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Dog Friendly Co. harness - has anyone in the US tried this harness?
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I keep getting ads for the Dog Friendly Co harness (instagram linked here, website linked here). Judging by the accents, they seem to be a Aussie company, and I'm in the US, although I did just travel to Australia in March (hence the ads?).
I've got an energetic and occasionally reactive 35lb labradoodle, and I'm considering getting this for walks or when we take her to a brewery. I especially like the velcro patch so I can share from afar that she is an anxious barker.
Has anyone tried this harness? I'd love to know your thoughts on the harness and if it suits your dog and your needs.
Photo of my doodle Joules for the dog tax
Joules loves chasing her disc golf frisbee, and rolling in mudTop Comment: This is a terrible company. I recommend avoiding them at all costs. They frequently have bad reviews and complaints posted on their social media pages, but they are very diligent about deleting anything remotely negative posted on any of their pages. Their customer service is insulting and their products are nothing special.
Does watch dogs 2 support co op campaign? Even if only one person progresses?
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Can you play the story two player? I know there are specific missions for co op but what about the main campaign?
Top Comment:
Main Campaign is single player only.
[Findster Maven] Findster Maven co. GPS pet collar defrauds crowdfunding patrons and forces user fees
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Wanted to write and share the ongoing experience users and patreons are having with Findster and Maven company that develop pet tracking devices. This is about their shady business practice that foiled thousands of people who crowdfunded the product on kickstarter and indigogo under false pretense. The premise of the Findster Home device was a GPS pet tracker for your dog or cat collar that used a proprietary MAZE technology that was SUBSCRIPTION FREE.
A decent technical breakdown can be found here of how it worked. But try and think of it like an encrypted FM radio that sends periodic GPS signals. This is what gives the collar the ability to operate without a cell tower for communication and have improved battery life over CELL based collars.
Ultimately the success of the Findster was from designing a GPS MAZE collar which investing in their proprietary technology to corner the market with a collar that avoided monthly fees. Otherwise you might as well use a CELL based collar as it would provide unlimited rage.
Findster success was due to the support through the crowdfunding campaign, crowd marketing and their own seed and venture capital. Patrons are a large reason to the success as crowdfunding sites provide a lot of visibility and allow companies to test the waters before investing capital. It also allows them to raise capital and a higher valuation from VC’s because they can gauge external interest.
Their products were the original Prototype, DUO, DUO+ and the new Home/base station device. Some back story. The DUO+ product was a collar that the pet could wear and the receiver would have to worn by the person tracking the pet on their belt. Ultimately it would operate as a wireless dongle that connected connect receiver (the belt unit) and collar with MAZE and then the receiver to your phone via Bluetooth. Distance was generally limited to around 1km in good circumstances around the receiver. The limitation could be summarized with distance reliability and battery life.
Findster Duo+ was targeted to people with dogs who go out for walks/hikes far away from their property. The current product that Findster home is the product the company has failed to deliver. It has been changed due to the merger that screwed over their patrons. The Findster Home product was presented to patrons as a home base station with an improved distance and improved battery life. This would provide the capability of further distance around your home/base station. Ultimately allowing the user to check on their pet when at work and confirm they were inside or out around their yard or if their cat escaped and where it was wondering around. The limitation of course is you couldn’t travel with your pet on hikes.
Findster Home was targeted to pets who stay around the home proximity as the collar is required to connect to the home base unit.
The company had decent success with the DUO+ and was able to crowd fund that platform successfully and the product worked decently. But Findster’s vision was always a home based receiver. Once they had worked out a lot of the kinks with the DUO+ they were ready to build the Findster home and they went right to the people that supported them before; crowdfunding. Thousands of Kickstarter and Indigogo users supported the development of previous products and Findster approached them once again with the Findster Home that explicitly advertised and emphasized there would be no user fees.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/findster-home-track-your-pets-location-24-7--2/x/26553599#/
The whole purpose of leveraging MAZE technology, so that pet owners could avoid monthly costs from cellular based collars. Findster and their MAZE technology had a proximity distance limitation that crowd funders were willing to accept in trade off for contract.
Findster missed their product delivery target by years (it was supposed to be released early 2020) and had kept their crowdfunding clients in the dark by not providing updates or refunds. It was not possible to process a refund through the crowdfunding platform as the refund grace time period had passed. Only way to process a refund was to contact Findster directly and many funders had difficulty reaching support as it was only through a contact us webpage. As well people didn’t want a refund because they still wanting the device they supported. When Findster finally broke radio silence it was to announce the rebranding to Maven and it now being a subscription based vrtual VET service. Enter the “rebranded Maven” This was most likely a company merger or acquisition between Maven and Findster. MavenPT was released at CES in 2019 and from what I can tell from searching online was a failure and never really took off. They likely wanted to pivot to veterinary services.
Maven was its own pet tracking collar but it was an odd product that had a small niche market. Ultimately it was a collar that would allow you to monitor the temperature of your pet crate during air travel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LOAHH5EKQ4
An odd aspect of their collar was how it let the individual on the plane monitor the temperature... but what are you supposed to do with this information? Its not like you can tell the Captain to turn cargo bay heaters on. It was a very unusual/niche business model. Maybe I’m missing something.
So now Maven and Findster have merged and used the Findster MAZE technology to pivot towards a subscription based VET service for $20 a month.
The details about the company rebranding and pivot to subscription is here:
It seems as though Maven needed to pivot to something that was a Subscription as a Service business model because their target market was to niche and an extremely weak business concept. It appears they brought Findster in to help with this pivot to home vet care to connect owners pets with a “pet monitor” that tracks their activity and sleep patterns.
Its seem they are trying to create a pet fitbit and eHealth, where you have access to a remote vet to ask questions through a subscription. This works for Humans because humans can communicate and describe symptoms. For pets, who knows the quality of service they will be able to provide, but a virtual vet might miss the mark for a plethora of reasons.
It is extremely important people have a local veterinarian and essential for pets to receive physical checkups and vaccines. Its essential for vets to feel and interact with the animal since our pets cant talk.
I would suspect Mavens long play is to encourage subscribers to transfer veterinary services that are ‘maven approved’. But the company would likely never publicly announce this. It would just make sense for them to have that business mindset.
The good thing about Findster MAZE was it was subscription free, that was the whole purpose of developing the MAZE technology. But now tethering it with a subscription vet service it the opposite of what made the successful. Because if people wanted a subscription you might as well use a cell based collar so you’re not limited by the radius of the MAZE receiver (DUO+ or Home base station).
Maven /Findster merger has failed its supporters and is steering the Findster company off a cliff. It is frustrating for them to have raised capital under false pretense. Maybe they can identify a market that will work for the Maven SaaS business model but it certainly wasn’t the picture they painted for their thousands of crowdfunding supporters. Unfortunate.
It’s worth mentioning there are lots of other competitor companies now.
If you’re looking for just a pet tracking collar look at
Tractive. They have an CELL based LTE collar that works quite well, the app is quite good too. If you want an RF collar (no subscription)
Girafus collar has excellent range. These RF collars get a bad review, but if you know teach yourself how to use them its very straight forward. Avalanche beacons operate the same way, and they are used in life or death situations. For cats, the TabCat collar is decent but short range
https://tractive.com/
https://www.tabcat.com/
https://www.girafus.com/
There are tons of other ones that are excellent.
https://www.pettrackerreviews.com/
TLDR; findster crowdfunded a pet tracker was sold to patrons explicitly as no subscription fee GPS dog/cat collar. Delays by over a year without providing updates to patrons. When product was ready they rebranded to Maven and change to SaaS (software as a service) model that requires a subscription and is no longer for a pet collar but for virtual veterinarian services.
Top Comment: Bait-and-switch aside, with the upcoming release of AirTags, pet/kid tracking becomes very possible in a city without a monthly fee. The premise is that, although Bluetooth has a limited range, there are plenty of people with iPhones. Having at least one iPhone user nearby enables the “Find My” feature to work. I see the original Kickstarter concept as carrying the risk of being obsoleted by emerging technology. Sometimes a larger manufacturer is more well-suited to producing a cheaper concept that doesn’t require a subscription fee for the product itself, by leveraging “infrastructure” that’s already built (as in, just how many people with iPhones there are). Their need to flip flop to subscription model is probably based on the founder’s realization that it’s hard to have a product+service business stay afloat by selling product on margin. Given how long it’s taking to develop, the product is probably running in the red and is their loss leader, with subscription fees hopefully bringing them out of debt.
sleeping dogs definitive edition co op?
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Does it have co-op? Steam have co-op tag on the game
Top Comment: Nope. Still a great game though
Adani's 'attack dog' law firm AJ & Co could face Qld Legal Services Commission probe
Main Post: Adani's 'attack dog' law firm AJ & Co could face Qld Legal Services Commission probe
Top Comment:
It was all so much easier when lawyers couldn’t advertise.
Watch Dogs 2 ( Co-op ) Crossplay?
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Hello Guys, I recently got the game on my PC and I was wondering if the game supports crossplay with Playstation. I have managed to find my friend who plays the game on Playstation on ubisoft connect and added him However we are not able to join the same session together.
Can anyone help with this?
Top Comment: Nope, it from 2016, there not a lot of crossplay game before 2019-2020