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The Nabaztag is up there with the most bizarre products we've seen, for it is, in fact, a talking smart rabbit.
While devotees of the Sega Idog or Aibo (the latter has now been put down by Sony) will have no qualms with this concept, most of us will be asking the same question: why?
In theory, the Nabaztag is a clever idea. It automatically connects to your home Wifi network and will read the news and weather (from selected sources), tell you the time, read emails and SMS messages and will even give its opinion on how well you have spent interacting.
In short, it's a Tamagotchi for grown ups.
Setting up the Nabaztag is relatively straightforward; attach it to the mains and wait for it to hunt down your Wifi signal (there's no Ethernet port).
WPA security isn't supported, leaving you no option but to revert to the less secure Wep alternative.
A WPA version of the Nabaztag will apparently appear later this year, but it won't be possible to upgrade the current version.
Personalising and associating the rabbit needs to be prepared at the Nabaztag website.
You give it a name, choose what noises (mp3 files or pre-loaded sounds) and colours it emits and, most importantly, determine what services it will provide.
Free Style services include those previously mentioned plus email alerts, stock market news and eight other features.
However, because Nabaztag is French in design and still very much in a teething stage, many of its features aren't aimed at the UK market.
At present, it will only read traffic reports from France and will only read out SMS and voicemails if sent from France.
Paying 3.90Euros for Full Rabbit services gives you Google Talk, Full Email alerts (which allows you to personalise the alerts), the ability to broadcast a Nabcast, your own stock market info and any RSS feed.
The Full Friend Rabbit service costs 5.90Euros per month and allows everything referenced plus the ability send free rabbit messages to friends who also own Nabaztags.
Although our Nabaztag told us the weather in London, the time (on every hour) and spun his ears around gaily, reading news from the BBC RSS feed was less impressive.
Uncommon words were hard to decipher, complicated names and phrases weren't pronounced correctly and its general speaking tone wasn't fluid.
Nonetheless, there is a thriving community in France, which demonstrates how much more of a gimmick Nabaztag appears to be.
Once services are properly localised, the Nabaztag could be your new best friend.
The Nabaztag is currently available to buy in the UK from Firebox.
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