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We know, Francesca, we know...

(Credit: MarthaStewart.com)

It's a dog. It's a porcupine. It's a dog dressed as a porcupine (Martha Stewart's dog Francesca, no less). Yes, it looks like Francesca will be dressing up as another animal species this Halloween, and she no doubt will suffer a serious identity crisis in the process.

The very creative Alison Lewis, editor of the technology life and style blog Switch, went on Martha's show Monday to demonstrate how to make the illuminated porcupine dog costume.

Required materials include fiber optic strands, electrical tape, a 5-millimeter LED light, AAA batteries, silver reflective paper, a craft knife, and a giant doggie toy to give the pooch as a reward for being mocked endlessly by all its canine friends.

On her blog, Lewis also explains how to make a light-up dandelion costume (pictured below) in case you and your pet would rather go the flora route this holiday. Some might call these costumes cute, but we're just worried about Francesca. Poor thing already has her own blog, and now this...

(Credit: Switch)

With Halloween coming up, we're seeing several ghoulish games appear in the iPhone App Store, including one from Paramount Digital Entertainment that's rather loosely based on Stephen King's "Pet Sematary," which was made into a successful film in 1989 (a sequel followed and according to IMDB, the movie will be remade in 2010).

The iPhone iPhone/iPod Touch version of "Pet Sematary" costs only $.99 and falls into the top-down, tap-to-kill genre of arcade games, which may just find some life on Apple's mobile platform.

Truth is, I expected the game to suck but it's not half bad and is kind of addicting. As the game description says, "Players in Pet Sematary take on the role of a lone hero uninterested in becoming cat food." You're supposed to selectively eliminate zombie children, dogs, cats, and birds by tapping them one to four times as they dart down the streets. However, if you accidentally kill the innocent townsfolk, your health is diminished and you lose points.

Each level lasts less than a minute and naturally things get more difficult as the game progresses, with more and more baddies invading the screen at the same time. In-game pickups score you bonus points, replenish your health, and provide temporary weapon upgrades. Also, if you want, you can have your scores automatically posted to your Facebook account, which should really impress your friends.

(Credit: Tomy)

Japanese toymaker Tomy has released a new dog translator gadget that can turn barks into words.

Bowlingual Voice is an update to Bowlingual, first released way back in 2002. The new version speaks with a human voice from a handheld unit wirelessly linked to a microphone around the dog's collar. The original version had no voice synthesizer.

Bowlingual Voice recognizes six basic canine emotions. Tomy says it can simultaneously translate the woofs of about 50 breeds of dog into Japanese.

Not surprisingly, the dogs say things like "I love you!" and not "Stop feeding me the same crap every day."

Another new feature is the use of the 2.4GHz band for transmission, which supposedly eliminates interference from other Bowlingual units. Tomy says you can use up to five Bowlinguals at the same time to translate doggie conversations. As seen in the Japanese video below, one dog asks, "Do you like me?" while the other says, "Go away!"

The handheld unit also has features like an "action dictionary" to help decipher the emotional states of hounds that don't bark much; a dog quiz; and a scheduler for trimmings and vet visits.

The idea of a dog translator sounds wacky, but Tomy says there's some science behind it. Japan Acoustic Laboratory's Matsumi Suzuki, an acoustics expert, developed the system that recognizes canine vocalizations.

I remember interviewing staff for an article in Japan Inc magazine when the original model came out. It notes that "the actual text messages are chosen at random from about 40 preset phrases within the emotion categories."

As far as I can tell, this random feature is part of Bowlingual Voice, which makes it more of an approximate interpreter than something like the universal translator from Star Trek and other science fiction tales.

You can get it on Amazon Japan for 18,900 yen, or about $200. There's no word on if or when it might be released outside Japan.

I'm not a pet owner anymore (it's a long and painful story; please don't ask!), but as I have written about a First Aid app for humans, it's only fair I write about one designed with animals in mind. (OK, I admit it, secretly I also want to make sure I remain on PETA's favorite list).

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

The app's name is (you guessed it!) Pet First Aid. It works with both the iPhone and iPod Touch and is a product of PetTech of Vacaville and JiveMedia (which is the same company that wrote the First Aid app for humans).

It's basically a quick manual that teaches you to take care of your dogs and cats. Topics range from daily mishaps like choking or scratches to common diseases and how to safely transport pets.

The app also has a section where you can store pets' medical data, as well as record their vaccinations, veterinarian contact info, allergies, and so on.

You can learn from detailed articles, video, and step-by-step illustrations that show exactly what to do when caring for your pet. The video section of the app includes tutorials on restraint, muzzling, CPR, bandaging, and the like. The best thing about this is all content is downloaded on your phone, meaning you can learn about this even when offline, a useful pastime for your long flight, for example.

I tried the app on my iPhone 3GS and found it very informative, with easy-to-follow instructions. Now I wish I had this when I was still a happy, allergy-free pet owner...

Unfortunately, caring for your pet never comes free. The Pet First Aid app costs $3.99 at Apple's App Store, the same amount as the similar app for humans. At least in this regard, human and animals are treated equally for once.

Augmented reality--in case you haven't been following, is a technology blending video cameras and computer graphics enabling you to interact with virtual creations in the real world. In practice, it looks like virtual reality crossing over into actual reality. You may have heard the buzzword, but as of late, it's becoming a serious gaming trend. At last week's PlayStation holiday preview in New York, one of the most talked-about titles in Sony's fall lineup was its hi-tech attempt to take on Nintendogs, called EyePet.

While it was definitely one of the most impressive augmented-reality game demos we've seen, it's far from the only one. Here's a rundown of EyePet as well as some other augmented-reality games of the future we're looking forward to playing. And is it just us, or is the angle of most of these titles to "make little animals appear next to you?" Clearly, if this is any indication, get ready for a whole lot more hallucinatory ghost creatures dancing on your coffee tables for holidays to come.

Eyepet (Sony, PlayStation 3)
Sony's been quietly leading the pack in U.S. augmented-reality game development, starting with 2007's bold but unsuccessful trading-card battle game Eye of Judgment. Although interactive PlayStation Eye software has been available on the PSN Store that achieves other AR effects, EyePet is their first major push at a mainstream home entertainment product. ... Read more

Sox didn't seem to mind wearing the Pet's Eye View Cam, as you can see in the photo above.

(Credit: Crave UK)

The subject of today's thing-you-can-attach-to-a-cat's-head story is a black cat named Sox--a large, meaty puss belonging to yours truly. Regular readers will remember us writing about a camera built to be strapped to just such a cat so you can pry into its private life. Well we got one sent in, and yes: we strapped it to a cat.

He didn't seem to mind, actually, as you can see in the photo above. The camera looks chunky, but it's actually quite lightweight and attaches to your cat's--or dog's, or sheep's, or girlfriend's--collar easily. And there it shall hang, taking a photo every 1, 5, or 15 minutes, until its pitiful 6MB of internal memory is full. That's 40 photos in total.

Sox tries Pet's Eye View Cam -- photos

Forty photos of questionable quality, to be honest, and the memory isn't flash memory as found in most digital cameras. Instead, it's some kind of volatile RAM, and if you're unfortunate enough not to get your photos from your cat before the battery dies several hours later, you never will.

For about $65, these specifications are lousy, frankly: 16MB of flash memory could give you more than 100 photos, none of which would vanish should Paws McBlack-Fur run away for a week. But as the only camera of its type we know of on the market, it'll have to do for now.

We left Sox to walk around taking pictures of the house he just moved into. Being an idle feline, most of the photos were of the same wall, thanks to him spending several hours sleeping in the same spot. But if you chuck the cat out in the morning, expect some considerably more interesting snaps by the time he comes in for his dinner.

No, it's not a great value. But yes, it is fun and it makes a smashing gift for anyone who's mad about their pet. The Pet's Eye View Camera is available now from I Want One of Those, and we've published a bunch of photos taken by Sox.

(Source: Crave UK)

Do real cats cross their legs like they're lounging on the couch watching soap operas?

(Credit: Sega Toys)

When we first caught sight of Sega Toys' meowing, purring robo-feline, we fervently hoped Lucky the robo-dog or some other bigger, stronger robot would come along and scare the creepy cat out of the neighborhood.

Alas, that's not to be. "Yume-Neko Venus," or "Dream Cat Venus," is slated for a July 30 release, according to Sega (PDF in Japanese). The fake feline will cost 10,000 yen (about $108)--not bad considering you'll be saving a bundle on kitty litter and toy mice.

The battery-operated robo-cat is equipped with five touch sensors that let it engage in real-life behavior like rolling on its back, blinking its eyes, moving its legs when you rub its belly, and sleeping a lot. Sega says the target age is four and above, and/or anyone who likes cats but can't have them due to allergies or co-habitating with animal haters.

The bot, which is modeled after the Norwegian forest cat, measures about 20 inches by 9 inches by 9.5 inches, making it the size of a (smaller) real cat. As far as we can tell, it'll only be available in Japan for now, but if you see a white cat with oddly vacant eyes slinking around your garden anytime soon, you'll know robo-cat went global.

(Thanks as always to my CNET co-worker Takayuki Sakurai for helping me make sense of the Japanese--the language that is, not the people.)

Sadly, the video won't embed. Click on the image above or the link in the story below to see the contraption in action.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Hickey)

While some of you might think of the "Blender Defender" as mean, I don't. Animals kept as pets need to learn the rules. Cats and dogs, though, are notorious for deciding the rules don't apply when we, the owners, are away.

That is why one clever soul rigged up a blender filled with water to a motion-activated wireless Webcam aimed at the house plants his cat liked to nibble. When the cat would enter the frame, a networked upstairs computer would activate the water-filled blender--and a strobe light next to it--via an X10 wireless home automation module. The cat (not mine, let me stress!) would then scramble off the counter, terrified. Ta-da!

It's not just enough that the genius concocted the two-part scaredy-cat machine. No, this genius put a video on the Internet so we can all share his cat's terror and, in the future hopefully, the bitter revenge scheme that's sure to follow.

Wilson's still at the car show, so Jeff and I play twosies under the table. We start off with a very important announcement that involves us literally showing up at your door with mace and a large, blunt object. We also reveal more details about our Meetup, apologize for yesterday's spoiler, and discuss some seriously screwed up stories!

www.meetup.com/The404

(Credit: Meetup.com)

Okay, so let's get a few business items out of the way while I have you here. FYI, we do have a ringtone in the works thanks to our buddy Jamie Lewis, check back here tomorrow for a download link. Also, be sure to keep sending in your adventure/prison/survival stories to win a copy of Tom Avery's book, "To the End of the Earth." Leave us an e-mail (the404 [at] cnet [dot] com) or call in at 866-404-CNET to submit an entry!

Finally, bust out your digital/analog calendar and mark this down: 404 MEETUP on April 16th (next Thursday) @ The Delancey. We plan on getting there around 7:30 and staying until whenever our legs give out. So here's what you have to do:

• Go here.
• Sign up for a Meetup account and join "The 404 Podcast Meetup Group"
• RSVP for the Meetup on April 16th

Make sure you join our group even if you live somewhere else and can't make it to this one, it will still serve as a good barometer for future travels and meetups--we'll use this group to organize and plan all future events, so don't sleep on signing up and we'll see you next Thursday!

Now back to today's episode: who knew that you could get Viagra, the popular ED drug, in an aerosol can? In Europe, scientists are playing around with a spray-on version. We personally DO NOT have any experience in this field, nor do we suffer from any of those kinds of ailments, but Jeff just happens to have a "friend" that's used it for recreation and speaks good things. By the time this comes to the United States, it'll probably just be a laser point that you just aim at the little tadpole to awaken the bullfrog.

Next, we get a little tangential discussing a new service called TinyChat that allows users to create online chat rooms on the fly, which of course opens up a whole discussion about the old days of chatting, with IRC and AOL chats. Jeff takes advantage of the intimate studio environment and reveals a little something about his college years, but so what? Institutes of higher learning are practicallybuilt to encourage experiemtation. We'll get behind you and your freak flag any day, Bakula! Well...maybe next to you.