supporting interspecies social awareness

Just got my copy of the UIST 2005 proceedings, and was rather amused to find this paper by Mankoff, Dey et al: Supporting interspecies social awareness: using peripheral displays for distributed pack awareness.

In interspecies households, it is common for the non homo sapien members to be isolated and ignored for many hours each day when humans are out of the house or working. For pack animals, such as canines, information about a pack member's extended pack interactions (outside of the nuclear household) could help to mitigate this social isolation. We have developed a Pack Activity Watch System: Allowing Broad Interspecies Love In Telecommunication with Internet-Enabled Sociability (PAWSABILITIES) for helping to support remote awareness of social activities. Our work focuses on canine companions, and includes, pawticipatory design, labradory tests, and canid camera monitoring.

On the Internet, nobody knows your lead author is a dog. As for peer review... well, let's just not go there ;-)