Now, this should be fun to have, if the price tag on it is not too outrageous. The guys at SoftBank have just introduced the Mimamori line of remote control robot cameras that were developed to cruise around one's house, at the cat's-eye view, for owners to have feedback of what their pets are doing.

Technically speaking, the SoftBank Z001 records 640 x 480 pixels, and now you would expect to read "video," but that's actually the still image resolution. You desire video, you'll have to be happy with an amazing resolution of 176 x 144, which is a lot lower than what many mobile phones (that are now out of production) were capable of. The good news is that you can log onto the Z001 directly from your cell phone, and drive it yourself around the house, and if need be, take some snapshots and MMS them back to your cell phone.

Storage-wise, the Z001 embeds a microSD slot, with an included 2GB memory card, which also happens to be the maximum size supported, but that's not a problem considering the sported resolutions. Now, my only question is whether this will be heavy and solid enough as not to be chewed or eaten by the pets. I will probably get an answer sometime in September when SoftBank takes this out.

Two models will be available, the Z001 in white and round shapes that you see above, and the Z002 in silver and a shape that looks like R2D2 rather than a pet, which you could consider if your kitten or doggy likes Star Wars. More details would include a (very useless) three times digital zoom, which surely renders the images in a very unimaginable way.


We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is