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Strange But Useless: The Rabbit
What do you get when you cross Wi-Fi, a plastic rabbit, some motors and flashing lights? A completely uselss device that you can carry around and show people, that's what. The technical name is the Nabaztag, and it's part of a French entrepreneurial effort to create a new communications device. The little rabbit changes color, buzzes, his ears wiggle, etc, to let you know different things. Look! His ears are smoking! Those stock picks must be really hot! In addition, loved ones from home can send your personal greetings that make the rabbit glow a warm red.
By far the most popular application among the initial users, however, is the ability to send an SMS, or short messaging system, message to the device to make it throb red, telling a loved one that they are being thought about.
"A device like this changes the actual environment of the recipient, kind of like a bouquet of flowers," said John Gage, chief researcher at Sun Microsystems, at the TED forum. "Once they get enough of them out there, I would love to see a global piece of installation art created by moving all their ears at once."
Look. I like carrying around little plastic pink bunnies as much as the next guy, but I'm just not so sure they're going to catch on.
After all, do we really need another device to carry around, no matter how cute it is? Heck, I want to see less stuff, and stuff already integrated into the stuff I already carry, not some new contraption.
But that's just me. I hear it's really catching on in Paris. It's probably the wave of the future.
"Once they get enough of them out there, I would love to see a global piece of installation art created by moving all their ears at once." What has this researcher been smoking? :-) Art from glorified techno knick-knacks--what a concept! So is Paris trying to be the "new Japan" by latching onto silly electronic junk? This all makes me very disappointed that my Pet Rock is merely analog and offers no connectivity whatsoever.
i love it