Video: Nabaztag reads bedtime stories better than daddy

The Nabaztag WiFi rabbit learned a new trick at CeBIT: reading RFID tagged children's books. Violet already loosed a book in France at Christmas and now plans to launch its first English language book in the UK within the month. Right, that's one less parental responsibility for you. It's also cooking up "ztamps" which are RFID stickers you can attach to anything you like. When each unique sticker is held to Nabaztag's nose, it responds with a predefined action like playing music, sending an email, reading off the latest headlines, etc. Really, it's not as crazy as it sounds. Check the video after the break -- now that they've fixed last year's service issues caused to overwhelming demand, parents might want to give this critter a second look.

[Gian @ Mar 5th 2008 3:44PM]

Hey, now! I embellish and do the voices. That wabbit ain't got poop on me. My little girl loves it.

[KazSur @ Mar 5th 2008 4:15PM]

Ok,.. Just add different voices to that thing and some random embellishes.. and we're set to completely replace daddy...

[NNTPgrip @ Mar 5th 2008 3:49PM]

Epic fail for not showing the girl. Still see no point of this device.

[Thomas Ricker @ Mar 5th 2008 4:08PM]

She asked that I not put her on camera.

Thomas

[SimonRichards @ Mar 5th 2008 9:05PM]

Thomas does not have an avatar :-O

[TomTom2007 @ Mar 5th 2008 4:01PM]

A great device to substitute your dad when he's off somewhere drunk...

[Preda @ Mar 5th 2008 4:07PM]

Wow, I was not expecting such an anti-male statement from a tech blog.

aren't most of your readers men? who have kids? who enjoy reading to them?

[ijyt @ Mar 5th 2008 4:10PM]

Cute.

[Captain Crunkled @ Mar 5th 2008 4:17PM]

"As time went on, they grew poorer and poorer..."

You know it's a bad omen when your product predicts doom..

[John @ Mar 5th 2008 4:33PM]

This is nice and all, but check out:

http://www.nabaztalk.com/

and you'll see message after message from current owners of Nabaztags complaining, because Violet can't seem to keep the back-end network running for more than 24 hours at a time.

[rento @ Mar 5th 2008 5:30PM]

Agreed I have the bunny and I was disappointed by Violet. The potential of the device is immense but they just don't do enough. Network problems and services which could easily do more.
Still I love my rentobun ;)

[MyridoM @ Mar 5th 2008 4:38PM]

This things crap compared to a Chumby.

[Dean Merritt @ Mar 5th 2008 4:45PM]

This looks really cool, and I would get one and I think my family would love it.. but most of the experiences I read are pretty bad... sounds like the company is in a little over its head.

[Mr.Gadget Australia @ Mar 5th 2008 4:57PM]

It'll be a sad day when my daughters choose a plastic rabbit over me...

[m @ Mar 5th 2008 7:25PM]

not as sad as the day when she chooses some pimply little punk with a fast car and a bad attitude.

[LordJohnWhorfin @ Mar 5th 2008 5:14PM]

I'm usually a sucker for a gadget, but I'm watching this in utter puzzlement. Who pays good money for this useless piece of crap? It would take all of five minutes before I'd want to pull out its ridiculous ears and throw it out the window.

[phanbouy @ Mar 5th 2008 6:10PM]

Hey.. I can see the end of an Apple keyboard in that photo... why the continuing fanboyism engadget? huh? huh????!?!?

/parody

[John @ Mar 5th 2008 7:20PM]

It's not "crap compared to Chumby", any more than an apple is crap compared to an orange. Despite macho-nerd posturing, it IS cute, and when it works, it's very cool. I've set mine up to read me my emails, detail forthcoming radio programmes, and much more. It has a Web API that makes is super-easy to create applications. The current model has a built-in RFID sensor, but it seems to only be supported in France at the moment - we non-French have been waiting for RFID tag support for a long time.

[Evan @ Mar 5th 2008 10:14PM]

What is a Nabaztag? And why do I feel an urge to own one?

[MyridoM @ Mar 5th 2008 11:03PM]

John hit it right on the head.. "...and when it works..." nuff said

MyridoM

[skulldriveshaft @ Mar 6th 2008 2:40AM]

so, putting in the cd of an audio book is too hard?

basically it's playing an audio file, but the real interesting aspects of this interaction are yet to come.

I couldn't really hear what was said about "how do I know when to turn the page", but I think it could be related to the moving ears :]

I'd be interested to find out if you could record yourself reading the bedtime story and have that available for your kid.

Anything that gets kids to read books is a good thing.

[bayu_bagaskara @ Mar 8th 2008 1:15AM]

I think that was an entertainment think which i had ever seen

[Carl @ Mar 9th 2008 9:10AM]

typique qu'elle mentione son café-clope, une vrai française