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4010040100Rabbit R1 review: A $199 AI toy that fails at almost everything
The Rabbit R1 is a cute AI gadget, but at launch it’s riddled with issues and terrible battery life. When phones can handle similar AI tasks, the R1 doesn’t do enough to justify its existence.
Engadget Podcast: Kill the Rabbit (R1)
The Rabbit R1 is finally here, and it's yet another useless AI gadget.
Rabbit R1 starts shipping to the first batch of US buyers next week
Rabbit says its R1 device will begin shipping Easter Sunday, March 31. They're expected to arrive at the end of April. The company is also hosting a pickup party on April 23 for buyers from all batches. More information will be released next week.
The Rabbit R1 will offer up-to-date answers powered by Perplexity's AI
The Rabbit R1 AI device will offer up-to-date answers powered by Perplexity.
Adorable internet-connected bunny Nabaztag is being resurrected
Robot pets have come a long way since the heady days of Tamagotchi -- we've got Sony's adorable Aibo that requires training and Groove X's fuzzy Lovot that follows you affectionately around the house. But none have quite captured the spirit of the delightful Nabaztag, the cute internet-connected robo-bunny released in 2005, which communicated information through color, motion and sound. Now, thanks to a crowdfunding endeavor, Nabaztag is hopping back into our lives.
Caturday... or is it Bunday?
What's neither a cat for Caturday or a dog for the Dog Days of Summer? If you're John-Paul and Nicole Clough of Oxford, England, it's a rabbit for "Bunday"! John-Paul says: Just sending this on the off-chance, as you seem to have been a bit short of cats lately... :) We are rather hoping you might feature our rabbit Thelma, AKA Thelma T Rabbit, AKA Big T, as an alternative in your thoroughly entertaining Dog Days of Summer / Caturday series (perhaps Rabbitday, Bunday, or Ears Looking at You?) We realise this is somewhat unorthodox but Thelma is totally in love with our MacBook and we just wanted to share. The pic is of their first encounter; since then she regularly and wantonly sprawls across it and tries to groom it by licking the screen. Whilst she's no doubt attracted to its impeccable style and performance, we think its warmth and the gentle hum comfort her most at the end of a hard day's grazing. As if that's not enough, even over strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and bananas, apples are absolutely her all-time favourite fruit. Here she is... Thelma appears to be all ears, listening to whatever sweet, sweet messages the MacBook is whispering. We'd love to see photos of your favorite feline (or bunny!) soaking up the warmth of an Apple product, chasing a Magic Mouse, or just being a general nuisance while you're attempting to work on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone. Please let us know via our feedback page and please remember that your cat photo has to have some sort of connection to Apple or its products. For security reasons we can't accept inbound attachments, so you should host the photo (Dropbox, Flickr, iPhoto Journals, etc.) and send us the link. Many thanks to John-Paul and Nicole Clough, and of course Thelma
Gadget Rewind 2005: Nabaztag
If robotic rabbits could multiply, we'd be overrun by "kawaii" (the Japanese word for "cute") by now. Thankfully, Violet's 2005 Nabaztag robo-bunny has kept its socializing strictly to the digital realm. This adorably designed, WiFi-enabled techno-pet was created as a hub for delivering streams of user data through color, motion and sound. In fact, interaction with this "smart object's" ambient notifications and playful exterior aimed to provide a relaxing and peaceful experience. Did we mention it was also programmed to perform Tai Chi (with its ears)?
Daily Update for February 7, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Rabbit video chat beta kicks off
Late in December we told you about the upcoming Rabbit video chat and screensharing service, aimed specifically at Mac users in the near term. Rabbit's team has been cranking away since then, and today the service begins welcoming invited testers to the closed beta. Rabbit's aim is to transform the current one-to-one or one-to-many experience of video chat into a massively social experience. Chat rooms in Rabbit have no specific participant limit, and the service adapts your incoming audio to deliver the conversations "near" you without overwhelming your ears or your bandwidth. Sharing content with your chat or Facebook buddies is also a core part of the Rabbit experience. Whether it's screenshared items from your Mac, a song on Spotify or hosted video content on YouTube or Hulu, you should all see and hear it together. Beta invitations are rolling out to the service this month, so if you're interested, sign up and check it out.
Rabbit aims to lift the limits on video chat, Mac beta coming next year
Considering how long it took for the videophone to truly reach the mass market -- the first public video telephony service was launched in Germany more than 75 years ago -- it's pretty remarkable how many video chat options we have today. From FaceTime to Microsoft's Skype to Cisco's WebEx, Fuze Meeting to Biscotti to Google Hangouts, there's a video chat approach for every preference and budget. Adding another video chatting option might seem to be gilding the lily, but the four-person founding team behind the upcoming Rabbit service isn't daunted. These tech execs all come from the gaming world, specifically massively multiplayer online games; CTO Philippe Clavel was the Technical Director at Sony Online, wrangling millions of players at once on the company's back end. With that mindset, they approached the video challenge with the tools of online gaming. "[We saw an] opportunity to do something more compelling around video chat," says Rabbit co-founder and ngmoco veteran Stephanie Morgan. "While video chat tools enable live interaction, they aren't social. Social networks give us new connections, conversations and discoveries, but they're not live," she says. Rabbit, which is launching a Mac-only private beta early in 2013, plans to take the shared video experience from a one-on-one or few-to-few scenario and scale it up to MMOG levels. The chat landscape will feature unlimited customizable rooms (public or private), and each room is designed to host unlimited numbers of participants. Users can "listen in" on a public room to preview the participants, social interests and ongoing conversation before jumping in. Once inside, the video focus shifts to the current speaker (similar to Hangouts) and the audio profile changes subtly to reflect the "room tone" adjusted to the number of participants. With hooks to the Facebook social graph, you'll be able to easily spot your friends (or friends-to-be with similar interests) who are active on Rabbit. The platform is designed for persistent, hours-long open rooms, so there's an element of companionship and "drop in" interactivity in play. The top-level room avatars are actually live video themselves, so it's easy to see at a glance if a room is active or not. When you're hanging out with your friends, you might want to share an activity or some media. Rabbit will make this as easy as a single click; you can include your own screen content and audio, narrowing focus to a particular application or screen region. For content from the wider world, you can simulcast streaming movies, music or video in sync to watch as a group. Rather than muting the participant audio completely while the movie plays, though, the service does smart ducking to allow you to keep chatting (politely and discreetly) during your flick. Of course, the coolest video chat application on the planet doesn't do much if nobody's there to chat with. The Rabbit private beta launch will be Mac-only during the initial phases, but the company fully intends to work toward a ubiquitous client portfolio including Windows, tablets and smartphones. You can follow along with the product's progress via the @LetsRabbit Twitter feed.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Beware of Darkmoon Rabbits
DeGei of Dragon Roar (also a participant of a few PTR and beta runs with us here at WoW Insider) has found the infamous Darkmoon Rabbit. What's the Darkmoon Rabbit, you may ask? Other than being the objective of an achievement in Mists of Pandaria, apparently it's bad news. According to DeGei, it has 72 million health and an attack called HUGE, SHARP TEETH that, well, lets the rabbit jump onto your neck and chew through it. You run around uncontrollably, taking a lot of damage, and you can't be healed while said rabbit is chewing through your neck. Effectively, what we have here is a tiny, rodent-shaped world boss, folks. A world boss the potentially drops itself as a pet. If you're dying to solo him, DeGei reports that pets don't get the debuff, so it's feasible for a warlock or hunter to pull it off ... but that 72 million health means you should bring something to read if you intend to attempt it. Huge, sharp teeth, people. You have been warned. Speaking as a man who has a rabbit, you do not trifle with them. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
The Firing Line: Why you should be playing Tribes: Ascend
Skiing! Jetpacks! Pew pew! Yes, kids, Tribes: Ascend is officially in open beta, and that means you no longer have an excuse. Hi-Rez Studios threw open the doors this morning, and despite the fact that the game's closed beta exceeded all expectations and hosted over 300,000 players since its November kickoff, there's always room for more.
Karotz hits the US, has a lot of catching up to do on Twitter, Facebook
After a rather graphic trip to the FCC, we suspected that Nabaztag's more pronounceable, if largely aesthetically identical successor Karotz was slated for arrival here in the US any day now. The time has finally come. The WiFi-enabled lagomorph is now available on our shores, bringing with it boatload of friendly connectivity, including Facebook and Twitter integration and the ability to send messages, audio files and pokes directly to the rabbit. And if you really want to get your friends' attention from afar, you can move its ears and change its colors remotely. You can pick up one now for $130 from Karotz's site and a number of online retailers. Video of the rainbow-eared white rabbit in action after the jump.
Nabaztag robotic rabbits rise from the ashes at midnight
Twas a sad day when Mindscape was forced to shutter the online service used by its collection of Nabaztag robotic rabbits -- as the tale goes, the domain's demise left the tiny, Linux-running hares inanimate, mute and nearly useless. But just five short months later, things are starting to look up. Via email, the company has confirmed that nabaztag.com will come (back) alive on midnight of December 24th (a timezone was not specified), allowing Nabaztag users to communicate with their coney comrades. "At midnight you can turn your rabbits on without changing anything," writes the bunny builder. That's not all. The company is promising to "enrich" the devic's modules with "community contributions." If you're a Nabaztag owner, step away from that eggnog and put on a pot of coffee... Christmas is coming a full 24-hours early.
Nabaztag successor Karotz cracked open by the FCC
We haven't seen anything this heart-wrenching since Pleo last made its way through the FCC. There's just something depressing about watching an adorable little animal robot get torn down in the commission's sterile government labs. Karotz, the successor to Nabaztag's friendly WiFi-enabled throne has followed Pleo down the FCC rabbit hole, getting poked, prodded, and pulled apart, to assure that it won't be shooting any harmful bunny death rays at you, the consumer. Also of note: the strangely ominous "Your New Life With Karotz" user manual cover.%Gallery-130021%
Mindscape pulls the server plug on Nabaztag, hands source code to developers
Mindscape's ambient hare progenitors are officially headed off to that matrix briar patch in the sky. Turns out a battle with the server's host has left the company in a sticky financial situation, effectively shutting down support for the WiFi-enabled bunnies. In a recent YouTube announcement, CEO Thierry Bensoussan addressed the community's concerns, offering up source code that ensures a homebrew future for the Little Linux-Bunny Foo Foo forebears. Hobbyists hoping to snag that Nabaztag.com domain for themselves will instead have to accept a url redirect, as the site remains firmly under the software publisher's lock and key. But don't mourn your news reading, weather-forecasting buddy just yet, you can always replace it with the discounted love of lil' bro, Karotz.
Karotz to start shipping, Nabaztag to return from dead for Easter
Cadbury aside, nothing says Easter quite like a good resurrection tale, and this story's got it -- starring a rabbit, no less. Owners of Nabaztag, the email-reading / weather-forecasting / and generally adorable WiFi-enable desktop buddy, have been reporting a massive die-off of their beloved ambient bunnies, a tragic end due to a recent server move. The rabbits' manufacturer tells us that the network issues should be resolved by next week -- something of a belated Easter celebration. The rebirth is also perfectly timed to welcome Nabataztag's second coming as Karotz -- those who pre-ordered should start seeing the glowing woodland creature in their mailboxes next week.
Final Fantasy XI hopping along for 2011
The new year brings all sorts of things -- hopes for improvement, resolutions of behavior, and of course in-game events for nearly every game that's active. Final Fantasy XI is no exception, with this year's event focused around the wide-eyed rarabs that range across Vana'diel. And as with previous years, players can ring in the new year with some lovely new prizes, including the option to turn oneself into a rabbit of unusual size for a while. Running until January 17th, the event follows the format laid out by previous years, with players chasing a bounding rabbit across various zones to obtain various prizes. The team at FFXIclopedia has already begun putting together a guide for players looking to get the most out of the holiday; the biggest challenge for players will be hunting down the Celebratory Coney darting across the landscape. Take a look at the official announcement for the usual piece of in-game fiction, and enjoy the start of another year in Final Fantasy XI.
Ring in the new year with Final Fantasy XIV's Heavensturn
Considering Final Fantasy XI's longstanding tradition of celebrating nearly every holiday no matter how obscure, it should come as no surprise that Final Fantasy XIV is poised to carry on the tradition. The first holiday event is still taking place, but a new one will begin soon to celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of the next. Dubbed Heavensturn, the event is a chance for players to score another unique piece of equipment -- in this case, a hat that manages to combine the samurai aesthetic with a rabbit. Running from December 31st until January 17th, the event will function similarly to the ongoing Starlight Celebration, with characters obtaining festive items that may be used in crafting. The centerpiece is the Usagi Kabuto, which is exactly what it sounds like: a bunny hat for the lapine-conscious samurai. According the backstory, Heavensturn traditionally is a time of astrological significance, but the event has started getting a bit supplanted by the rabbit helms. Final Fantasy XIV players can take a look at the full backstory as well as the new crafting recipes for the event in the official dispatch.
MindScape's Karotz continues the proud Nabaztag lineage
It's been a while since we've heard anything on the Nabaztag front. Violet, the company that built the original "ambient" bunnies, went bankrupt but was snapped up by MindScape a year ago. Now MindScape is ready to show off the latest addition to the Nabaztag family, dubbed "Karotz." The WiFi rabbit runs on Linux, with a 400MHz ARM CPU, 64MB of RAM and 256MB of storage, so it should have plenty of headroom for that vibrant hacker community that sprung up around the first two Nabaztags. Karotz can also run off batteries or be plugged in via USB, and has the same RFID reader functionality of the Nabaztag/tag. The biggest new feature is a webcam, which will purportedly have face recognition (to be paired with Nabaztag's existing voice recognition), along with allowing you to check up on your home from a smartphone app. Karotz will retail in France starting in November for €150 (about $210 US), followed by the UK in December and February in the US. Hopefully Karotz can find a bit more market success than its ill-fated predecessors. %Gallery-105157%
