Here comes EVERYTHING!

Written on 25th September 2008                                                                                                              9 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

Violet is the company behind the nabaztag, the funny abstract rabbit that reacts to electronic impulses by blinking, talking and moving. Today at PICNIC the co-founder and chairman of Violet, Rafi Haladjian, talked about how the nabaztag was their first effort at connecting, well, everything. One of his slides simply showed:

“Goal: connect everything

step 1: connect rabbits
step 2: connect everything else”

His only comment for that slide was “We got step 1 covered and now it is time for step two” to much amusement of the audience.

Turns out Haladjian wasn’t joking. Within a few weeks Violet will start offering the Mir:ror. A simple device you can hook up to your computer via USB with a built-in RFID reader. It will be able to read everything you already own which contains an RFID chip but also comes with a bunch of ‘ztamps’.

These stamp-like pieces of adhesive plastic will also contain RFID chips and you will be able to tag the “7995 other items in your house that don’t know how to communicate, yet”. Apparently we all own about 8000 items of which only 5 know how to talk to the rest of the world. Violet’s goal is to make them all smart and connected.

This means you will be able to tag your umbrella and then hold it up to the mir:ror which will automatically launch your favorite weather report sites. Hold up your car keys to the mir:ror and it will give you traffic conditions and your calendar.

The possibilities for using the mir:ror and Ztamps are endless and really challenge everyone’s creativity.

What would YOU use Ztamps for?

frid, mir:ror, nabaztag, picnic, picnic08, Rafi Haladjian, violet, ztamps

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Lazy Web 2.0 addicts use Nabaztag for updates

Written on 7th February 2008                                                                                                              1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

You probably already heard of Nabaztag, the smart Wifi-enabled rabbit with its famous moving ears. Its Facebook app was a real hype, and thousands of users fell for the rabbit’s charms. While most people might see this rabbit just as a funny gadget, its inventor Rafi Haladjian told during LIFT08 that there’s a lot more to it.

Haladjian is founder of several Minitel start-ups and Internet providers in France. His latest venture Violet is the company behind Nabaztag. One day, he was sitting behind his desk, thinking about how he could promote his Wifi services. His eye fell on a rabbit and he had his eureka moment. “With creating Nabaztag, we wanted to make a statement”, Haladjian said, “If you can connect a rabbit, you can connect anything.” Just imagine we made a Wifi-enabled frisk. People would have said, ok, so you can connect frisks now. Yet by connecting something absurd as a rabbit, people think: you can even connect rabbits now”.

After explaining his choice for a Wifi rabbit, Haladjian told about the functions the electronic animal has. I would like to highlight one, namely the speech function. Nabaztag for example updates you on the statuses of your Facebook friends. “Nabaztag tells you about things that are good to know, yet now worth the effort of looking up. The typical Web 2.0 info”.

It’s a great idea. By taking Web 2.0 data -such as Last.fm shouts – off the screen with an Ambient Information Device like Nabaztag, they become more accessible for people who are now only interested in content that IS worth the effort looking it up. Haladjian is also using it as a filter for his RSS reader: “Nabaztag is reading the RSS headlines out loud. I look up the ones that sound interesting.”

We’ve learned yet another lesson at LIFT08: next to the fun-factor, gadgets like Nabaztag also have the potential to change the way we use the web.

france, Inspiration, lift08, nabaztag, violet, wifi

1 Comment »