Power Of The Internet

[Demaestro]

Power of the Internet.

I found a dog Tuesday and there is website that links lost and found pets, we made a 'found' listing on it. Today the owners made 'lost' listing and the website matched the listings and notified the owners and they were able to call us and know their dog is safe.

He has a whole family, mom,... dad & kids. His name was Rusty.

His breed is Shiba Inu... super cute, like a little fox.

Anyway when they called I said to my wife "Power of the Internet" and she laughed and said he had just said

"Wow...the internet is a powerful thing"

[edited by: Demaestro at 6:00 pm (utc) on Jul 29, 2010]

[brotherhood of LAN]

Great story... it would have been a lot more difficult and have taken longer without the web, for sure.

[LifeinAsia]

Cool! People talk all the time about how the power of the Internet is in making the world smaller by allowing people to connect to other people all over the world. This shows how the power is also in connecting people almost next to each other (assuming the dog was lost locally and didn't do one of those cross-country walkabouts after wandering off).

Waiting for version 2.0 where the owner uploads a picture of the lost dog and the finder uploads a picture of the found dog and the site matches the images. And a smartphone app can't be that far behind that...

[J_RaD]

power of communication.

[henry0]

My site does all of that! including SMS
My lost/found system is 100% automated
not to mention owner pic gallery, video upload
etc....
Funny could have been mine....

[Demaestro]

power of communication

True, but the Internet was the medium for this particular communication and went a step further and was the facilitator of the 2 parties.

They literally lived about 3km across a large park from us but different neighborhood.

I thought when we made the post that the chances that they would look at the same site was slim. It is US and Canada and we are a little city of 1 million.

After they did find us through the site I came to the realization that after searching for hours on foot** then you are stuck at home and still feel the need to "do something" going online is a natural thing now, which I think is a sign that we have moved into an age where the Internet is becoming a part of day to day living, not just something you 'play on'

**(we had posters up within an hour of finding him, but in the wrong hood)

[BillyS]

Waiting for version 2.0 where the owner uploads a picture of the lost dog and the finder uploads a picture of the found dog and the site matches the images. And a smartphone app can't be that far behind that...

I don't think this is very far away. I expect Google to be the first to announce this capability. Picasa already has this feature and I'm sure they're constantly tuning that process.

[henry0]

I am in that line of web
The img matching concept (even if doable) is not very practical, the founder needs to have a phone, camera or whatever to take the pic, then uploading it.
with my system simply enter the dog ID tag... done.
email and cell txt message are sent, each party is aware of how to communicate with the other one, no further thinking or action to be taken..

[Old_Honky]

If they had the dog chipped it would be much easier. Lots of people aren't ever on line. My wife's cat was chipped and just after we set up home together after her relocating a couple of hundred miles the cat ran off. We tried posters, knocking on doors, websites we even put up a site for the lost cat but no luck. 2 Years later after we had virtually given up hope there was a phone call from our local vet; someone had caught her eating the food they put out for hedgehogs, and the vet had scanned her.

[claus]

Thousands of Terawatts of electrical power by the hour, and probably much more. Too sad the current electricity smorgasbord looks to be a scarce ressource, going away with oil. So I guess we better enjoy it while we can :)

[Demaestro]

2 Years later after we had virtually given up hope there was a phone call from our local vet; someone had caught her eating the food they put out for hedgehogs, and the vet had scanned her.

Nice!

[incrediBILL]

If they had the dog chipped it would be much easier.

If people are really concerned about their pooch they'd get a personal GPS locator, they go for about $99 these days, attached to the dog collar and you can track the mutt online.

Just finding the dog using GPS one time is more than worth the embarrassment of walking down the block calling a collie yelling "HERE SEXY!" (wasn't my dog, wasn't my embarrassment)