Pleo

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Recently I came across Tails Of The City, a very lovely blog about pets and their owners in the Bay Area, or in blog author Amelia Glynn's own words:

"Welcome to Tails of the City: A menagerie of stories about Bay Area pets and the people who love them."

She had begun a series of posts named The Pleo Diaries which talked about her experiences with a Pleo she named Baby Nathaniel. I enjoyed reading her posts about her family's stories of discovery and wonder at what our plucky, little, green, cuddly hero could do. That is until I came across this post. Ironically, the post begins with a very funny story about how Nathaniel was mistaken for a turtle by conductors on the train she was riding. But at the end she has this worrisome note about Nathaniel's overall future:

"Maybe I'm just not enough of a tech geek, but I have a hard time understanding why an adult would want a pet dinosaur. Real pets are, hands down, more fun. (Plus they're soft and tend to be better cuddlers.) And although I can see how a Pleo could help teach kids how to handle and care for a pet, the same could be done with a live dog or cat, with more parental supervision of course. Could this be who Pleo is really for: parents of kids who want a pet but who don't have the time or deep-seated desire to take care of one? I'm clearly still stumped.

If there are any Pleo parents out there who'd like to weigh in, I'd love to hear from you."

What she doesn't say but clearly implies if you read between the seemingly impartial lines of her recent Pleo Diaries posts, is that if Baby Nathaniel doesn't impress her sufficiently she will feed him to the dogs! I offer as proof the disturbing photo to the left. The furry executioner you see in the photos belonging to this post is none other than Walt the baby dino eater. Walt comes from a long line of baby dino diners who were bred to help control the dangerous Tyrannosaurus Rex population that was plaguing the Bay Area back in 1971. You may not have read or seen about this because that was a very smoggy year in the Bay Area and all you could see of the rampaging Rex population were their feet. But the army of trained baby dino hunters were brought in and very quickly eliminated the Rex population by mercilessly consuming the Rex babies along with a tablespoon of salt and a chew bone.

Please visit her blog and comment on her post about Pleo and her final feelings on him. Let her know why we love Pleo so much and open her heart to the idea of letting little Nathaniel live! She loves pets so somewhere inside her there most be a spark of mercy for our little baby Camarasaurus!

[Note: the photos on this page are copyright Amelia Glynn and were used with her permission.]

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[UPDATE: 10-2-2008] There are a bunch of great Pleo photos from the Carnival on Flickr; a lot more than the 3 I list in this blog post. Visit this Flickr page to see them. ]

Pleo was sighted recently at the 15th Annual Elizabeth Glaser "Kids For Kids" Celebrity Carnival, a benefit held for pediatric AIDS victims that is attended frequently by well known celebrities. Among the celebrities this year was Tyson Beckford (calm down ladies), who was said to be seen checking out Pleos that were roaming the event and enchanting attendees left and right. I couldn't find the pictures of Tyson Beckford with Pleo but there are several other pictures of him with the kids in the Zimbio "Kids for Kids" picture set. I did find a few pictures of actors Sebastian Stan and Leighton Meester hamming it up for the camera with a stunningly attired Pleo who seemed to be loving the celebrity attention. I have included links to the pictures below. Check them and the other Carnival photos out. They're really fun!:

Sebastian Stan laughing with Pleo

Sebastian Stan providing support while Leighton Meester feeds Pleo

This is *not* a Pleo photo despite erroneous reports it is

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The BBC recently created a humorous video where they put Pleo in a nature vs. nurture style test. More tongue-in-cheek than scientific, they hatched Pleo twice and raised him in two starkly different manners. In the first, they are dutiful doting parents to our beloved dino, offering strong parental psychological support and kindness. In the second they are neglectful harsh parents that refuse to give Pleo a second helping of Christmas Pudding no matter how much he cries. Then they show the dramatic difference in Pleo's happiness and self-esteem between the two upbringings in a fashion that would make even the great Charles Dickens uncomfortable: "Please sir, I want some more!".

The funniest part of the video is when you see how the actors struggle to be mean to Pleo in the "bad upbringing" segment, especially when compared to the kissing, petting, stroking behavior they helplessly exhibit in the "good upbringing" segment of the video. The test was done as part of their intriguing The elements of your smarter home article where they talk about some of the technologies that will affect our day to day lives at home in the near future. Follow this link to the article and at the top you will see a video player for the Pleo segment. Warning: video contains mild scenes of anti-Pleo behavior, quite tepid actually.

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Ugobe has released another software download for Pleo that when written to an SD card, makes Pleo do his best dinosaur on a rampage impression. Pleosaurus Rex mode comes complete with Godzilla like sound effects and aggressive animations which make Pleo act as if he is laying waste to some hapless urban area. Add a few army men and a small toy tank or two, and you've got your very own angry dinosaur destroys the world scene, albeit in an relatively adorable manner. If you find the mystery touch trigger that triggers the Pleosaurus Rex death animation, you'll be treated to the heart wrenching final moments of a baby robot dinosaur gone berserk, complete with the appropriate sorrowful sound effects in a scene that rivals the likes of the famous King Kong death scene. You will need an SD card and an SD card writer to use the download. Click here to download Pleosaurus Rex now.

This is a post about Pleo, UGOBE's robot dinosaur

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Hello all. It's Labor Day weekend so this post will be short. According to this post on a Taiwanese Music blog, the female music star of the video below receives a Pleo from her ex-boyfriend as a gift. But I have to admit that when I first watched it, it really looked like she was dumping her boyfriend for Pleo! Think about it. No dirty underwear around the house. No getting lost on trips and refusing to ask for directions (heck, future versions of Pleo might even be GPS capable!). No arguments about who left the seat up in the bathroom or forgetting to put the cap back on the toothpaste.

Wait a minute. This isn't funny. Honey, why were you gone all day with my Digger again? Hmm?




This is a post about Pleo, UGOBE's robot dinosaur

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Another great video from Pleo World member maggie44n. In this video, her Pleo named Linus gets the full spa treatment at Changes Salon! Somehow maggie44n got the whole spa staff to play along and Linus gets the full treatment including a fossil rock massage (ironic, isn't it?). There's nothing like watching a bevy of beautiful women fawn over a tiny baby dinosaur to make you very jealous. On top of all this, my Digger got a hold of this video and has put himself up for adoption! For more fun adventures with Linus & her other Pleo named Schroeder, read her plog.



This is a post about Pleo, UGOBE's robot dinosaur

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Gizmodo UK has a short but very interesting interview with Steve Bannerman, a new arrival to Ugobe's powerhouse marketing team. In it he talks about the 55,000 Pleos now out in the wild, the Pleo Reincarnation program I mentioned in a previous post, and most importantly officially states that:

"Next year we will bring out additional life-forms. I can't say which right now but the new lifeforms don't necessarily have to be for purely entertainment purposes."

He also indicates that Ugobe wants to get more software out there for us Pleo owners to enjoy and explore. Bannerman was a bigwig marketing type over at Apple where he worked on Quicktime TV and headed up the launch of Apple's online media streaming business. Read the interview if you get the chance and here's to an exciting 2009 where new Ugobe critters will roam the Earth!

This is a post about Pleo, UGOBE's robot dinosaur