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Nabaztag
Let ALL things be connected
Why, after 20 years spent building online virtual worlds on the French minitel, then the Internet, Rafi Haladjian realized in 2003 that time had come to jump out of the screen and take the physical world as the new frontier. How Violet, the company he co-founded decided to start connecting everything, to get out of the lab and make actual products with a Darwinian view of the advent of ubiquitous computing...and why among all things he is convinced that the Internet of Things should start with a Rabbit.
Speaker:
rafi HaladjianModérateur:
Bruno GiussaniBurn the Bunny, Long Live the Bunny
Février 8, 2008 - 14:09 — Libby DavyEnough already. We got one of those crappy Nabaztag bunnies for Christmas. Infact from Father Christmas himself. So it was all the harder explaining to our 7-year-old daughter Bea (who, the fancy website promised us would have her life oh-so enhanced) that we were going to send it back. "But that's so ungrateful Mummy! Father Christmas won't ever give us a present again if you do that."
But frankly, sending messages to yourself and sitting around staring at the stupid little thing waiting for it to do something ain't our idea of fun. Mr "I need bigger challenges all the time" Smarty Pants Minitel agreed last night that there wasn't much happening for UK bunnies until April and that yes, they're not much fun if your friend's don't have them.
Please use your enormous brain to solve some real world problems Rafi. Take a leaf out of Al & Andy's books and go win a nobel prize for technology that solves climate change, or something, anything. But take the bunny back.
Is it just the women who hate it, or just the people that don't have geek friends with no life. Fortunately I met Dana Gordon (and fabulous Jean Bapiste) last night. And after we burnt a few banknotes together (ask me for one and you can too) we went looking for the Bunny.
Alas... that pleasure will have to wait.
So here's a pic of the best Bunny I can find right now. Signficant that it came from the Burning of the Clocks community event - a pagan inspired event by Same Sky - by the ocean in Brighton. In real time, with maximum bandwidth. Amazing how they get the wind to really feel cold on your face, for the fire to crackle just so realistically.
Frankly, he was a lot more fun than a Nabaztag/tag/tag/tag/tag/tag could ever be. And his weather report was waaaay more useful, fun, joyous and interesting.
2 comments
Cybaztag?
Février 8, 2008 - 10:50 — Anders H. NissenHaving listened to showman scientist Kevin Warwick I was just struck by the thought that it isn't language - written or spoken - that we should try to replace by new forms of wetware communication.
Rather I'd suggest we combine the wifi-enabled Nabaztag rabbit with Kevin's research, and perhaps implant rabbit ears as well as colored lights, to be able to receive (and send out) the sort of background information and data that the Nabaztag rabbit is supposed to - email alerts, RSS-feeds, weather forecasts, stockmarket movements, etc.
It would also add to the fun if he wasn't working with Terminator-looking tech gauntlets but rabbit ears and blinking lights :-)
"If you can connect a rabbit, you can connect anything"
Février 7, 2008 - 16:38 — Daniel DemelThe first afternoon session on thursday is about "Stories" and is starts with a talk from Rafi Haladjia, founder of french company Violet, which produces the little white wi-fi rabbit Nabaztag.
After working several years bringing real world things to the screen, he founded Violet in 2003, and now wonders how to make the bridge from the Flinstones to the Jetsons to fulfill the dream of "calm-computing". Rafi talks about the bandwidth of attention as a critical factor of receiving information and about Moore's Law and the natural evolution.
Violet's strategy is to make affordable products, products that are fun, usefull, which give new images to technology, empower the user and open it to the community which can help to generate killer apps.
But why a rabbit?
"If you can connect a rabbit, you can connect anything"
Rafi then gives a short description of what the Nabaztag does: it gives information through light, speaks, plays music, reads, moves and sniffs objects through RFID. This functions are used tho give reports, read rss feeds...
The second stage of Violet started last christmas with Gallimard Jeunesse, when they launched a RFID-enabled children's book which could be read by the Nabaztag. In this way books could still remain in the old form but be enabled to connect to digital media and get enhanced by this.
The next product they are going to launch is Ztamps. This is going to be a widespread of RFID tags, so people can stick them to every objects and create new applications.
To boil down what Violet wants to do: connecting everything to everything.
Speaker Profile: Rafi Haladjian
Janvier 13, 2008 - 14:51 — Sylvie Reinhard
Why we invited Rafi to LIFT
Rafi's career is very bright and original (coming form the Minitel entrepreneurship world), we were interested in his perspective about current development in technologies, especially about ubiquitous computing. He has indeed an original stance in the way he proposed to develop his company; somewhat like "we don't know what ubiquitous computing is so let's try something and see how people do out of it", leaving some space in his Nabaztag product to customization or hacking.
What will Rafi speak about
Rafi will talk about his latest start up venture, his approach towards entrepreneurship and what led to the creation of the Nabaztag. This cute little communicating animal is permanently connected to the Internet. It sends and receives a myriad of messages, indicates your mood to the outside world with its ears or lights in its belly, tells jokes, has performed in operas in France and the US (NY) and that is not all it can do. For more information check out Rafi's interview with Benjamin Gauthey on YouTube about Nabaztag or Rafi's LIFT Profile.
