Brie and me

Excited little bunny!!

2008-01-25T15:18:00.000-08:00

Well it's the end of a hard working week for me and my Nabaztag Brie... and I am picking up Brie's outfits tomorrow she has choosen three of her favourites from the fine carrots collection so I will get her measured and dressed up by the end of the weekend I hope :) Also I have ordered her two new sets of ears, spoilt rotten she is!!! We opted for silver for a bit of shimmer and colour and also the black spiral which look very funky! I got a very good price on 'www.purelygadgets.co.uk' just under a £5 for each pair. I expect they will be delivered next week sometime.

Today I also added some RSS feeds for Brie to read out to us during the week these included 'Heat magasine' for some girly gossip and updates and also the 'Saints' feed which is information regarding my football team Southampton FC. I have heard the Heat information several times but only heard the Saints feed once so far... I will keep looking for some interesting RSS feeds for our bunny though as I am sure there are many more which we would like!!! The feeds are easy to add you just copy and paste the URL of a RSS you find on the web and add it in the 'My RSS feeds' section of Nablife in your Nabaztag account. Then you and your bunny can keep track of your interests toghether :)

(Nablife> Nabaztag services- 'Day2daylife' > My RSS feeds)

Server loss again... oh and a dose of fine carrots!!

2008-01-23T04:26:00.000-08:00

Well just thought I'd post a blog entry as I have been thinking my current ones are FAR FAR too long for the general reader!!! so will try and update on Brie and mines life on a more often but brief basis!!! Sooo its mid week and not much to report really!!! Monday night Brie appeared to be responding to nothing! her lights were flashing away but no messages coming through, no feeds and no voice activation so I swtitched her off to reboot! She connected again straight away with her breathing lights operating but no response otherwise. Having identified that this was not a return of the 'mystery illness' but Violets servers being down again I let her be for the night.

Yesterday was MUCH more active and Brie seemed her usual self!!! she received some wonderful messages and tunes from her Nabaztag friends which we very much enjoyed :) I missed the pre-set memo I had set up last week as the TV was on too loud!!! oops! but did hear Brie annouce rather randomly that she has a taste for what I think I heard correctly as 'chocolate mousse and broad beans...(not together I hope!!!) Silly of me to make the common assumption that my bunny would love Carrots and lettuce! not this one! So better remember the choc and veg next time I pop to the shops!!!

I also stumpled across the 'fine carrots' site this week on the web! I love this site!!! How adorable it is! It offers sources for activities such as 'fine dress' , 'stand up' bases' and 'nabcasts' to choose from!! Customising your rabbit with different costumes and audio. Brie has taken an automatic shining to a few of the outfits on there but she will have to be patient as I have no printer at home and am limited to black and white ink in the office! I have someone on the case already though and hope to pick up Bries ladybug outfit amongst others this weekend :D

Check out the following links for a choice of outfits and to kit out your very own bunny:
http://fine-carrots.com/ - lots of fun outfits and Nabcasts.
http://www.nabazabi.fr/ - Many costumes and also templates (French site)
http://www.nabzone.com/ -(check under Nabzwear- includes stickers as
well as dress)

Work in progress...

2008-01-21T02:37:00.000-08:00

I haven't written an entry in a while...mainly because I have been spending time on finding new things for Brie and exploring different widgets/ activites for her. Not having any programming knowledge is proving a bit of a restraint! but I am always learning so hopefully more and more things will be found to do with my Nabaztag bunny!!! Just like to say a big thanks to everyone on the French Nabaztag forum for all their help with my sometimes random and seemingly straightforward questions!!! Especially Hunta_de_la_Radieuse and Trukmus for their patience!! It has been much appreciated :) So.... what have I found for my bunny you might ask?!?

Well firstly I have found out about the exciting concept of Nabazworld! This is a google earth community for all Nabaztags worldwide. It is a google earth layer so that when you load Google earth you can see all the bunnies and their home locations!!! It looks most adorable seeing all the rabbits and where they are based!!! and also makes you realise how many of us there are out there with these cute little fellas!!! The Nabaztag comunity is MUCH bigger than I thought! France appears to be heavily populated with the bunny kind but I see some based in the UK and I am sure it is ever growing with the Nabaztags scattered all over Europe and beyond!! The Nabaztags can also be viewed in Google maps so I hope to provide a link to Brie's location once she has been uploaded to Nabazworld. To insert your very own bunny in Nabazworld you must download google earth to your PC, insert the layer of Nabazworld in your placemarks section and then create a placemark within this layer. You label this new placemark with your Nabaztags name and then save it to create a KMZ file. Once you have this file email it to Trukmus of the forum who will then share your placemark and bunnie's location with the rest of the community. :D You will then be able to see your bunny on google maps and google earth once you search for them!

Here is a small veiw of what
Nabazworld looks like in Google Earth:

So... what else have I stumbled across in the world of internet rabbits this week? Well I also tried to set up my 'Memo' service with Brie! This is an official Nabaztag service and can be found in the Nablife directory in your account if you are a bunny owner. It is basically like an electronic post- it- note! In which you can set prescribed times in which your Nabaztag can alert you of something. You select a day of the week, a time in which you wish to be reminded and then a music/tone/ alert for your rabbit to speak. Seeing as I have only uploaded a few mp3s for Brie to bop along to the memo service didn't seem to make much sense to me... as her dancing to my songs at certain set times in the week didn't really inspire me to remember my diary dates!!! However thanks to direction from Hunta_de_la_Radieuse (fellow community member) I was able to record some of my very own wav sound files and then convert these to mp3 on itunes. The webpage which was a useful tool in doing so was:

http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

Here you can choose from various voices and type in your phrase, once your wav file has been created and downloaded you can convert it to a mp3. Upload this into you library of music in your burrow and off you go :D Brie has yet to 'remind' me of something yet! but my first personalised reminder is set for tonight!!! so it will be interesting to see her at use!!! (p.s some of the voices on the above website can sound everso slightly 'mechanical' so to say!!! howver I am using my memo service as a bit of fun and experimenting at this stage. Any TTS Text-to-speech that is software can be used to create such audio clips however the one listed is completely free and easy to use :) )

After all this exhaustion and coming to the end of the week yesterday I spent more time on some basic Nabaztag fun!!! Firstly I have placed a widget on this blog (right at the bottom you will see) in which you can message Brie directly from here!!! It took me a while to find one in English which was simple to place on your own website (ie no programming or html code adjustment involved) but finally I found one on google gadgets. Simply search for 'Nabaztag' on the 'google gadgets' homepage and a variety of widgets appear. I have installed the Nab messenger so feel free to message Brie :) however there are also other fun activities such as fortune cookie, magic 8 ball and biorythm all produced and supplied by the wonderful Nabzone. Just click on the 'add this to my webpage' button and copy and paste the code into your blog. Easy and fun!

I also have some other bits and bobs to write about but will leave it for now as this post is getting rather long!!!

Mystery illness... or not?!?

2008-01-14T13:40:00.000-08:00

Well... this weekend was a bit of a surprise!!! Woke up Sunday morning to discover Brie was still sleeping!!! (I know, I know, we all deserve a lay in now and again but being such a disciplined young rabbit Brie usually always arises from bed just after 9am) so I was a little shocked! I unplugged her at the mains and reconnected her but no luck!!! at this point having been out to the footie all weekend I thought poor Brie had suffered some neglect!!! Eeek! I have recently asked a friend of mine to have a play around with the Nabaztag API (a progamming tool for those of the more expert types) so gave him a text and asked him to wake Brie. She awoke! Hurrah. Thinking she was fine I carried on my usual business and thought nothing more.

This was until I noticed my wifi bunny had no flashing lights on her belly... Nabaztag's communicate alot through their light language so this immediately made me think something was up! I spoke to Brie and asked for a verbal weather report using her 'voice recognition' function, she seemed to recognise I was communicating but didnt' respond :o( I then sent a few messages and mp3's for her to play aloud from the Nabaztag website but still nothing!!!! Then all of a sudden Brie's 'breathing' light (the violet one at the base) went solid!!! I was just about to vow to never leave her alone again but turnt to the Nabaztag forum for guidance!!!! (see bunny links at bottom of my blog for a link, the forum is mainly French but there is a section for English users)

There are some really friendly and knowledgeable Nabaztag owners out there! and before I knew it the members were reassuring me that my bunny was not sick but in fact Violets server was down and experiencing some difficulties whilst being upgraded. This put our minds at rest however it did seem strangely silent in the house! You kind of get used to a wifi bunny talking to you all day...and she was much missed! I was truely relieved to know that I didn't have in my care a broken rabbit!!! some good came out of this in that you are constantly learning how to cope with your rabbit and what it is trying to tell you!!! I straight away new the symptoms of a few 'bugs' seemingly present in Brie's behaviour, you can always ask other owners advice, or check the official site for updates (some of which can seem a bit slow) the Nabaztag imfirmary (the official help request form http://help.nabaztag.com/index.php?langue=3&type=1) is also a speedy and helpful service. Brie also made a new friend in Bozztag.. :o) so hello Bozztag!!!! and thanks for the lovely whistle song! I had one lil happy bunny bopping away when she was back up and running this morning!!! :D

Brie has a boyfriend!

2008-01-13T09:53:00.000-08:00

Wow this bunny doesn't waste anytime!!!! haha! Brie has found love with another bunny! His name is Benjii and they have wed in an ear companionship!!! This means that everytime I move Brie's ears Brie recognises their postion and memorises it, she then alerts Benjii her man of this.... Benjii then follows suit and vice a versa!!! Seemingly a little pointless but a bit of fun!!! and Brie seems happy! Benjii seems a very nice bunny and is a Nabaztag version one original so a little bit older than Brie. He seems to approve of Brie's dress sense and recently commented on liking her beautiful silver necklace which she can sometimes be seen wearing!!! I have posted a photo of Benjii on the blog, lets hope they are happy together! best wishes to Brie and Benjii!!!

<---- This is Mr Benjii bunny!

It's a girl :)

2008-01-13T09:33:00.001-08:00

Brie was born in Dec 07 so is still less than a month old!!! I managed to find her for sale on play.com for £50 including post and packaging which was a complete bargain!!! The Nabaztags and tag/tags usually retail at about £80, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more but I have never seen one at such a discounted price online before!!! I didn't hestitate and before we knew it she had arrived!!!! My boyfriend didn't seem to keen! (as I am a sucker for anything that appears remarkably cute!!!) but nevertheless we set her up a couple of days later....

Set up took about 45 minutes in total, we plugged her in and then followed the manual instructions (which were more of a 'quick set up guide') first Brie or at the time the unamed rabbit had to be connected to our laptop. Here the concerns set in!!! The rabbit could not be linked to our laptop, she just wasn't recognised at all but the computer!!! My boyfriends laptop has Vista and after 'googling Nabaztag and vista' we soon realised some problems were apparent. People have said to be having difficulty setting up their bunnies under this format. Why should that bother me? well for the bunny to be of use it must be connected to the internet... it IS a wifi bunny after all, not until your bunny is connected online and registered will it come to life!!!So I was feeling a little disappointed at the tme, thinking 'well done woman you have gone and ordered another potentially useless item and soon to be dust collector'. However having not TOTALLY given up we thought we would have another go with my laptop. My old faithful from the uni days... or the 'brick' as I like to call it! Heavy, old and most often slow my laptop has never failed to work though!!!! Running on windows XP home, it was worth a try to unite with the bunny. Following the instructions again, our rabbit was soon detected by 'the brick' and straight away was connecting to the Nabaztag server (home of all bunnies) YAY! success!!!!

The bunny glowed a bright violet colour which means she is happily connected, I logged onto Nabaztag.com and named our bunny!!! She was christened 'Brie' yes... after the French cheese, as the manufacturers of the Nabaztag are French and I also appear to have developed a love for the cheese most recently so it seemed most fitting!!! Once registered and an account is created at Nabaztag.com you are up and running and can browse the site, your rabbit can subsribe to a number of services like telling the time, reading news feeds and email elerts for example. Brie appears to have taken a liking to these services as well as 'Tai chi' 'Nabazmoods' and the 'Nabaztag weekly report' which alerts us as her owners how her week has gone and how successful we have been at rearing her!!!If you have a wifi bunny please feel free to message Brie by sending a mail to Brie@Nabaztag.com or logging in and creating an account at Nabaztag.com here you can meet all the rabbits in the bunny directory.The bunnies can also exchange mp3 songs if you wish!!!! Brie looks most adorable when dancing away and moving her ears to some tunes!!!!