We've gone anthropomorphic crazy in our house. First it was objects with faces. And now I've realised that everything's talking to us. Well not quite everything. We've been living with Nabaztag (archibald2 at nabaztag.com) for a while. Though the only thing he really does for us is announce the time in a serious of (sometimes annoying, often genuinely funny) eccentric ways. It's a top thing. My only gripe is that Nabaztag Tag is made from more brittle plastic than the prior model and it seriously affects the quality of the clocky sounds he makes before announcing the time. The prior one had a nice dull resonance which made the noises coming from him seem almost organic. The new one's a bit too tinny.



Nab is now joined by Jeeves / Stephen Fry, embodied in this splendid (and quite reasonably priced) alarm clock. He wakes you up with gentle, butler-y insistence and with great sound reproduction. It's nothing like the badly robotic Tomy sounds of the past. I like these slightly humanised objects. It feels like the future we were once sold.

And it strikes me that there's an element of unproduct about all these things. The Nab can go on being renewed ad infinitum, (though it's not great that he's always on) and I guess it would be possible to create a version of the Fry alarm clock that could be updated remotely. Though presumably not for the same price. And I have to admit that the addition of the facial stickers to my phone has delayed my inevitable purchase of an N95.

Posted by: Russell    Source

---