As I mentioned in my most recent doodle-a-day entry, my interest in Aibo has led me to learn a good deal more about all sorts of robots for the home. People now send me links to articles about everything from Roomba to Genibo to Pleo ... but today someone sent me a link to Future Girl's video coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show going on now in Las Vegas.

Together with Jonathan Coulton (he of Code Monkey fame) she's been exploring the show from top to bottom but THIS particular clip features a look at many robotic offerings ... so I thought I'd share.

I'm going to do some more research on some of these items (like Roboquad) and I'll let you know if I find anything of particular interest.

I still haven't managed to get a photo of the exercise bike (which is why I haven't yet made any wider posts about trading on Craig's List or other sites) ... but I thought I WOULD let you know that I've posted one of my random Aibo doodles over at my other blog: doodle-a-day.com.

One of the ways I've KNOWN that I haven't lost interest in the Aibo Quest despite my lack of activity was the number of times that Aibos turned up on my doodle pages. Yeah, I know that they aren't 100% anatomically accurate ... but I'm working just from memory of jpgs and Quicktime movies ... and a SINGLE face-to-face meeting with a real "live" Aibo.

I hope that my accuracy improves as I spend more time actively engaged in this pursuit.

Okay, I haven't ACTUALLY made it through a FULL year with my Aibo obsession ... but I'm close enough that I think it's WORTH making the leap of faith and synching the date up with the New Year. So let's get right to it, shall we?

Discovering Aibo
As odd as it sounds, the very first time I ever heard about the Aibo was on the day that Sony announced they were cancelling the line. How someone as geeky as me managed to not get wind of an honest-to-Asimov robot pet for the first SEVEN whole years of its existence will forever be a mystery. Be that as it may, the little robot dog almost immediately became an obsession for me ... though it was beyond my means to go out and buy one during the short window of time that they would remain on sale. I needed a better solution.

OneRobotDog.com
Inspired by OneRedPaperclip.com, I decided to start a web site dedicated to TRADING my way up to an Aibo. If Kyle MacDonald could turn a simple paperclip into a house, I reasoned, I ought to be able to make some mundane object into an Aibo. With a little help from my friends, I put up the OneRobotDog.com site and chose my starting trade: A collection of Dungeons & Dragons memorabelia from my days working at TSR and Wizards of the Coast. With no real way to accurately assess the value of these items, I gave them an arbitrary value of $25 ... it seemed about right to me.

The First Trade
It only took a few weeks for me to get my first trade started (though it took a few extra weeks to get it concluded ... I just wasn't prepared for the details in this process), and soon I'd sent off my D&D items in exchange for a single Magic: the Gathering card. The foil Ravnica edition of "Birds of Paradise" had a secondary market value of about $50. In my first trade I doubled the value of my offering!

The Dry Spell
Then came the summer, and I lost my focus. I stopped MAKING time to actively promote the site and my quest. As a result, not much happened. To no great surprise, people didn't just wander in from the Internet on their own ... and the quest might have seemed dead to an outsider. But friends and family will attest that I never stopped TALKING about my desire to become an Aibo owner ... and those I met during the summer convention season can certainly tell you that I talked the site up quite a bit, even if I didn't get around to actually MAKING any of the changes and additions I talked about. Still, though the changes weren't obvious, my work DID eventually pay off.

The Second Trade
A friend from Seattle heard me talking about the project and made me an offer for a new trade. For the M:tG card he was willing to trade me an entire factory set of the "Fire For Effect" release for the MechWarrior collectible miniatures game. According to eBay, that was valued around $100 ... so again, a very good trade up! My items were still squarely in the niche of gamer-related paraphernalia, but definitely increasing in value. Now if only I could get into the main stream.

The Third Trade
Before I even had a CHANCE to think about posting the second trade online, I already had a third trade offered. A friend here in Vista, it turns out, is a BIG MechWarrior fan and was willing to trade me a Schwinn 235i stationary bike for the factory set! Here was my big chance to make the mainstream ... so I jumped on it. Of course, I have no idea how to actually VALUE the bike. NEW it sells for over $1,600 ... but this one is a few years old and has been put to good use. Still, I think it's fair to say that I've gotten something that's worth significantly more than $100 here ... and the number of people who might be interested is going to be MUCH bigger than for the miniature mechs. I just have to get back into the habit of letting people KNOW about what I'm doing.

What Lies Ahead
That brings us to today ... New Year's Day 2007. I've been meaning to go and make some updates to the site ... but since that's taking me so long, I've targeted the URL at this blog instead. I may just keep it that way ... but in any case, I need to get some photos taken of the bike and posted so that people can SEE what they might want to bid on. My goal is to get the photos taken later this week and posted shortly afterward. Then I plan to get BACK into the business of actively PROMOTING this site and my quest.

I'm still very positive about this. If I can stay focused and keep trading, I think it's COMPLETELY realistic to think that eventually I'll be able to become an Aibo owner. I HAVE to think that way, because as the price of the Aibos goes UP on eBay, the chances of me actually being able to BUY one plummet.

Anyway, that's the news here at OneRobotDog.com. I hope that you'll come back and check on my from time to time ... and I PROMISE that I'll do my best to have new and interesting things for you to read about when you do.

In the meanwhile, leave a comment ... or drop me a line ... or just send me some silent robotic prayers.

I and my future robot dog thank you.

As I noted in my earlier post, the North County Times (who printed an article about my Aibo Quest shortly after it had begun back in February) contacted me a few weeks ago. They wanted to include updated information on how my hunt was going in a year end review article they were planning ... and that article came out today. If you follow the link, you'll find the details about OneRobotDog.com about halfway down the screen ... but here is the text:

Stan! Trading Up, Vows To Do Better (February 2006)

Vista resident Stan! (yes, that's his name) has a New Year's Resolution. He wants to spend more time on his Web site, www.onerobotdog.com, so that next year he will get closer to his ultimate goal ---- to trade up from a inexpensive collection of gaming convention memorabilia to an Aibo, Sony's discontinued robotic dog.

"I have utter faith that this will succeed," said Stan! in a recent telephone interview. "But you have to work it if you want to succeed, and I have not put the extra work in to find creative ways to bring it full speed. I am not less committed to making this happen. I just have to get my priorities straight."

Throughout the year, he said, he allowed himself to "get distracted" with conventions, seminars, and his real job as the Creative Content Manager for Upper Deck Entertainment.

Stan's idea has been something less than an overnight success. Unlike Canadian Kyle MacDonald, who made international news when he traded up to a house from a single red paper clip, Stan is still struggling to make trades. To date, he has made only three.

Starting with a collection of Dungeon & Dragons memorabilia, Stan! traded up to a Magic: the Gathering card called "Birds of Paradise (foil Ravnica edition)" worth about $50. From there, he traded for a MechWarriors constructible miniatures factory set worth between $80 and $125.

Then, this summer, he traded to a Schwinn 235i stationery exercise bike, which is where he is now. "My goal was to get out of the obscure realm," he said. "I have some cachet in the geek world, and the first things were very niche. I wanted to trade for something more broadly popular because the marketer in me thinks this is how I will get a chance to have more people notice me."

And getting noticed is how Stan! believes he will eventually trade up to his goal. "It doesn't matter how cool the thing is if people don't know about," he said simply.

Stan! said he wants his Aibo more than ever. "I got to meet him and interact with him in June," he said. "I knew how cool they were. I had all of the specs and read all about artificial intelligence, but what I was not ready for was how charming these robots are."

Since Stan! started his Web site, the price of the Aibo has risen. But he is not the least bit deterred and remains philosophical about his quest.

"The thing I think is most interesting about the whole thing is that everyone has something that technically is valuable to someone, but not valuable to them."

---- Staff writer Ruth Marvin Webster

I was VERY lucky to have gotten the attention from the paper the first time around and I more or less squandered the opportunity. I HOPE that I'm going to be smarter about it this time around.

Look for MY year-end update tomorrow ... and more robot dog news on a regular basis throughout 2007.

I've been guilty, I'm afraid, of not really giving my Aibo quest the public attention it requires and deserves. That isn't to say that I've been ignoring it entirely. No, quite the opposite. Although I haven't made any public announcements, I've managed to secure two more trades in the past few months ... and today there will be a second newspaper article published about my hunt.

New Year's Day is generally considered to be a good time for resolutions and refocusing ... and although I usually don't do such things, I WILL this year make a resolution to be more ACTIVE in my hunt for an Aibo ... and to post to this blog more regularly whether I have trades brewing or not. There are A LOT of interesting things happening in the world of robotic pets, and I aim to be a more involved part of them.

Anyway, I'll post again either later today or tomorrow when I find out the details of the new North County Times article. And then I'll post a Year in Review message just to get everyone caught up in time for 2007.

Hopefully THIS will be the year that I become an Aibo owner!

Okay, I've ignored this blog long enough. I just can't seem to REMEMBER to get on here and put in updates. (See? I TOLD you that I was new to this blogging thing.) I'll try to do better in the future ... I promise.

Still, there's definitely something I SHOULD have been here talking about ... I finished my first trade! Of course, if you found your way here, you almost certainly have read that on the main page ... but I'm going to blather here for a few minutes anyway.

It feels good to have gotten the first step behind me. There's still a loooooong road between me and my Aibo, but "the journey of a thousand miles ..." etc. etc. Now I've got to get off my butt and start advertising. Last time I made a few postings on various Craig's List barter and collectibles as well as a couple of D&D sites. Now I've got to track down some Magic: the Gathering sites to haunt.

Of course, I'm sure that the article in the North County Times helped a lot last time. I'm going to have to see if I can't scare up a little more media coverage somewhere. And I'm thinking about haunting some Aibo related sites ... but first I have to come up with some kind of content that current Aibo owners will find interesting. Anyone have any ideas?

That seminar was TERRIFIC. It mostly was an overview of the history of Aibo. I learned quite a few things I didn't know about the middle years and the cute models (designed to appeal to female consumers). And, of course, I got to meet an Aibo for the first time. I actually got to meet several, a pair of ERS-7s and a 220. It was a FASCINATING experience and only served to further cement my conviction that I MUST become an Aibo owner.

Of course, I ALSO learned how difficult that is going to be moving forward. There seem to fewer than 5 Aibo units remaining in stock at Sony Style stores ... and, as noted a few days ago, ebay currently has more scams than actual Aibos. Oh well. It wouldn't be a "quest" if it was easily achieved, now would it?

I'll write a little more about the seminar later on ... but I have to get on the road in a few minutes. (Maybe I can WIN an Aibo in Vegas.)

During my online wanderings I came across a listing for an Aibo-related seminar happening in Los Angeles on Sunday. As it turns out, I'm getting ready to drive up to Las Vegas early next week anyway ... so I think I'm going to head up a day early and attend Living with Aibo at the Otis College of Design + Art.

I'm not sure what to expect, but I hope it will be informative and interesting ... AND that I'll get to interact with various models of Aibos and talk with their owners.

If you're going to be there, say hi! (I'm still not at all sure that ANYONE is reading this.)

No sooner do I rant about a lack of sales outlets than I get a message from the fine folks at http://AibosNStuff.co.uk offering to sell me an Aibo at a perfectly reasonable price. It's good to know that there are some legitimate outlets out there. I just hope they've still got SOME inventory when the trading is done.

Anyway, check them out. They seem to be good folks.

One of my greatest worries about this whole process is that by the time I am able to trade up to a level where I COULD get an Aibo, it will no longer be possible to get one in the general marketplace. I mean, Sony has stopped production now. They've also removed Aibos from their Sony Style physical and online stores.

So where would I go to get one when the time is right?

Ebay seemed like a very likely choice, so I've been checking it out and I have to say that I'm distraught by what I've found. There are a good number of Aibo auctions, though many of them are for older models, update packages, and peripheral equipment. There are even a solid number of auctions for ERS-7M3 Aibos ... but MOST of them are scams. Aibos seem to be one of the hot-ticket fake items on ebay these days, with disreputable folks trying to get desperate would-be-owners to "buy now" by sending money directly to the seller ... and then delivering NOTHING in return.

For the past week I've seen fake auctions being put up and then stripped down by the ebay official literally DOZENS of times EVERY day. Plus, this has had the result of driving the prices even HIGHER on the actual legitimate auctions. (It seems like it's completely possible to get somewhere north of $3,000 for an unopened champagne brown model.

Oh well. I guess that just means that the trading at OneRobotDog.com might have to go on a little longer than anticipated.

And I'll have to keep looking for more potential sales outlets.