I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew, didn’t you? Oh, it’s just a harmless little bunny, isn’t it? - Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail (YouTube video clip)
Nabaztag (video demo), is a cutesy competitor for the Ambient Orb (left), that connects up to the Internet over WiFi (unlike an FM subcarrier used by the Orb). The bunny changes LED colors on its belly (or moves its ears) to let you know whether you have new email, what the weather’s like, or how the stock market is doing, etc. A voice synthesizer can read messages.
The new model, which has a mike in its belly button, can also “hear”, using speech recognition and “smell” using a receptor in its “nose”.
The “Wi-Fi bunny” is reviewed by C/Net reporter Daniel Terdiman.
The bunny was intensely intriguing, and I found myself bending low over my friend’s table staring and prodding at the plastic object. It has a nearly nondescript smooth, white, semi-cylindrical plastic body with a little black painted nose and two black oval eyes. It also has two detachable white ears.
Nabaztag is a fun, if somewhat confounding toy. It’s hard to deny its cuteness, and the novelty of a rabbit that can communicate with other bunnies across the globe, but it can be difficult to get it to do what you want, and the Web interface that controls it leaves a lot to be desired.
Basically, it’s a communications device dressed up as a cute little multimedia plastic bunny that can tell you the time, give you traffic, weather and news alerts, let you know when you have e-mail waiting, play your favorite music and much more.
Traffic alerts are fine. Spoken messages from fellow bunny owners are fun. Even watching LapinLED do “tai chi” at random times was kind of neat. And I loved the combinations of blue, red, orange, purple and green LEDs flashing at me all the time.
But ultimately, that’s all there is. This is a $150 toy. It flashes. It speaks. But it’s a novelty. And despite my initial excitement, I find myself a little underwhelmed.
I think there’s more to the bunny than that.
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