Issue Date: December 5, 2004
You've never had pets like these!
First you could read your newspaper online, then get your groceries. Now it's pets -- scurrying around the Internet, wagging their tails, just waiting to be "adopted."
Plenty of virtual pets, like hamsters (maniform.com/stuff/hamster.htm) and dogs (virtualdog.com), are available for adoption online. But A.I. pets can't be more fun than their real-life counterparts, right?
Not so fast. Enter sites like neopets.com. At first glance, the casual observer might wonder about the appeal of these wide-eyed, brightly colored creatures. But it takes only half an hour at Neopets, registering and playing, to get attached. Web-savvy, game-loving kids are eating it up.
There are more than 48 species in "Neopia," and thousands of activities. You can buy pet food, play some 160 games or invest in the Neodaq.
It's entertaining, easy to navigate and even educational. One of the best things about virtual pets is that they teach kids about things like managing money and being part of a community.
At Power Pets (powerpets.com), registered users can adopt up to four pets from 30 species, travel through New Barkston and earn "power bucks" along the way, or open shops, write stories and rescue "minis" (animals deformed by the evil Padam's experiments). Power Pets has a strong underlying social message about animal testing, and the pets are modeled on the real thing, so this site caters to an older audience.
All this is to say -- Sorry, Spot: Fuzzy as you are, you'd better start learning some new tricks.
-- Jen Weiss
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