author picture

by Lee Bryant

This is a Headshift blog post by Lee Bryant, written on March 30, 2006. It has (4) comments, the latest of which was on April 16, 2006.

Les lapins - ils sont arrivée

small-rabbit.jpgSo ... the ambient bunnies have arrived, and if you want to connect we have enabled external API events. Bunny #1 is called Headbunny and bunny # 2 is awaiting a power adapter and a name.

Obviously, the first thing you notice is they are so French. They connect only to a central server (in France). The info and signposting on the site is so impenetrable in places that I get a masochistic thrill from using it, and of course the help page is in French. And, of course, the services include such diverse offering as air quality (in Paris), traffic info (in Paris) and weather (in Paris). Finally, the jingle it plays as a new message alert sounds like slightly sinister incidental music from a 1970's French movie. I love it!

We have two theories for the proliferation of rabbits (there are 40 so far in London):

1. After his recent outburst, Jacques Chirac turned to an aide and muttered "envoyez les lapins" as revenge against the anglophone world.

2. The arrival of the rabbits presages a massive distributed internet attack as every geek and security consultant worth his/her salt spends whole days standing in front of a small rabbit trying to get it to sing and move its ears (and probably opens up holes in their wireless security to do so), whilst some cunning hackers take over the world.

But ... who cares when they are so cute.

Probable uses include:

- Server monitoring
- Support request monitoring
- Annoying the hell out of my co-workers
- Online answerphone
- IRC bot mood monitor at events
- Giving presentations
- Start a choir

Anyone have any better ideas?

4 Comments

user-pic

Get an army of bunnies to monitor the share price of your listed clients, then you will know instantly when you are delivering quality consulting that creates immediate shareholder value.

user-pic

Connect the bunny ears to voice recognition and semantic analysis, in order to distinguish bullshitting from real information sharing. It would be really useful in management seminars or polical rallies. The scientologists would love it as well.
I also envision a series of somewhat ruder devices (e.g. with fingers instead or ears) that would work along the same principles. Big market!

user-pic

Watership Down: The Next Generation

user-pic

Piers, brilliant!

Leave a comment