Verizon’s Non-Phone World: FitBit, TAGG Collar, Vehicle Diagnostics

While at the Verizon Communiations's (VZ) flagship store on 42nd Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in Manhattan to see the roll-out of retail availability of BlackBerry's (BBRY) Z10 smartphone, I was also pitched some of Verizon's non-phone offerings.

The company is branching out into more wares that use its wireless telemetry network to monitor and give feedback about all manner of activities. They asked to show me some of these wares, as I was already in the store to talk about the Z10, and I was game.

A $99.95 pet-monitoring collar, made by startup TAGG, can be placed around an animal's neck to track your pet. It comes with three months of service included, and costs $7.95 a month after that, and gives you constant reads on where your dog is (or your iguana or another pet, I suppose, depending).

A $49 device called “FitBit” can clip to your pants seam and measures how much you've walked and how many calories you've burnt in a day. It's extremely light weight plastic, comes in bright colors, and has a monochromatic display that's touch-sensitive. The battery is rated to last a week and a half, but a store associate who's been using it, Summer, said she'd been able to go a month without needing to recharge it. The devices sends constant updates that can also be monitored via a Web site. There is no charge for the wireless network service.

The third device, which went on sale today, “Vehicle Diagnostics, is a small plastic device made by Delphi Automotive (DLPH), went on sale today for $249 plus a $5-per-month fee. It plugs into a monitoring port built into cars already, below the driver-side dash above the break. It is billed as a way to “keep an eye on your vehicle's health from your smartphone. Also using the telemetry network, it can send information to your smartphone to tell you such things as when the oil needs to be changed. It can also send a beacon to let you know where your car is. That means it could conceivably be an anti-theft device, or a theft-remediation device, at least, to locate stolen vehicles, or to tell you where your children may be if they borrow your car. (But I would suggest you refrain from spying on your children.)