LIFT08: Rafi Haladjian

From the LIFT program: "Rafi Haladjian, founder of Minitel start-ups and internet/wi-fi providers in France will tell us about his latest venture: Violet, a french tech company, has designed the Wi-Fi and RFID enabled rabbit called Nabaztag."

"Violet's Strategy"

• affordable products with one at a time buying decisions
• fun & interpersonal communciation are as powerful propositions as usefulness
• design matters
• make it simple
• a new image of technoloy
• open standards
• empower the user
• build a community to provide services and help generate killer apps

2003: the DAL Lamp
2005: Nabaztag

Why a rabbit?
With a rabbit on the desk the day they decided to do the new product (and have ears, no voice, they multiply, etc). In the end they wanted to make a statement: if they could connect a rabbit, they could connect anything.

What does he do?

• Reads short reports (weather), RSS feed headlines, etc
• emotional messenger, physical avatar of friends
• ear movement chat

Nabaztag and Gallimard Jeunesse (a french editor) joined to let theNabaztag read books. This is done by letting the rabbit "smell" the Ztamp (RFID tag) on the book, whereafter he starts reading it.

2008: connecting the rest of the 10.000 things at home ("the strategy is: first to connect rabbit, then connect everything else).