Home telephone service, cell phones, and email have changed the face of communication.  What used to take several weeks or months to contact family or friends via the “Pony Express”, now takes only seconds.  Technological advances are made everyday, which aid the swiftness of communication.  Distant family members can either dial a number or punch a few keys and have instant contact with loved ones.  The most direct form of communication is phone service.  However, conversations have to be kept to a minimum, especially for airtime charges, and more so for international calls.  Due to this fact a large numbers of phone users have shifted to email or instant messaging.  While it would seem that a user would be completely satisfied, the one thing email cannot give is a feeling of human connection.  Many make attempts in messages to express nonverbal actions or reactions with emoticon symbols, but one might argue that the level of personal feeling is non-existent.  Our team discovered a large market with the need for a type of more personal communication.

Our team observed a need for Internet communication with an actual physical interface.  The medium must be friendly and inviting.  Thus, the concept of “Fuzzy Net Buddy” was conceived.  This invention is a new product that would make one of the first attempts at a genuine personal electronic communication.  The primary market would be children and their parents, guardians, or grandparents.  The secondary market would be young couples.

In today’s global society, many families spend less and less time with each other.  Factors such as dual-income households (where the child spends at least 8 hours away from the parent in daycare or school), separated extended family, and military service have caused a large decrease in family time.  Parents would like to spend more time with their child or at least be able to check up on their child throughout the day.  In addition, younger children cannot easily access the current forms of communication. The “Fuzzy Net Buddy” provides this contact. A child would see this product as a playmate and the adults would see it as a way to have a link to their children through out the day.  This means of establishing a “continual presence” is a key feature of our product.

The general function of the teddy bear is a mechanical interface to leave and receives messages via a wireless Internet connection.  An example would be if a child wanted to tell the parent something interested they observed while they were playing.  They could simply press a button and record their own message.  The receiver inside the bear would relay this message to a home-based computer whose software would send the message through the internet to a website which can be accessed by the parent.  The parent could listen to the message and send a voice reply.  A light on the teddy bear would indicate to the child that a message awaited them.  Further expansion on this core product might include movable parts to better convey emotion from gestures along with the messages.