Meet Goldum, my Nabaztag WiFi Rabbit.  I was looking for a simple, USB controlled lamp for a project that I am working on and I happened to find this instead.  He's about 10 inches tall when his ears are standing up.  He connects to my WiFi network and then  receives messages over the Internet.  There is a growing community of people who have Nabaztag and send each other messages, and there are services that you can subscribe to for free.  Services such as weather reports, poetry readings and news reports. He (or she as the case may be) can even deliver your RSS feeds.  He speaks English and French right now in a variety of voices.  I just heard that the next version will include speech recognition and VoIP support.

I know it sounds strange, but he's a lot of fun.  I also think that we're going to see a lot more interesting devices such as the Chumby that will sit in our homes connected to wireless networks.  Nabaztag is made by Violet, a French company, and you can get one in the U.S. at ThinkGeek.com. I'm still looking for a simple, cheap USB controlled lamp if you have any ideas.  I want a lamp that I can turn off and on via software.  Thanks for any pointers.

Video: Goldum the Nabaztag WiFi Rabbit