Nabaztag wireless rabbit breeds new generation

PC Pro, UK
Oct 27 2006

‘We are against screens,’ states Rafi Haldjian, authoritatively.
Haldjian is the man behind the Nabaztag wireless rabbit that is
evolving to the next generation; Nabaztagtag.

Nabaztag is that strangest of beasts: it has no compelling reason
commending itself. It doesn’t have a bigger hard drive, or faster
processor than the competition, and it out-Japan’s Japan in terms of
novelty electronic toys, yet it has charmed some 65,000 people –
mainly French – into buying one, and at nearly £80 a pop.

In fact, under the ears, there’s really not a lot going on. A set of
glowing LEDs, a speaker and a wireless component pretty much make up
the technological oomph of Nabaztag. Its charms lie in the range of
online services you can attach to it – reading you your email,
weather and traffic reports – to its Tamagotchi addictiveness, with a
personality that thrives on interaction, and chastises its owner for
leaving it alone too long.

Word of the WiFi rabbit has roamed far afield, with online
communities such as NabaztagAmerica. You’ll also find evidence of
them on Flickr and YouTube. And because there’s an API available to
skilled ‘Nabaznauts’ as they call themselves, there is a constantly
growing range of services available from these communities.

A new European landscape emerges from its popularity. Perhaps it’s
the long nights, but the further north you go, the more likely
Nabaztag will find a loving home. ‘It’s most popular in Nordic
countries,’ says Haldjian. ‘Followed by the Dutch, British, and
French owners. The Spanish like it more than the Italians. The
Hungarians like it more than the Polish.’

Nabaztag means rabbit, in Armenian. ‘It’s an out of nowhere object
for with an out of nowhere name for an out of nowhere people,’ said
Haldjian. ‘In a world of bits, anything can happen, and no-one is
surprised any more. So we wanted to know, is there a way to bring
that back home, bring it into meat-space. Which object should we
think of first to do this? The rabbit of course.’

He said that he deliberately avoided using a household object with a
function such as a fridge, as that carries with it the baggage of
needing to perform that function ‘better’ by being connected to the
Internet.

‘We want to

prove there is life beyond the PC,’ he said. ‘This is not about the
future of rabbits. We wanted to mix the fun, emotion, magic and
relationships in an object’.

The new version of Nabaztag is Nabaztagtag. ‘In Armenian, that would
translate as Rabbit-bit,’ said Haldjian. ‘Version seven will be
called Nabaztagtagtagtagtagtagtag’. Its evolutionary highlight
resides in the microphone placed approximately where you would
imagine its belly to be.

The microphone gives it a number of new interesting possibilities.
Firstly it can recognise words. You can tell it to tell you the
weather or to ‘shut up’. If somebody is messaging your rabbit whom
you don’t recognise, you can even ask it ‘Who’s that?’.

All the voice-recognition and other processor-pushing capabilities
are performed on the Nabaztag server. The rabbit itself is simply a
dumb terminal. This makes it easy for Violet, the company behind
Nabaztag, to add new services without the need for any upgrade to the
rabbit hardware.

Nabaztagtag can stream mp3 files, and you can add interfaces into
blogs and personalised Google pages as a shortcut for messaging your
rabbit. You can subscribe to podcasts through it, and Haldjian also
talked about adding VoIP capabilities and the ability to monitor its
ambient surroundings through the microphone so that you can tell for
example, whether anyone is in the room and therefore able to receive
messages.

‘Also, it can smell things,’ says Haldjian rather enigmatically. With
each Nabaztagtag you get a roll of RFID tags which you can associate
with other objects. Examples he quoted include attaching one to your
keys. You wave your keys in front of the rabbit as you leave and
return from work each day, and Nabaztag, and anyone else you want to
notify, knows when you are home.

You could also attach one to a present which would trigger a message
from Nabaztagtag once opened. Or in a book for your children, so that
when they showed it to Nabaztagtag would stream a recording of you
reading that book to them. ‘With RFID tags you can add meaning to
anything,’ he said.

Democratising RFID in this way should help allay the privacy fears of
people when they hear of the technology being applied to passports
and the means to monitor and track people in their everyday lives.
‘When you give people the same tools as the authorities, it’s a good
thing,’ said Haldjian. ‘We’re in the early days of the Internet of
things and we should show that this can be about fun, and
creativity.’

For the future Haldjian is even considering his first concession
towards the dreaded screen with a small projector on top of
Nabaztagtagtag’s head that would show its thoughts and moods.

But for now, you can get your Nabaztagtag for around £90 from 18
November from the likes of Selfridges on the high street or Firebox
online.

Matt Whipp