Pet ownership is on a steady rise worldwide. In Japan, more households had pets than kids in 2006, and a slew of new products geared toward canines has come on the scene to meet this trend. Wired presents a bizarre roundup of some of the coolest tech for dogs from companies in Japan and the United States.

The article is titled “Doggie Style: Cell Phones, Webcams and GPS for Hounds.” Maybe it doesn’t seem bizarre to the animals and their owners, but I’m sure most dogs and cats don’t need half of this stuff? Here are a few of the Japanese products mentioned:

• A portable, durable camera from Takara Tomy can be hung from your dog’s collar and operated by remote control. You can set a timer, triggering the camera to snap photos every few minutes and auto-upload to any Japanese cell phone.
• Pet Pedometer. Designed to attach to a collar, this pedometer is also a timer and a dog tag, all-in-one. The top line of the display shows how many steps puppy has taken; the bottom line shows how long she’s been frolicking. You can fill in your information on the back in case she trots too far and gets lost.
• See the Pooch Eat. Hailing from Japan, the ISeePet is an auto-feeder with a built-in webcam. You can connect the device to the Internet.and program it to send out an alert noise when it’s dinner time, then watch your dog pig out from your work computer or cell phone.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is the rise of Social Petworking: “Dogster.com is a networking site for dogs. Just like on MySpace, your popularity is determined by how many Pup Pals you have, and you can leave love interests a Bone to let them know you’re watching them. Currently more than 300,000 users are registered on Dogster and its sister site, Catster.”

Source: Source: Lisa Katayama. “Doggie Style: Cell Phones, Webcams and GPS for Hounds,” Wired 05/10/07.

Related Post: “Doggy Stress Patch,” EBT Blog 05/07/07.

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