My(fricking!)hase

It's nice to be a technophile and all in order to be a little out there - one of those weirdos that adopts strange technology before everyone else so you can talk about your eccentric purchase/habit/hobby/indulgence/moment of extreme boredom.

Sometimes, though, the pain of participating in the whole "beta testing" process can be more than you're ready to deal with. In this case...Claudia...WAIT TO BUY THE RABBIT.

The idea is very clever. It's a smart object that is supposed to do a whole bunch of kinda useless but cool things. Namely: tell me when I have an email, read out the 5 top headlines of the New York Times every hour (or once a day, whatever), play the radio, give me traffic and weather reports, read the top feeds of some of my favorite blogs, etc. Oh, yeah, and it's multi-lingual, and practices tai chi regularly with its ears.

Cute idea. If it would really work. I'm still working on getting these things to work: email, headlines, blogs, tai chi, time once an hour.

What is working? weather, market report, occasionally the time, her *mood* report, radio. Oh - and one other cute thing. Other users can send messages to my rabbit. And today...I got TWO messages. One from a woman in Munich - a student - who told me to have a nice Sunday evening. The other from some guy is Bucharest - that sent me a strange song.

For 140 euros, not enough. Of course, for 6 euros a month, I get premium service, but I'm certainly not going to commit to that with the current level of quality. Am bombarding company with SUGGESTIONS and recommendations for fixing their services (ok, I sent one email). According to Nabaztag blog, I am not the only one dissatisfied.

Andreas says I should send the little beast back. I think I should just feed it to Sammy if it does not improve.