Bonjour à tous les geeks (c’est le cas de le dire!), j’espère que vous allez tous bien depuis le temps que le site est resté en standby…

Mais, nous ne sommes pas là pour discuter du site!

Le moment est venu de vous faire partager mes avis sur ma BD du moment: ben… Les Geeks! ^^

Tout d’abord, je vais vous raconter comment j’ai connu cette série, ce ne sera pas long, promis!

Un jour, je me baladais chez BD-World à Loverval (Belgique) pour acheter des mangas quand tout à coup mon regard se figeat (du verbe figer!) vers un livre, ou plus juste, une BD proposant un titre Googleyiens! (kesako!? xD) Google sort des BDs maintenant? -_-’

Eh bien non! C’est là que je vois que la BD s’appelle “Les Geeks” mais avec le design du logo de Google… Ce qui est bien trouvé car ça attire, la preuve!

En bon geek, je me dirige vers le livre en question pour le  feuilleter et déjà, le titre fait parler: “Un clavier AZERTY en vaut deux”. Excellent! ^^

Les doubles pages d’entrée était un “Space Invaders”, en tant que vieux gamer de la vieille, j’apprécie! Je lis la première planche nommée à juste titre “Time Freeze” et là, c’est le coup de foudre!

C’est comme si les auteurs, Gang, avaient espionné ma vie style “The Truman Show”!!!

Bon, c’en est assez, je le prend… C’est à ce moment là que je découvre que  je lisais le modèle d’exposition et qu’en fait, le tome 1 était vendu avec le second: “Dans le doute, reboote”!!! Génial comme offre de lancement et ça va me faire de la lecture! Bref, passage à la caisse, on remonte dans la tuture et vite à la maison pour lire ces deux petits bijoux…

Il ne m’a pas fallu longtemps pour tout finir d’une traite, j’ai tellement aimé les persos et l’ensemble de la série. J’aime beaucoup les références aux jeux, films, mangas/comics, etc… connus (déjà dans les double-pages d’intro où l’on retrouve Mario, Pac-Man, Tetris, …)! La BD n’est pas plus courte qu’une autre, mais on est tellement dedans qu’on à l’impression de la terminer à vitesse grand “V”!

A partir du tome 2, on retrouve les “cartes d’identités” de chaque protagoniste et c’est folklorique! Entre le geek touche-à-tout, fan de jeux (Fred), sa copine (Julie) malade du Wii Fitness et se battant toujours avec ce dernier pour le calmer dans sa geekerie en passant par le copain squatteur (Vince), fan de mangas et de MMORPG… Il y a de quoi faire car le reste de la bande n’est pas plus mal! Charline, la goth qui ne jure que par Apple (comme moi tiens! xD), Hubert, l’intello qui ne vit quasi que pour sa môman, qui bichonne son cocker et lit des revues scientifiques que même mon ancien prof de science n’y pigerait rien et pour finir, le rafiné Charles-Benoît qui tiens une librairie de comics et rolliste à ses heures!

Ce que tout ça est réaliste! ) On se retrouve un peu dans chaque personnage… Enfin… moi du moins… oui… sauf pour le cocker!

Je vous parlais de références. En effet, déjà en voyant le bureau de Fred, on peut voir des tas de trucs: un Nabaztag, des figurines de Toro (SCEI), Link (Zelda), Goldorak, mon voisin Totoro, tout ce qui est iPhone, iPod… chez Charles c’est plutôt un R2D2 taille réel (neeeed!), poster de SpiderMan, le bouclier de Captain America ou encore le buste à tronche de Wolverine ou T-Shirt Batman et pas mal d’autres choses du style!

On sent bien que les auteurs sont très bien informés niveau geekeries… Peut-être le sont-ils d’ailleurs… (moi je dis “oui”!) ^^

Questions dessins (Thomas Labourot et Christian Lerolle) maintenant: très soignés, coloration nickel, ni trop flash, ni trop pâle. Les personnages sont bien trouvés, leur design colle parfaitement à leur personnalité. Donc, de l’excellent boulot…

Bref, nickel! Et le scénario est différent à chaque planche donc, assez changeant… Tout y est!

Je ne vais pas spoiler, mais je peux vous dire que les tomes 3 et 4 sont tout aussi excellents et ne sont pas réchauffés des premiers, il y a toujours une nouvelle situation… contrairement à beaucoup de BD qui repompent sur leurs premiers gags en changeant quelques détails.

Et là, vous me dites: “Eh quoi Manu, ne me dis pas qu’il n’y a pas de défaut!?”… Bon ça y est? … Vous le dites?

Bon, et bien si, il y a un défaut et pas des moindres: moi aussi je veux une voiture avec peinture Mario Kaaaaaaaaart comme Fred et Julie!!! :’(

Plus sérieusement, le seul défaut de cette BD, c’est que tellement on l’aime, on a un goût de trop peu et on est super impatient de voir arriver le prochain tome… comme pour un jeu vidéo!

Alors on fait quoi?

Eh bien, on les harcèle suis à la trace sur leur site: www.lesgeeks.net ou sur leur Twitter: @lesgeeks

Sachez que Les Geeks sont dispos également en eBook pour votre iPhone ou iPod Touch sur l’Appstore à des prix plutôt intéressants.

Infos sur la BD et les auteurs -> ICI

Les Geeks (Gang/Labourot/Lerolle) paru aux éditions Soleil

Et un grand merci encore à Pen de l’équipe des “Geeks” pour le tome 4…

Et pour vous mettre l’eau à la bouche, voici ce qu’était la bande annonce du troisième tome.

@ très bientôt sur Otageek pour un article sur IG mag, le magazine de jeux vidéo du moment…

Eccolo qui, il coniglietto intelligente!! Questo simpatico Coniglietto è capace di fare un sacco di cose: lo puoi usare come sveglia alla mattina, ti comunica le notizie del giorno, che tempo fa e si sintonizza sulla tua radio preferita. Ma non è finita qui, ha tantissime funzioni tutte da scoprire, inoltre si sintonizza su internet ed è in continuo aggiornamento.  Inoltre, se compri due conigli li puoi far fidanzare tra di loro , così se uno lo tiene il tuo ragazzo/a  , potrai inviare messaggi da coniglio a coniglio o inviare canzoni. Inoltre ,se hai un Iphone, lo potrai collegare al tuo coniglio e dargli nuovi comandi ( ci sono un sacco di applicazioni per il nabaztag su itunes ). Ecco il sito se volete saperne di più: http://www.nabaztag.com/it/m-3-.html

Mapping the Agile thinking, theory and practices to the realities of the target company is a tricky part of making Agile happen in a sustainable manner. HubOne’s Nick Beaugeard, known to readers of this blog from his post Enterprise Product: $50,000 and 8 months – You Must be Kidding, shares with us his recipe for so doing in a start-up environment. He manages to weave the pragmatic details with the core principles behind software development in general and Agile methods in particular. For example, consider the following insight provided by Nick:

In fact, when developing an API, the unit tests are your clients!

Readers of this blog might want to compare and contrast the thoughts Nick expresses in this post with those of:

1. Ryan Martens on prescriptive versus adaptive rollout of Agile (click here).
2. Eric Ries on iterating on the problem definition and developing the customer base in parallel with iterating on the solution (Click here).

Here is Nick:

After my last post, where I discussed the concept of implementing the tools and process before you get people on board, I though it appropriate to provide some prescriptive guidance on how we achieved the process. This post is primarily aimed at start-ups where you have total control over your infrastructure, computers, network and internet connection. If there is enough interest, I’ll produce another post of how to perform the same, but in a corporate environment.

I believe, and my experience has shown, that preparing your work environment, tools and process before the team starts coding helps eliminate costly and lengthy discussions about tools and process. In fact, in my experience, most developers are pleasantly surprised to find the environment ready and working and slip into the processes extremely quickly.

So, please find below my ten steps. Following this process really helped us get up and running quickly. Whilst we used Microsoft Development tools, this equally applies to their open source equivalents, so feel free to substitute specific tools, just not the requirements and process.

1. Authentication, Network and VPN. Setting up the core of your environment is critical. As you are more than likely working on secret software at the outset, you need good, auditable mechanisms for authentication and logon. In addition, we don’t want our developers to have to do anything except start their PC or laptop and login, and we really want them to be able to work remotely. If you don’t feel qualified or able to complete the steps below, any good local IT Pro should be able to set this all up for you. To perform this, we implemented the following:
   1. Network Connection – we are in Australia so our networks are not fantastic. We subscribed to a good ADSL 2+ plan (24Mb) with a 80Gb limit. We implemented a modern ADSLwireless modem/router and configured it correctly. This gave us acceptable internet connectivity.
   2. Domain – We implemented a domain controller running on Windows Server 2008. This gave us corporate authentication, auditing and identification. The domain controller was hosted on our private network (see 1.c)
   3. Routing and VPN –our internal development network needed to be protected from internet connectivity so we implemented a Windows Server 2008 machine with two network cards (called multihomed). One card was connected to the router and one connected to an Ethernet switch. We used a private IP subnetfor our development Local Area Network (LAN) and enabled Microsoft Routing and Remote Access. This gave us the ability to authenticate domain users to VPN into the private network for remote working. We then configured our router to allow access to the server for VPN Access.
   4. DNS –one of the issues you face with ADSL is that your Internet IP Address changes often. The solution for this was to use a solution from DYNDNS (www.dyndns.com) which allowed us to register a host name, coupled with a client application which ensured our host name for VPN always pointed at the correct IP Address.
   5. DHCP –it’s a real pain, especially when using VPN when your client machines are configured for static IP addresses. We used Microsoft Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to ensure every machine had a unique IP Address and that our networking became just “plug-and-play”
2. Version Control and issue tracking – in my experience, there are four critical systems needed for any software development team. These are:
   1. Version Control – Also known as source repositories, these systems allow control over check-in, check-out and versioning of source files. I cannot recall the number of times we backed out an individual source file to a previous “working version”. Without this in place, I can guarantee you’re going to struggle maintaining a good code base!
   2. Bill of Materials– the way I use these is to highlight each of the key deliverables in a project. When building Enterprise Profile Management, our BOM had 345 separate items, everything from the corporate website, to graphic design, to core components of the API. The Bill of materials is a way to track the overall progress of the project. Each item in the Bill of Materials should have at a minimum a title, description, owner, due date, % complete and %tested. We also use the bill of materials to determine our release criteria (more on this later).
   3. Build System – the biggest mistake a development manager can make is to not build the software regularly. We build our software system every time there is a new check-in (called continuous integration). Even with a very small team, the ripple effect of changes could go un-noticed for ages without building regularly. As an aside, we also have a Nabaztag (www.nabaztag.com) bunny which tells us whenever there is a build, whose check-in caused it and whether it succeeded or failed. While this is really annoying, it focuses the developers on good check-ins. We might also make the person who broke the builds buy us a round of beer, but that’s a secret!
   4. Issue Management – More important than email, IM, or indeed any other form of communication in the development team is issue management. I believe that in  a project of any size, you’ll be hard pressed to ever finish if you don’t have good issue management. Issues should contain a title, description, history, assignee, status and indicate which version/iteration of which product the issue applies to. I don’t actually think a spreadsheet will cut it here. If there’s one investment you make, make sure it’s issue management.
      We used Microsoft Visual Studio Team System for all of the above. Being an ex-microsoft product team member, I am familiar with the way the product works, but there are lots of plug-ins available for scrum, agile (MSF) and CMMI. To do this on a startup budget, we were able to join the Microsoft BizSpark program (http://www.bizspark.com) which gave us instant access to Microsoft’s developer tools. I’d highly recommend taking a look at that program!
3. Backup – Now is the time to do a backup and recovery operation. You have no real data in the system and how you installed it all is probably fresh in your mind. Trust me, every first recovery operation fails. You need to imagine your office has been hit by lightning and you have no servers, and just a backup. If you can successfully recover your environment in under 24 hours, you’re in a good place. Document how to do it and test it regularly.
   When we were developing Enterprise Profile Management, our server with all issue management, reporting, builds and version control failed (the processor fried). We were taking backups, but the restore failed. It took me 22 hours to perform a forensic recovery of our production platform. Luckily the developers could work offline, but we still introduced a ton of integration bugs. Don’t skimp on backup.
4. Email, IM and Web Conferencing – You’re going to be working remotely at some time, whether you think you will or not. We quickly implemented the following tools:
   1. Email – Google Gmail for your domain (www.google.com/apps)
   2. IM – Windows Live Messenger and Skype (www.live.com, www.skype.com)
   3. Web Conferencing – Dim Dim (www.dimdim.com)
      Note: there are lots of other tools out there, we just chose these (with little science, but they’ve worked well for us)
5. Coding Standards – Getting at least some coding standards in place before you write any code is really important. Good Version Control Systems should be able to validate code against your standards on check-in. My key coding standards are:
   1. No String Literals – All strings must be externalised in resource files for later localization (a process called globalization)
   2. Commenting – I insist that every class, method, property, event and interface be commented. There’s method in my madness here; obviously code commenting is important but with proper commenting (especially in C#) and tools like sandcastle, you can automatically create documentation like ours at http://api.hubone.com.
   3. No Short Cuts – This one was a little contentious – Our code will in the future (hopefully) be worked on by people who had no idea of the concept. Writing out If…then constructs and property accessors in long-hand makes the code much more readable for novices, junior programmers, support teams and architects alike.
   4. Unit Test Everything –I insist that every method, property, event etc, etc has an associated unit test. These we execute as a part of the build. My goal is to have over 80% of any code written covered by unit tests. In fact, when developing an API, the unit tests are your client! Although this increases the programming effort up front, it actually reduces the total time taken to ship the product. I havelost count of how many times our massive unit test library has saved us from nasty regressions that we could never have found from UI testing.
6. Write some code –Don’t worry, you don’t need to be the world’s best developer to write some code. All you need to do is think carefully about the different items in the Bill of Materials and start prototyping the methods, properties and events that will make it all work. Ensure you adhere to your coding standards. The goal of this exercise is to effectively build a skeleton of your application before the developers get on board. This can make them hyper productive when they start. They’ll probably end up getting rid of every line of your code, but it will get them in the rhythm of how you want the platform to look. As the architect of our platform, I used this period to prototype and test all of my assumptions of how things would work. By the time the developers got on board, I had a passable working prototype of an API with unit tests and coding standards, although there is almost none of my code in the final product, this enabled us to get running really quickly.
7. Don’t write a test plan – Write the user documentation instead, and use this to test your application. That way you’ll know your application does everything the user guide says it does and you won’t double up on a test plan and the user guide (which should end up being pretty similar anyway). I wrote our user guide because I knew what I wanted the product to do and it’s also a fantastic way (sometimes they only way) you get to communicate with your customers.
8. Give ownership, responsibility and praise – You will have no choice. As you get developers, testers, writers and others on board, you must give them ownership of components. I find that if I give someone total ownership, they always deliver. People are proud when they do great work and if they feel and really have ownership over something, it will be their best work. Not only that, but they’ll pull out every stop to impress you, the team and your customers. If you hire correctly, you’ve got great professionals in the team. Respect them as professionals and the results will be awesome.
9. The best wire framing tools are not wire framing tools – You’re a start-up, right? Then you’ve discussed your ideas with potential customers and you deeply understand their needs. You could sit down with any number of wire framing tools and attempt to design components. How about you take a different approach? Write functional code which does what you (and therefore your customers want) – Developers find it far easier to code from a working model and they can re-use portions of your code. All of this streamlines the process and you can take your models to customers (with caveats on your poor coding skills and lack of stylistic ability).
10. Constantly review and drive – We spend some time every day in front of a whiteboard discussing options, vision, checklists and almost everything else, but in a start-up, it’s not really a democracy. I run my start-ups like a benevolent dictatorship – I hold the final decision, but let everyone have input. I’m the one talking to customers, and sometimes I bring customers in to explain a requirement, but at the end of the day, how it works is up to me (I have the most to lose if it doesn’t work!)

Notice here, we never had a specification, requirements specification or design, we build the code a piece at a time and made it work. We’ve gone back and documented some core functionality, flowcharts and features, but at the outset, it’s more important to make it work. I’ll share a caveat, though, I’m also the software architect so I can hold the requirements for scalability, security and reliability, and guide the team to accomplish those goals.

Hiring the team can happen sometime between points 7 and 8, I don’t recommend you do it before!

If you’d like more information, please feel free to get in touch at nick@hubone.com, and if you’d like a copy of the software this built, we can be found at http://www.hubone.com.

There’s a rumour going around that Violet, the Company that produces the Nabaztag (Armenian for rabbit – or did I just dream that?) has filed for bankruptcy.
Does that mean the product and (somewhat dodgy) support and development will die too? There are various forums full of Nabaztag owners bemoaning the poor service (such as Nabaztalk and others)but, probably, some very delighted customer too.
If the story is true, it’s a pity as the internet enabled devices market could be really exciting – the convergence of media is inevitable, but clearly the road will be rocky. We’re getting used to home wifi and TV. This is/was a cute product (Violet had a couple of others) that could have done very well introducing us to the benefits of accessing real time information from the web in very different ways.
There are, incidentally, clear issues with the widespread use of RFID – which Violet were also exploring – when treated as if it is a secure technology. It isn’t, so therefore its use in passports and credit cards creates problems, but the applications Violet was working on were largely free of security issues since a) they were within a domestic or office setting and b) they were, broadly, for entertainment i.e. they didn’t really matter. Crucially, they were also fun.
Now, who will lead the way? If anyone has any news, let me know.
Updates …
Here – translation of another report
and an interesting development here. Want to own the company??

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The goal here was to design a product (something like the famous Violet’s Nabaztag) with one accessory who can control home appliances.

So I choose to design the white semi-sphere which is the voice of the whole system, with a tactile tablet and a stylet.

The basis, which is inspired by the architecture of chinese temples, permits to recharge the products.

The ideogram means hapiness in chinese. Once you have turned the product on by rubbing the white tactile surface of the semi sphere, the ideogram lights will come on.

This tactile tablet links Zaojun to the appliances of your house so you can control them remotely.

Here are the concept boards.

featured at:

http://www.thedesignblog.org/entry/zaojun-smart-secretary-manages-your-work-in-office-and-home/

I nanoztag sono piccoli coniglietti colorati, poco più grandi di una sorpresina kinder, con assolutamente nessuna funzionalità. Ma nessuna: zero che zero. La funzionalità sta nell’etichetta: un francobollino colorato attaccato sul fondo, la z:tamp, che contiene un chip RFID.

Ogni z:tamp ha quindi la sua identità univoca, conosciuta e registrata sul sito della casa madre, e ad ogni z:tag – sempre via internet – può essere associata un’applicazione tra le molte disponibili e personalizzabili.

Ad esempio voglio che il coniglietto rosso mi faccia partire la playlist rock, e il coniglietto giallo mi dica le previsioni del tempo.

Non solo: visto che la funzionalità sta nell’etichetta, posso attaccare l’etichetta a qualsiasi cosa (non c’è bisogno di strapparla crudelmente dal coniglietto, viene venduta a parte), e dare “vita” a diversi oggetti. Posso attaccare un’etichetta al barattolo di mangime del pesce rosso e chiederle di segnarsi quando dò da mangiare al pesce. Posso inviare una mail alla mia borsetta – o a quella di qualcun altro – affinchè mi ricordi le cose da fare quando esco. Associo l’applicazione all’etichetta sul sito, poi poggio il coniglietto sul lettore RFID, e sul pc a cui il lettore è collegato succede quello che deve.

E qui cascano già un paio di asini. Il lettore, mir:ror, un grazioso oggettino metafisico con un design personalizzabile apple-style, è l’unico modo per dare un senso alla vita dei coniglietti. Se non hai mir:ror – o la versione nuova del coniglietto grande, il nabaztag, ve lo ricordate? – i piccoli nanoztag non attiveranno mai un bel niente.

Secondo asino che casca: il coniglietto, rosso o giallo che sia, in realtà non farà mai nulla. Sarà sempre il pc a fare – e quindi se non sei vicino al tuo pc con il tuo mir:ror non ti fai nulla del tuo coniglietto. Limitante, nell’era della mobilità. Si, è vero: andrebbe bene anche il pc di qualcun altro col mir:ror di qualcun altro, ma suvvia siamo seri: quanta diffusione potrà mai avere un aggeggio del genere, per poter contare di trovarne in giro per case ed uffici? Cel’avrò giusto io, e mia sorella perchè glielo regalo [no, sister, non te lo regalo davvero, e non me lo compro, era per dire].

E quindi che c’è di interessante? Non possono non essersi accorti che questo aggeggio è totalmente inutile. Su cosa puntano per venderlo – lasciando un attimo da parte l’incontrovertibile verità che non ne venderanno mezzo? I signori di Violet sperano nell’oggetto cult. Quel fenomeno per cui tutti lo comprano anche se non serve a un cazzo. E ciò che può far scattare questo fenomeno è il lato affettivo, il fatto che i coniglietti sono così carucci, non sono dei cubetti, o dei quaderni, ma proprio dei coniglietti colorati e cicciosi, e che ricordano il primo inutile oggetto della serie, il nabaztag, con la pia speranza di iniziare un’intera serie cult.Puntano in parte sul collezionismo (tanti colori, collezionali tutti), e in parte sulla rarità tecnologica: è un oggettino da nerd stiloso (non quelli che ne sanno davvero, ma quelli che si piccano di saperne per fare i fighi, tipo me insomma), e quindi è compatibile con mac (stiloso) e con linux (nerd).

L’intuizione interessante è la materializzazione delle funzioni: applicazioni astratte diventano oggetti, si concretizzano, si possono toccare, prendere, spostare. L’estrema astrattezza del computer – multipurpose per definizione – diventa tangibile, acquista un volto e dei confini, perdendo ovviamente in genericità e flessibilità. Questa cosa credo che non sia senza futuro: penso che alcuni oggetti estremamente semplici, nell’uso come nell’applicazione, anche se basati su pc e quindi magari largamente personalizzabili, potranno prendere piede, rispondendo a un bisogno non solo di immediatezza, ma anche di corporeità, di rapportarsi con oggetti reali – almeno in certi contesti – e non solo con raffigurazioni e virtualizzazioni.

In ciò anche l’aspetto affettivo e di design può giocare un suo ruolo non indifferente, ma tutto questo a patto di una reale usabilità, che attualmente non può prescindere da una vita wireless, svincolata da cavi e pc – anche perchè se devo passare dal pc tanto vale che clicco quello che devo cliccare, che mi cambia prendere il tal coniglietto? L’unico caso in cui posso immaginare che prendere il coniglietto cambi effettivamente qualcosa è nel caso dei bambini, per cui l’associazione di applicazioni ad oggetti potrebbe rendergli più rapido e immediato l’uso di alcune funzioni che fanno capo al pc – ma si tratta di puro uso, nulla a che vedere con una qualche educazione informatica.

“Collassare” funzioni astratte in oggetti concreti realizza del resto un incontro a doppio senso: le funzioni astratte si materializzano, mentre l’oggetto acquista una nuova dimensione concettuale, una identità e funzionalità più profonda, un po’ come suggerisce Bruce Sterling con il concetto di spime (contrazione di space e time): gli spime sono oggetti con una storia, che portano con sè la loro storia, e hanno delle funzionalità, con cui interagiscono con il resto del mondo. E secondo Sterling questo lo farà proprio la tecnologia RFID. Ora, io ammiro Sterling tantissimo, ma questa dell’RFID mi pare proprio una cazzata. Quella dello spime no, ha un suo senso, lo stesso senso vago e visionario del nanoztag, un senso che a un certo punto diventerà reale, e ci sembrerà ovvio, ma diversissimo da come lo si poteva immaginare. Un po’ come internet e le sue prefigurazioni in fantascienza.

Il nanoztag rimane un oggetto assolutamente inutile e non avrà alcun successo di alcun tipo, ma alcuni di questi elementi secondo me si riaffacceranno nell’evoluzione della tecnologia nei prossimi anni, e i signori di Violet potranno dire che ci avevano pensato e maledirsi per non essere riusciti a cavarne niente altro che un paio di coniglietti plasticosi invenduti – ma dall’ottimo design.

The Nabaztag, the WiFi rabbit by Violet

This research report from Hammersmith explores how the convergence of smart devices, intelligent buildings, converged systems, and smart grids is laying the foundation for the Internet of Things:

http://thehammersmithgroup.com/images/reports/web4.pdf

Qu’est-ce que c’est ce petit lapin qui bouge les oreilles? Encore un gadget extravagant de nos amis Japonais? Que nenni ! Cette création bien française est le premier lapin communicant. C’est LE gadget du moment.

Nabaztag (qui signifie lapin en arménien) est unique. Il bouge les oreilles, il chante, il parle, il s’illumine, il nous comprend! Mais ce n’est pas tout, ce lapin surdoué avertit de l’arrivée de mails importants, permet d’écouter une WebRadio ou un Podcast, annonce la météo, prévient des conditions de circulation, donne les dernières informations publiées sur internet (RSS), parle des dernières tendances de la Bourse, fait un point sur la pollution, reconnaît des objets… et surtout, Nabaztag invente une nouvelle manière de communiquer avec ses amis. En effet, il lit les SMS, e-mails, messages vocaux et cartes postales électroniques que vous recevez.

Lapin surdoué, adoption facile

Son installation est on ne peut plus simple : une fois adopté, vous le branchez sur une prise électrique, vous l’enregistrez sur le site nabaztag.com et c’est tout. Nabaztag nécessite néanmoins une connexion à Internet à haut débit avec une borne d’accès Wi-Fi. Il est compatible avec tous les ordinateurs (Windows, Mac OS, Linux).
Ce Nabaztag vous fera entrer dans la nouvelle ère des objets communicants. Mais les futurs parents devront y mettre le prix : 134,90€ (prix du site nabaztag.com).

Boris Manenti (Avril 2007, pour planetecampus.com)

Eine hat es gewusst, eine hat sich den Kopf hemmungslos zermartert, eine hat den Fehler entdeckt.
Berlin`s Warteschleifenexpertin Nina hat es gehört: in meinem alten Intro (bis Folge 41) sage ich

Torben Hendrik Sebastian Lüssen.

Wo liegt der Fehler?

Im Henrik. Denn die Figur heisst “Torben Henrik Sebastian Lüssen”, nicht “Torben HenDrik Sebastian Lüssen”.

Schon doof, wenn man selbst nicht weiß, wie man seinen erfundenen Namen ausspricht

Liebe Nina, an dieser Stelle ein fettes Gratulation.

Der Gewinn ist bald auf dem Weg zu Dir, und Du kannst ja dann berichten )

i LOVE techie gadgets. and i found some very cool items that i need to get sometime in the near future:

• Poken

Do you Poken? http://www.doyoupoken.com

• Nabaztag

The first smart rabbit. http://www.nabaztag.com

• USB fridge

No. 10 of the “Top 10 utterly pointless USB devices”. i don’t think it’s pointless at all!

• more items will be added soon

Last week, I bought a nabaztag, this week it is gone. I returned it. It bought it for 145EUR, and the price is now 99EUR.

Nabaztag in a nutshell is a WiFi bunny released in 2006 to a sell – out audience and released once again late 2008 circa as a 2.0 version with additional features. It promises alot of things, like reading out your rss feeds to you, letting friends send messages, reads out the weather if you press and speak to its microphone, tai-chi with its ears, calls your mom if you put a baby rabbit to its stomach and so on. It has potential, but it won’t take over the world. Here’s why.

1. Setting up was a pain. I’m spoilt, and so is every consumer on the market. Apple was the leader in the term user experience and now every other company is following suit. So fixing up the bunny was a pain! I followed the instructions and set up the rabbit to the nearest wireless only to stare at it to wonder if it was alive, or not. Which leads me to…

2. Servers were down. Either that, or there was something wrong. I tried to log in a couple of times only to realize that the servers were down on one browser, and not on other. Huh???

3. The language on Violet.net suddenly morphed to French. I don’t speak French, I don’t intend to and I have enough problems with Dutch. I know Violet is a french company, but suddenly changing to French is one thing, and having the language change profile two degrees deep under a french term nobody except the French knows isn’t going to cut it.

4. The bunny showed no signs of life. I thought it was not working, then I realised that the violet light at the bottom meant that it was alive. Well, at least some ear moving would be nicer, or something to indicate that the nabaztag was actually alive.

5. It was kind of too expensive for the functionality. Well, some functions were neat I admit. And I’m a design-orientated low funcationality sort of person. But after the umpteenth time of sending my mom the same message “Hello this is Joanna” from my nanoztag, I think I got a little too bored.

6. The voice sounds funny. But all computer-related voices sound weird, just take a look at the lastest VoiceOver iPod Shuffle, they’ve never done much research on that area or at least never got near to a real person’s voice as far as I’m concerned.

7. Everything goes through the Violet Servers. Including the apps which you program using the APIs available.

—

I think the bottom line is, I like the idea. Its cool, that’s why I wanted to buy it in the first place. I like the fact that you can program your bunny with the APIs available to do weird stuff as well. I wanted a place of my own where I had a WiFi bunny in the kitchen so I wasn’t stuck on the sofa with my MacBook all the time. I wanted my mom to buzz me now and then and my bunny pet to tell me stuff. However, I was stuck with server problems, language problems and the problem of it not recognizing my wireless connection (which I share with the rest of the housemates). I think if all that is solved, with the price point being about 70EUR, I would give it a shot again.

Check it out here: Nabaztag

Inderdaad, er bestaan officieel mini Nabaztags!
Ekmi zit al te lonken, zo een kleintje… in het rood of in het groen…

Het heeft alvast een hogere aaibaarheidsfactor dan de Poken!

Hab einen Nabaztag:tag abzutreten…äh…abzuGEBEN.
Das Vieh nervt mich nach knapp einer Woche schon so sehr, dass ich es nimmer aushalte.

Jetzt wird er wieder bei Amazon.de zum Verkauf angeboten.

Seit 2 Tagen haben Annabell und Albert einen neuen Mitbewohner:
Den Nabaztag:tag-Hasen.

Wer oder was ist aber Nabaztag:tag, kurz Nabaztag?
Er ist ein multifunktionaler Roboter, der mit dem Internet verbunden ist (per WLAN) und sich darüber mit (vom Benutzer vorgegebenen) Informationen versorgt. Diese werden entweder über integriertem Lautsprecher oder durch blinkende Lichter kundgetan.

So kann Nabaztag unter anderem erzählen, dass man eMail erhalten hat, er liest RSS-Feeds vor, informiert über das Wetter und die Luftverschmutzung (warum auch immer), singt Lieder und gibt Podcasts wieder.

Ausserdem kann er Verbindung zu anderen Nabaztags aufnehmen und deren Besitzer sind in der Lage, von Hase zu Hase Audio- oder visuelle Nachrichten zu schicken.

Einige von Euch erinnern sich vielleicht noch an die Furby`s, die vor einigen Jahren die Kunderzimmer stürmten und Eltern sowie Kinder um ihre nächtliche Ruhe brachten.
In gewisser Weise ähneln die Nabaztags den Stoffmonstern, nur dass sie tatsächlich auch einen gewissen Sinn und Zweck erfüllen.

Nabaztag ist allerdings auch ein klein wenig mit Eigenleben gesegnet, so macht er täglich mehrmals seine Tai-Chi-Übungen, summt ab und zu ein Liedchen (wobei ich immer zu Tode erschrecke, wenn hinter mir plötzlich was zu singen beginnt) oder stellt Fragen wie “Wie spät isses eigentlich?”, und das mit Berliner Schnauze
Das witzige an der Sache ist: es ist dem Benutzer überlassen, in welcher Sprache und welchem Dialekt das Vieh seine Verbaläusserungen von sich gibt. Das kann mitunter sehr spannend und Unterhaltsam sein.

So ganz habe ich die blinkenden Lichter an Bauch und Nase des Hasen noch nicht verstanden, aber es macht Spaß, ihm einfach dabei zuzusehen, wie er sich hier einlebt.

Annabell (mit neuer Schleife statt Glocke) ist noch nicht so angetan von ihm, während Albert schon die ersten Kontakte knüpft. Ich bin gespannt, was dabei rauskommt

Annabell und Albert freunden sich mit Nabaztag an

In USA und England sowie Frankreich gibt es einen riesigen Kult um diese Hasen, unter anderem werden, wie oben, gewaltige Performances und Events rund um die Nabaztags veranstaltet. Ich bin gespannt, was uns da noch erwartet.

Man kann meinem Hasen auch eine eMail schicken an toheselue@things.violet.net
Der Nabaztag liest dann die Betreffzeile vor .) 

Das kann der Hase

Mein neuer Begleiter. Love him.

Annabell und Albert are not amused.

A rabbit is for life…

A French company called Violet sells a number of “Things” – internet-enabled devices that interact with you and/or your environment.  (Actually you can buy them from lots of resellers).  They include mirrors, stamps, lamps and strangely rabbits!  The first generation rabbit was called Nabaztag (Nabaztag is Armenian for “rabbit”), whilst the second  generation is called a Nabaztag:tag, and amongst other enhancements, has been blessed with the ability to “sniff” RFID tags and play MP3 files.  You can identify a Nabaztag:tag by it’s belly-button microphone which enables the rabbit to hear a small number of single word commands, e.g. “weather” and respond, e.g. by telling you what the weather will be.  Wikipedia can tell you more about Nabatztags.

I recently got a Nabaztag:tag.  He (or is it a she?) comes in clean pure white, although Violet also sells coloured replacement ears, and many people customise their rabbit’s look.  Of course, the geek in me didn’t care too much about style and rather wanted to fiddle with how it works and get it to do different things…

Cruisecontrol.rb is for peace of mind…

As was alluded to in a previous blog post, we use CruiseControl.rb to do continuous integration of our code.  Within ten minutes of checking some code into Subversion (yes we use that too), our CruiseControl.rb server will automatically

• check the updated code out
• update the application’s database using Rails migrations
• start the application
• run our unit tests, our integration tests and our performance tests
• do some profiling of our code
• shut down the application again
• build our documentation
• and finally trawl through our code picking out the TODOs and FIXMEs etc.

This is great, but how do we know whether it worked or not?  Well, we use CCMenu which sits on our menu bars and quietly shows a coloured blob giving the current state of the build.  Some of us integrate it with Growl to actively tell us whether it succeeded or failed when the build completes.  But that wasn’t enough for me!

Tell me, tell me now!

Yep, I had to integrate CruiseControl.rb and my rabbit.  Unfortunately, CruiseControl’s documentation on writing plugins is a little sparse (I couldn’t find any truly complete documentation), and Violet’s documentation isn’t ideal either (and they keep moving it although there is some general consensus between them all).

So, I’ve tried to simplify it for you.  First I wrote a CruiseControl.rb plugin using the sparse documentation and got it working, but it didn’t do much because I’d only learnt about a couple of hooks.  Thinking that there must be more, I trawled the CruiseControl.rb source code to discover all the possible hooks… and there were lots more!  So I added methods for all of the possible CruiseControlRB hooks to my plugin.

Finally, I used that complete template plugin to integrate with my rabbit.  And here’s the code:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'

class NabaztagNotifier

  # Configure your Nabaztag's details here.
  NABAZTAG_SERIAL_NUMBER = 'xxxxxxxxxxxx'
  NABAZTAG_TOKEN = 'yyyyyyyyyy'

  COLOURS = {
    :black    => "0,0,0",
    :red      => "255,0,0",
    :green    => "0,255,0",
    :blue     => "0,0,255",
    :magenta  => "255,0,255",
    :cyan     => "0,255,255",
    :yellow   => "255,255,0",
    :white    => "255,255,255",
  }

  def initialize(project)
#    puts "initialize"
  end

  def no_new_revisions_detected
#    puts "no_new_revisions_detected"
  end

  def new_revisions_detected(revisions)
#    puts "new_revisions_detected"
  end

  def sleeping
#    puts "sleeping"
  end

  def build_requested
#    puts "build_requested"
  end

  def configuration_modified
#    puts "configuration_modified"
  end

  def build_initiated
#    puts "build_initiated"
  end

  def build_started(build)
#    puts "build_started"
    rabbit(:colour => :yellow, :message => "Build started for #{committer(build)}", :status => :building)
  end

  def build_finished(build)
#    puts "build_finished"
    if build.successful?
      rabbit(:colour => :green, :message => "Build fixed by #{committer(build)}", :status => :success)
    elsif build.failed?
      rabbit(:colour => :red, :message => "Build broken by #{committer(build)}", :status => :failure)
    elsif build.incomplete?
      rabbit(:colour => :yellow, :message => "Build incomplete", :status => :incomplete)
    else
      rabbit(:colour => :yellow, :message => "Build status unknown", :status => :unknown)
    end
  end

  def build_loop_failed(error)
#    puts "Build loop failed: #{error.class}: #{error.message}"
    rabbit(:colour => :red, :message => "Build failed with an error", :status => :failure)
  end

  def build_broken(build, previous_build)
#    puts "build_broken"
#    rabbit(:colour => :red, :message => "Build broken by #{committer(build)}", :status => :failure)
  end

  def build_fixed(build, previous_build)
#    puts "build_fixed"
#    rabbit(:colour => :green, :message => "Build fixed by #{committer(build)}", :status => :success)
  end

  private

  #
  def committer(build)
    match = build.changeset.match(/ committed by (\w+) /)
    if match.nil?
      return "unknown"
    elsif match[1].length > 1
      return "#{match[1][0,1].upcase} #{match[1][1..-1].capitalize}"
    else
      return match[1]
    end
  end

  def rabbit(options)
    url = "http://api.nabaztag.com/vl/FR/api.jsp?sn=#{NABAZTAG_SERIAL_NUMBER}&token=#{NABAZTAG_TOKEN}"

    # Quarter second tempo
    url += "&chor=4"

    # Ears up => success
    # Ears down => failure
    # Ears askew => unknown
    if options.has_key?(:status)
      angle = case options[:status]
        when :success
          [0, 0]
        when :failure
          [180, 180]
        else
          [90, 90]
        end
      angle.each_index do |ear|
        url += ",0,motor,#{ear},#{angle[ear]},0,#{ear}"
      end
    end

    # Colour:
    #   Symbol => named colour
    #   String => "R,G,B"  (0-255 in each value)
    if options.has_key?(:colour)
      colour = case options[:colour]
      when nil
        COLOURS[:blue]
      when Symbol
        COLOURS[options[:colour]]
      when String
        options[:colour]
      else
        COLOURS[:white]
      end

      (0..12).each do |n|
        url += ",#{n    },led,#{n % 4 + 1},#{colour}"
        url += ",#{n + 1},led,#{n % 4 + 1},#{COLOURS[:black]}"
      end
      url += ",14,led,1,#{colour},14,led,2,#{colour},14,led,3,#{colour}"
    end

    # Message
    url += "&tts=#{URI.escape(options[:message])}&ttlive=10" if options[:message]

    puts "Sending Nabaztag: #{url}"
    $stdout.flush
    Net::HTTP.get_print URI.parse(url)
  end

  public

  def test
    puts "testing"
    rabbit(:colour => :blue, :message => "Boo", :status => :abc)
    build_started(nil)
  end

end

# Uncomment the following line to test:
# NabaztagNotifier.new(nil).test

Project.plugin :nabaztag_notifier

As it stands, it is a drop in CruiseControl.rb/Nabaztag:tag plugin that announces the start of a build and who started it, and the completion of a build and who broke it or fixed it.  However, it is ripe for extension to make it do what you need – make the rabbit more chatty, or rip out the Nabaztag bits and reuse it as the starting place for a standard CruiseControl.rb plugin.

Installing it

There are 3 steps to installing the Nabaztag:tag CruiseControl.rb plugin.

1. Installing the plugin depends somewhat on your CruiseControl.rb version.  So far we’ve used two different versions:
   • in the first you had to put the above file in builder_plugins/installed directory in CruiseControl.rb, making sure that the file has the right owner and permissions.
   • in our current CruiseControl.rb version, you need to put it in the builder_plugins directory, again making sure that the file has the right owner and permissions.
2. Then, you’ll need to edit the first few lines to set the

       NABAZTAG_SERIAL_NUMBER = 'xxxxxxxxxxxx'
       NABAZTAG_TOKEN = 'yyyyyyyyyy'

   You can get the serial number from your rabbit – follow the Violet instructions for registering. Once you have registered with Violet and opened your violet.net account, then you can configure your rabbit to join the “Violet ecosystem”, i.e. generate the token.  Now you have the serial number and the token, update the appropriate lines in the plugin.

3. Finally, simply restart CruiseControl.rb to pick up the plugin.

To test that it is working, start a build – if you start one from CruiseControl.rb’s web interface, the rabbit should announce “Build started for unknown” whilst flashing yellow LEDs and cocking his ears forward expectantly.  Later, hopefully your build will succeed and the rabbit will announce “Build fixed by unknown”, flash green LEDs and perk his ears up, but if it fails then the rabbit will announce “Build broken by unknown”, flash red LEDs and put his ears down flat.

How to tweak it to suit you

Out of the box, the plugin will announce the start and completion of the builds, along with the Subversion committer of the latest checkin.  To help the rabbit pronounce our usernames, the plugin splits the first character off the username, e.g. “jsmith” becomes “J Smith”.  This is done in the private committer() method – modify it to suit the pronunciation of your Subversion usernames, or even to cope with a different source code control system.

By default, the plugin uses the very boring, but universal colours of green meaning good, red meaning bad and yellow meaning warning.  Hence, the rabbit flashes yellow when announcing the start of a build, red if the build fails and green if it succeeds.  You can modify the COLOURS constant in the script to define more colours, and then refer to them in calls to the rabbit() method.  The colours are defined as red/green/blue combinations between 0 and 255.

As I just alluded to, the private rabbit() method does the hard work of putting together a message and a choreography (what Violet calls a sequence of ear movements and LED flashes).  So, this is the method you would modify if you want to change the rabbit’s behaviour.  The Violet documentation (or wherever it is today) isn’t particularly clear, but hopefully is a bit easier to follow with this example.  One thing you could do is to use the voice API parameter to use something other than the default voice.

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the plugin includes methods for all the hooks I could find in CruiseControl.rb.  You could use any of them to make your rabbit more chatty, or to integrate CruiseControl.rb with other services such as sending emails, writing to logs, etc.

Good luck; have fun.