International Conference on Human- Animal Interactions, Glasgow, Scotland, October 8, 2004.

Steven Leckart

Review: Kool Dogz Ice Cake Maker

Gus loves chew toys, carrots, spinach, dog treats, and he's especially fond of ice cubes (or "free treats" as my bro-in-law calls them). Since the pugger enjoys each of these independently, I figured freezing 'em all into one massive block of ice on a sunny Sunday afternoon would pretty much rock the little dude's world.

So did Gus finally figure out what to do with that thing?

Pics, video and details after the jump...

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Joel Johnson

Hound Bytes is a bargain basement Dug the Dog

I've yet to see Up, but I keep hearing about this hilarious dog in the film, which speaks its mind through a telepathic thought-to-speech collar. While it sounds like science fiction, that technology is closer than you might think! Researchers at places where things are considered to exist estimate that similar collars could be around the neck of your beloved dog as soon as telepathy is a real thing.

Until then, there's "Hound Bytes", an x-rated clip-on speaker that barks theoretically humorous quips when triggered by remote control. It's only $13 plus shipping, far cheaper than a dog costume, the traditional way to embarrass a dog and its owner at the same time. [via John Biggs]

Steven Leckart

HOWTO Click Train Your Dog

This video has nothing to do with click training (that I know of). But I'll go out on a limb and say it had to have taken some deep, deep discipline to shoot that thing.

Personally, I'm all about affirmative verbal cues and occasional treats. Other dog owners prefer the non-verbal conditioned reinforcements of a handheld clicker.

So which is more effective?

According to one recent study the use of a clicker resulted in a "decrease of over 1/3 in training time and number of required reinforcements" when compared to verbal conditioning. Plus, click training also promoted the superior acquisition of complex behaviors (on a limb again, but just look at that video!).

Most of Clickertraining.com's 15 Tips seem pretty straightforward and helpful:

Click for voluntary (or accidental) movements toward your goal. You may coax or lure the animal into a movement or position, but don't push, pull, or hold it. Let the animal discover how to do the behavior on its own. If you need a leash for safety's sake, loop it over your shoulder or tie it to your belt.

A clicker costs $1.50. How hard could this technique be, really?

If you've used a great book, web site or video, or just want to share your experience, please write us in the comments...

Lisa Katayama

Review: A puke stain with the Bissell SpotBot Pet

Sometimes, my dogs puke. This is because they eat everything from grass to flip flops to sheets of paper towel soiled with grease. Twice, Ruby got into a huge bag of dark green iron pills and had to get her stomach pumped. Several weeks ago, Malcolm puked out a grass-and-kibble stew, which I didn't discover until I got home hours later. All of these incidents had left seemingly indelible stains on my carpets and couch. Enter SpotBot Pet, a not-so-little cleaning robot that claims to work any stubborn pet stain &mdash be it puke, pee, or butt juice &mdash out of carpets and upholstery. It has three modes &mdash one for surface stains, one for deeper stains, and a manual mode for use with the attached hose.

The SpotBot Pet has two fluid tanks &mdash one for a cleaner-water mix and another that dirty water gets sucked back into. Below the dirty water tank is a pair of nylon bristle brushes and little vacuum cleaner heads that simultaneously scrub stains out and suck dirt in. Its diameter is 8 inches, so any stain bigger than that might require two treatments. The SpotBot came with a trial size of Bissell's Pet Stain & Odor advanced formula cleaner, which supposedly works for pee, puke, and butt juice. Perfect.

A full cycle of the set-in stain takes about five minutes and is deafeningly loud. It didn't bother me that much, though &mdash after spending days trying to scrub canine vomit out with soap and water and Nature's Miracle, I was beginning to think the couch would just have to sport a puke stain motif forever. I was willing to listen to this Bot do its deed.

Five minutes later: The couch was soaking wet, but the stain? Gone! It was awesome. I tried it on an area of carpet stained with pee, too, and it worked great. At $140, it's a tad pricey and it's heavy and loud, but it works, and it doesn't require any manual labor other than picking the thing up and placing it on top of the stain.

Product Page (Bissell)

Steven Leckart

Video Gallery: Dogs vs. Robots

Consider the Fourth Law:

A robot must confuse, agitate and/or do battle with all canines, unless such action conflicts with the First, Second and Third Laws.

After the jump, videos in which robotic dogs, raptors, humanoids, vacuums and other bots face off against "real" pooches...

This post is part of a Theme Day: BBG on Dogs.

READ THE REST

Lisa Katayama

5 must-have geeky dog toys for geeky dogs

My dogs are stereotypical geeks. They're book smart, they obsess over trivia, and they can be socially awkward at times. If your dog is like mine and gets bored of ordinary cookies and chew toys within seconds, you should strongly consider getting them some, if not all, of these toys for geeky dogs.

1. Intellibone
A plush bone with five donut rings around it. The dog has to try to get all the rings off the bone, one at a time. Difficulty: 5/5. Fun factor: 3/5

2. Kong Toy
The oldest geek dog toy on the market was invented in the 1970s by a Colorado man with a destructive German Shepherd. It's made of rubber, and has a cone-shaped orifice inside that fits things like treats and peanut butter. Difficulty: varies Fun factor: 5/5

3. Everlasting treat dispenser series
Refillable, squishy treat dispensers that hold a variety of cookies and proprietary all-natural disc-shaped chewy treats. At our house, we call them the blue thing and the orange thing. Difficulty: 3/5 Fun factor: 5/5

4. IQube
A tri-colored 6x6x6 cube filled with little round squeaky toys that pups have to pull out. Kyjen has various iterations of this toy, including Hide-A-Squirrel, where the dog gets to smoke baby squirrels out of holes in a plush tree bark. Difficulty: 2/5. Fun factor: 3/5

5. Omega Paw Tricky Treat Ball
This thing teaches dogs how to roll things around directionally with their nose. The incentive = treats that only drop out of the core if they're positioned right. Difficulty: 4/5. Fun factor: 4/5

(See my dogs demo-ing some of these toys on
YouTube.)

Steven Leckart

Review: A Day w/the Zoombak GPS Locator

My pug Gus is micro-chipped. He's never gotten lost *knock wood*, but if he did &mdash and somehow broke free from his dog tags &mdash I'm confident the chip could help garner a safe return home. However, pet hospitals and shelters stock a variety of scanners, which aren't equally effective at picking up the varying frequencies of various chips.

Plus, if Gus gains weight, we could be screwed altogether. Blogger/veterinarian Patty Khuly explains: "For each 5-pound increase in body weight, the odds that a 125 kHz chip would be missed increases by 5%--by 8% for other frequencies."

Rather than wandering the streets whistling and calling your dog's name hours after you realize the pup's gotten loose, you can get real-time location updates from the Zoombak, a small GPS unit which utilizes web-based Bing Maps, as well as email and SMS alerts.

In theory, this is brilliant. In reality, well, check after the jump for my experience tracking Gus...

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Lisa Katayama

How to carry a laptop and a lapdog at the same time

When I got Ruby six years ago and started taking her everywhere with me, my biggest dilemma quickly became: how do you carry a laptop and a lapdog at the same time? Most dog carriers aren't made to fit human stuff, and even if you're just lying on the couch, you can't really put both on your lap. Ruby and my MacBook, it turns out, are surprisingly similar in many ways. They both weigh less than 10lbs, take up a lot of room, and get really hot if I leave them on my lap for too long. Also, they both want to go everywhere with me, I'm often forced to choose between one or the other because I don't want to carry two bags. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has struggled with this.

I still haven't solved the problem of how to have both on your lap at the same time, but Sherpa's new Sport carrier series solves the portability issue, but there is finally a way to carry a laptop and a lapdog at the same time, in the same bag, even on an airplane. The sport sac pet carrier comfortably fits a 13" MacBook and a 10lb miniature pinscher, plus it has interior compartments for credit cards and keys, including a velcro pocket for a cell phone. If you have a netbook and a bunch of gear (cameras, voice recorders, etc) the sports wheels pet carrier is, like, a lapdog-owning geek's dream. It has wheels and straps that turn it into a backpack. Also, the rubber wiring in the front holds a water bottle, and there's an outer pocket for wallets and keys and cell phones. Perfect.

Sherpa's actually kind of a cool company for those of us concerned with pet portability. The founder, Gayle Martz, was a flight attendant for 20+ years, and she pioneered the pet-in-cabin movement by creating cabin-safe bags and lobbying for the right to carry small animals on board a plane. She founded the company in 1990, and her bags can be found in almost any pet store. I never wanted one until now, though, because I found the traditional Sherpa styles (black, boxy duffels) pretty drab. The Sport line, which debuts this month, changed that for me. I'm digging the bright colors and simple style, and the practicality of it &mdash carry-friendly straps, multiple pockets, lots of mesh for good air ventilation &mdash makes me wonder why other dog bag brands haven't thought of this stuff.

Product page [Sherpa]

Lisa Katayama

$3000 doggie treadmill

If you're too lazy to walk your dog every day, you could always dish out $3000 for a Jog a Dog treadmill.

Product page

Steven Leckart

Gallery: A Visual History of The Artificial Dog

Sony's four-legged entertainment bot AIBO launched a decade ago. At left is a figure from patent #6458011, which was filed in 2001 by inventors Makoto Inoue and Emi Kato:

A walking-on-four-legs type robot whose body is connected at the front right, front left, rear right, and rear left with legs is adapted so that its action saves the user trouble and increases the user's affection for, and curiosity about, the robot.

I find the evolution of the artificial dog fascinating. Check out more patented pooches &mdash from analog to animatronic, including more iterations from Sony &mdash after the jump...

[top right image via Sony]

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Lisa Katayama

BBG on... Dogs

Clockwise from top left: Porter Johnson, Malcolm Keilana, Ruby Keilana, Gus Leckart, Mocha Beschizza, Tricksy Beschizza, Black Jack Putney

Perhaps the most important prerequisite for being part of the BBG team is to have a puppy or two. Because we love our doggies so much, we dedicate today to stories about dogs: gadgets for dogs, robotic dogs, pictures taken by dogs, a robot that cleans puke stains, geeky dog toys, a dog tag with a motion sensor in it, advice on how to carry a lap dog and a laptop at the same time, and more. Woof! (Or, as they say in Japan, wan wan!)

Rob Beschizza

"Pet Spa," an automated dog-washing unit

Dog-o-Matic Washes Your Dog, Traumatizes Them For Life [Oh Gizmo]

Steven Leckart

Star Trek creator's wife spends $4m for their dogs!

Before her death in 2008, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's widow Majel set up a $4 million residential trust to care for her dogs*.

TMZ reports:

A domestic employee named Reinelda Estupinian -- the person who cared for the pups -- gets $1 million and the right to live in the mansion with the dogs... Majel claimed Reinelda deserves the massive stack of cash because she "did an excellent job of caring for my animals (giving them comparable or better care than that which I gave them during my lifetime)."

I'd love to see how the Roddenbury pootches are living (my guess: LARGE). If you're reading, Reinelda: please set up a few web cams or even a Flickr stream using a few Pet's Eye View cameras.

In related news...

Although she passed away in Dec. 2008 after battling leukemia, actress/producer/petlover Majel Barrett/Roddenberry will reprise her role as the voice of Starfleet Computer in Star Trek. That fact alone got me even more pumped to see the movie. RIP, Mrs. Roddenberry.

[image via Lisa Knapp's Fabulous Pugs via Costume Dogs]

*The pug pictured above is not a Roddenberry. The family seemed to prefer the company of larger, less dolled-up canines like German Shepherds. Here's Majel with Orion.

Lisa Katayama

Dog plays Casio keyboard, sings along to his own performance

Porter 9-Volt is a San Francisco-based dog that sings and plays a Casio keyboard. He wrote this song, performed exclusively for YouTube, on the fly. [via Neatorama]

Rob Beschizza

High-tech mousetrap gains engineer a new friend

Jim Clark made a mousetrap of unimaginable complexity, expense and coolness. Hooked up to a camera and strobe lights, it captured the nightly misadventures of a mouse that took up residence in his kitchen.

There was a humane and happy ending, too: once he finally caught it (rather than just took photos), Jim ensconced the mouse in a well-appointed cage.

Building a better mousetrap [Strobist via Wired: Gadget Lab]

Joel Johnson

Solvit pet harness lets them ride in a human seat

Next Monday my bulldog Porter and I will be hopping in a rented minivan to drive cross-country to move to Eugene, Oregon. My plan was initially to put him in his cage (just a single wire cage, not a hard-sided travel kennel) so that he could sleep without getting rolled around by braking and such. I may still do that—he needs to get at least twelve hours a day or his wrinkles begin to lose elasticity—but at the suggestion of one of my soon-to-be-ex-roommates, I've just bought him a Pet Vehicle Safety Harness from Solvit. It has a padded piece that goes all around the front that connects to the seat belts in the vehicle, in theory giving them a little bit of motion while they're sitting but still locking up tightly if there are any sudden stops.

I'm not actually sure Porter will want to be sitting up for more than a few minutes at a time, but if he can still manage to lay down in the seat at all it should be a safer option for him than being in a bungeed cage. And if not, at least we've got the first piece of equipment he'll need when we go skydiving.

John Brownlee

Kittens chillax on a Roomba

A variation of Last Man Standing played with kittens on a Roomba. All these kittens are just champs: none seems particularly dispirited to lose the game. Teeth-gratingly irritating LOL Cat captions in the comments, if you please, my droogies.

[via POETV]

John Brownlee

iPhoto 09 recognizes faces... even cats'

I don't know why it surprised me, but one of the best things about upgrading to a new unibody MacBook Pro was finding a new version of iPhoto installed on the machine. Oh, sure, I knew I could have technically upgraded iPhoto at any time: it's part of the iLife package. But I guess it just never occurred to me that Apple would spend time improving it, so I was delighted to discover how much better the new iPhoto kept untagged photos organized. I promised to keep my eye on future upgrades.

A month later, another update to iPhoto comes down the pipe, this time with facial recognition technology, which automatically searches your photos for faces, asks you to identify each one once and then easily bring up any past or future photos that feature a certain visage, no matter how dollsome or hideous.

It sounded pretty neat, but this is even better: it also works on felines. I imagine a great project here: drag in every LOLCat photo on the Internet and finally compile a definitive "Who's Who" off quasi-illiterate, cheeseburger loving doofus cats.

iPhoto's Faces recognizes cats [Maclife]

John Brownlee

A product only my cleaning girl will love: Bird Diapers

I know what Humbert Humbird is belatedly getting for Christmas. From personal sputtering experience, though, I'd add this line to the product pitch:

"Bird diapers? Why bird diapers? Well, if you enjoy having your budgerigar walk around on your face while you yodel, than you'll love bird diapers."

Only $24.99! Expect Humbert's review — transcribed from outraged squawks — in February.

Bird Diapers [Gadget Nation via Red Ferret]

Joel Johnson

Fling-ama-String cat toy mechanizes feline torture

The "Fling-ama-String" cat toy may be inelegantly named, but its every motion provokes delight. I now realize it is possible to create an entire room of cat attention-torture devices, jittering feathers actuated by motors, mousey puffballs racing around a room on tiny tracks.

As a first step, you can buy this AA battery-powered toy that slips over any doorknob for just $24, plus shipping.

Fling-ama-String Cat Toy catalog page [CatToys.com via Red Ferret]

Rob Beschizza

Bird House CCTV Camera

You don't have to live in London to enjoy its scenery: these bird houses recreate the world financial capital's authoritarian je ne sais quoi.

CCTV camera as bird’s nest [P&V via Make]