Tony Hawk Ride comes with a skateboard controller. You know what that means: dogs playing video games. What’s amazing about this video is just how good this dog is. Impressive!

[YouTube]

My perspective is that nature always beats technology. Waves eat ships, roaches beat Mortein and earthquakes topple buildings. Every day, this conflict plays itself out in front of my eyes as Malcolm the puppy gnaws on gadgets.

I’ve had Malcolm for a year now. He’s a little dog. He’s a good boy although kind of a moron, but Lisa and I love him. As a puppy, he chewed on a good variety of things (as puppies do). Pens probably reminded him of bones; he would jump onto Lisa’s chair to grab a pen from her desk and prance away with his prize, crunching away to get at the inky marrow. He’d attack shoelaces with such fervour you’d think they were spaghetti with meat sauce. Glasses, too. He liked biting up the ear pieces so they would be jagged and painful to wear. But now that he’s a bit older, he’s developed a primary affinity for eating gadgets.

TV remotes are fun for him, but only rectangular ones and mostly on the corners. The Toshiba remote has a little bit of chew on the corners, but the AppleTV remote, made of that soft chicklet-looking plastic, is his favourite. If I leave it on the coffee table, I will find it under a couch cushion two days later looking more worn. The black IR cap has broken off and the battery case has popped out. I’m lucky he didn’t swallow the batteries. One time he even chewed through a 110V cable for a heating pad. I’d only unplugged it that morning!

Malcolm’s favourite thing to chew on is an animatronic lion cub. Someone sent it to me last year, unsolicited, and it turned into a dog toy. It’s basically a little robot cub that growls and moves its eyes and mouth. The size of a teddy bear. Malcolm used to be scared of it, but now he just unleashes all the hell a 4kg dog can on it. I think he hates it. After all he’s a flesh and blood dog, and the lion is a robotic cat. Not only is the conflict inter-species, but its a battle between a biological being and a robotic one.

At first, he’d drag it across the floor by its limbs. After awhile he learned to grab it by the nape of the neck and shake it. After two months, the neck opened up as did the plastic spine which is surrounded by various cables that power the mouth and eye servos. He chewed through them and killed the robot. Sometimes he humps it, but its clearly dominance not cross-species homosexual technophilia. I think.

I don’t have a point here. I just find it amusing and fun to watch nature’s greatest machines destroy the primitive man-made replicas. Man, do we have a long way to go.

*Yes, I spray things down with bitter apple now.

The point of the Autofetch Motion Pet Ball is to stick some pet treats inside, activate the internal gyro-drive, and let the ball spin around to entertain and reward your pet. Well, at least I think you’re supposed to use it for your pet, because one of the two “frequently asked questions” listed on the product page is a bit odd:

Can I use this motion ball with my pet Rabbit or Pig or Iguana?

Yes, it can be used with any pet, child, or adult human.

I really want to give whoever wrote that the benefit of the doubt and assume that the intent is to say that it’s safe for kids to use the toy to play with their pets and that they’re not encouraging shoving Halloween candy in there and watching a kid chase after the ball. Although maybe that could be fun to watch. [China Vision Red Ferret via Wired]

The sidewalk in front of the store has been fitted with small infrared lights, and the installation with infrared cameras; this is how Sniff, an art project designed by Karolina Sobecka and Jim George, knows where its audience is, and can anticipate which direction they’re moving.

Some might see a playful interactive exhibit here, but I see something more insidious. Walking by confused, platter-eyed puppies every once in a while is a part of city life; each time you do it, you make an easy—but still present—decision not to buy that dog that evidently loves you more than anything, for some reason. With Sniff, you don’t have a choice: he seems to like you, but you physically can’t take him home; likewise, there no risk that your walk-by buddy is going to get incinerated at a shelter, because he isn’t real. Technology, you’ve stolen the richness from our relationships to dogs that aren’t ours. Thanks. [Sniff via Urlesque via Neatorama]

This Sniff toy dog by Sara Johansson looks like a regular stuffed dog, but actually has lots of components inside to make it (arguably) smarter than a real dog. Or, at least, a squirrel.

The video illustrates what Sniff can do, including sniffing out RFID tags to instigate “activities” such as different behaviours and vibrations and melody games. I can’t tell how well this works, but that little girl in the video looks like she’s having the best time ever, so that’s pretty cool. And Sniff is designed with sight-impaired children who have special needs in mind, which makes it even cooler.

You’ll have to wait a bit longer if you want to get Sniff for your kid, but you can get a book right now about a day in his life, written by the creator. [Nearfield via Make]

Interested in seeing this thing for yourself and in the US? Come on into the Giz Gallery when it opens on Wednesday. And bring your dog, too. I still have doubts that any dog would actually go to town on this thing, so I’ll tell you what: If your dog has sex with the sex doll for dogs, you’ll win a prize. No raffle for you! If you own a shameless dog, you can skip to the front of the prize line. Prizes include camcorders and laptops, not the throwaway stuff. We have to be able to get the carnal act on video, because we are gross and need proof.

Also, admit it, you’re a little curious.

Read more about our Giz Gallery 09 here and see what else we’ll be playing with at the event.

The Snuggie craze was bad enough when it hit a couple of months ago. But this? This takes it too far. Snuggies for Dogs? Throw it back!

What’s really amazing about these is that they actually improve on regular Snuggies. Snuggies for Dogs have velcro on the back to keep the damned thing on. Why don’t they have that on the human models?

As a bonus with your order you’ll get talking dog tags instead of a reading light. This is purportedly to record something like “My name is Spike, here is my address,” but I think it’d be better to have it say “Please give me a steak, you asshole.” Because really, that’s what your dog would want it to say. [Snuggie for Dogs via Consumerist]