Photo of fake cat wearing experimental Twitter collar.
(Credit: Tech-On)
Sony's Computer Science Laboratory has seen the future of location-aware lifelogging, and it's probably curled up on your couch.
During an Open House on May 28, the SCSL team showed off a prototype cat collar called Cat@Log, equipped with a still camera, GPS, accelerometer, and Bluetooth, capable of reporting your four-legged friend's minute-by-minute activities over Twitter. The end result plays like a mashup of Crave favorites: the kitty cam and the Twitter cow.
Now, I know what you're thinking. Where are the lasers? We can only pray Sony will add both laser and 3G compatibility before the product hits store shelves.
Obvious disappointments aside, Sony's team of engineers has figured out how to associate your cat's activities with preset Twitter-ready phrases. Currently, the device is capable of communicating 11 phrases based around movement (jumping, walking, running, sleeping, etc.), as well as facial gestures. In time, the engineers hope to expand the device's vocabulary, giving Twitter squirrel some worthy competition.
Thankfully, this is only a concept model. Should a consumer version ever materialize, it's only a matter of time before our new cat overlords turn the devices against us.
