Another Company Wants To Track Fido With GPS
from the roving-rover dept
Just four years after a Japanese company launched a similar product, a company in Sweden has announced the "world premier" of a GPS dog collar that lets owners keep track of their pets. The collar has a GPS chip and a cellular modem; when an owner sends an SMS to the collar, it responds with a message detailing its location in text or map form. Like GPS applications for tracking kids, the device can also trigger alarms if the dog wearing it wanders outside a preset zone. While the company behind the device says it can help solve dog owners' "worst nightmare", it's hard to imagine too many of them ponying up the cash for the device and ongoing service. These sorts of tracking applications are continually mentioned as part of the future -- but the only problem is that people don't really seem all that interested in them.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And the next logical step is to collar
It will be portrayed as "saving the children", protect the young ones from predators, helping the senior citizens "Help I've fallen and I can't get up!"
The government does this now to newly released felons.
Whoa, mark of the beast.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
My socks too.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
What ticks me off the most is that it's only my left socks that go missing. If I could tag all of my left socks with GPS units, that would be very cool. I'm sure that you could get sock-tracking chips for less than $200 each.
:-D
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tools for sale on Craigslist
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WTF ?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WTF
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Small enough to go on the dog (and preferably a cat)
Batteries for 5 years or more.
No fee until I "ping".
Reliable coverage (for me, only in metro areas).
Very very reliable overall.
Being able to locate a lost pet would be great. I have lost a couple of animals down through the years and can be EXTREMELY painful. I'd probably be willing to pay $100 for the device and $1 or $2 per ping (so I could test every so often).
Yeah, I know, it wouldn't ALWAYS work (thief would remove the collar, for example), but if it ever worked, it's just so much better than... "Gone and tough sh--".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]