A wireless rabbit for the home: Nabaztag

Nabaztag is a wi-fi enabled plastic bunny that lives on your desk and connects to the Internet via an existing wireless network. Nabaztag can connect to the net, get useful information and provide it to you in a fun and friendly way in French or English - you can get your desktop rabbit to tell you the time, wake you up with your favourite MP3 track, read some news headlines from the internet, let you know that new email has arrived in your gmail account and give you a weather forecast. If you happen to have a two rabbits (or a friend with one), they can talk to each other over wi-fi and "get married".

The Nabaztag uses sound, lights and waggly ears to communicate to you when there are content alerts. The critter uses its Internet connection to tell you when you have a message, when news breaks, weather updates, travel news, etc.

Send a message to Nabaztag via a website while you're away - perhaps to leave a message for your partner... the message will be delivered over Broadband and wi-fi and your rabbit will read it in clear French or English.

The Nabaztag rabbit is cute too with his Flashing lights, wiggly ears, rabbit-shaped... and a hi-tech gadget factor. This is what your wi-fi was meant for! The image on the left shows you what mood Mixom currently is in. I can change the mood by twisting it's left ear. Useless but good fun!

A newer version, the 'Tag' is available at various internet outlets but I picked mine up at the local Apple store.

In summary, I was fairly impressed with the little chap - once you've got him set up correctly, he'll sit on your desk and keep you amused. Out of the box, Nabaztag required some setup - involving getting my PC to establish a direct connection to the Nabaztag.

To get the most of this wi-fi bunny, Violet, the French creators want you to sign up to the extra services available from Nabaztag.com because as after a while, you'll find the free services a little limited. Instead of a life-long contract (rabbit life that is) with Nabaztag.com I strongly suggest to look for third party applications that use the NabaztagAPI to create even more wicked applications for your internet bunny at no extra cost. After all, violet's business plan is a bit like skype charging per chat message.

Most of the interaction with Nabaztag takes place via the Nabaztag site, so it's a case of logging on to nabaztag.com, making some changes to your settings, then waiting a few moments while the information gets downloaded to your Nabaztag.

What I really do not like about this device is that there is no way to get it working without the nabaztag.com site. When nabaztag.com stops existing, all the bunnies will die too. This lemming-like situation makes me a little bit uncomfortable and feel that, violet.fr should at least supply some local proxy software for LAN use that works without the nabaztag.com site.

Nabaztag is a fun gadget, as long as you don't take it too seriously. If you have wi-fi, a sense of humour, and some euros left in your bank account, get one... and enjoy!