Karotz, the ultimate Wi-Fi smart rabbit. The successor of Violet’s Nabaztag is here. With the same cute eyes, nose, and ears with its light up belly, many improvements have been made since Nabaztag. Karotz is basically your house companion. Karotz can wake you up in the morning, tell you the weather, sports, RSS feeds, music, Twitter, etc. Karotz officially made its presence at the 2011 International CES in Las Vegas, NV. Karotz has a webcam, RFID scanner, and voice control. As soon as you set your eyes on it, you will fall in love with it.
The outside shell of Karotz is made of a hard white shiny plastic that makes it look really elegant and sharp. It has removable ears that are attached via magnet. Its webcam is on the front towards the bottom of the Karotz and a tilt feature is available on the bottom of Karotz to tilt the webcam. In terms of security, there is no way to tilt the camera into Karotz so if the camera is accidently launched, it will show just black, nor is there a privacy shield for the webcam. Many users will find this an issue, but I have not found a security hole where the webcam can be launched without any user intervention, for example, installing an application that says it will use webcam.
In terms of Karotz’ technical specifications, they are as follows:
- Windows/Linux/mac compatible
- Arm 9 Processor, 400 MHz, 64 MB RAM
- 256 MB Flash Memory
- Integrated microphone
- Integrated speakers
- Volume control
- Wi-Fi antenna
- Webcam
- RFID reader
- 1 USB 1.1 port
- 1 mini-USB port
- 1 LED
- 360 rotating ears
- Removable ears (magnetic)
- 1 push button
- 4 languages: French, English, German, Spanish
Karotz also has a multicolored flashing LED. From its predecessor Nabaztag who had multiple LED’s, Karotz now only has one. Karotz’s RFID reader is located under the Karotz’ nose. Like Nabaztag, it has an ISO-14443-B reader operating at 13.56Mhz. The RFID reader can read RFID tags in the Flatnanoz, Nano:ztags, Books, and coming soon, the Family Quiz product. I have found it can also read the Nabaztag z:tamps which have been discontinued and replaced with the Flatnanoz.
Karotz also has on the bottom, a docking port. This docking port is for the upcoming accessory, the Music Pack. This has a release date of September 2011. It contains the following:
- 1 music dock with volume control
- 2 stereo speakers
- 1 support for your MP3 player
- 1 pair of black ears
- 1 black RFIDress music
The price of this accessory is at $99.99 USD and available from store.karotz.com
There are many more accessories like the interchangeable color Earz. There are many different colors like Phosphorescent Blue, Pink, Blue and White stripes, Red, Slate, and Chrome (for WKC members). There is also a personalized accessory called Skinz, which is like a sticker for your Karotz. I have not tried this yet, but what I would like to see is how easy it is to apply and take off. I have found with many skins for mobile accessories, that it leaves quite a bit of residue after removal.
Karotz also has the option for a tail, or a USB drive. You can either use your own USB drive for storage of your multimedia, or purchase a 4GB USB tail from Karotz. Karotz does not come with a battery, so if you want to have your Karotz portable, you will need to purchase a battery from the Karotz Ztore. I have not tried the battery so I do not know how efficient it is, and how long it lasts.
There are also the Flatnanoztag’s and Nanoztags available in many different colors. These allow you to launch certain activities with Karotz. Karotz comes with two Flatnanoz in the box, one yellow and the other green. There are often some promotions where when you buy a Karotz, you get an accessory for free. Flatnanoz and Nanoztags are relatively low priced (under $10 each). For the Flatnanoz you can purchase a nice key ring to hold your Flatnanoz. The Nanoztag’s are quite high quality, same shell as the Karotz product itself, and has removable rotatable ears. The Flatnanoz are also quite high durable plastic, so you don’t have to worry about breaking them. They come with a set of stickers that you can define which Flatnanoz is what application, for example, weather, traffic, etc..
Also, for users who do not have a Wifi connection, you can purchase an Ethernet adapter for Karotz.
The new Karotz voice is absolutely amazing and very welcoming. It has a female voice, which to me is quite a big enhancement over the old male robotic voice in previous versions. Many bugs have been fixed in the latest update, including the multimedia bug.
Regarding the product, there is one issue I have found with the build quality itself, it is not a really big issue, however. On the right side of Karotz, the LED light does leak through the side slightly and you can kind of see shadows of “veins” or cables running through Karotz. When Karotz is asleep, and the room is dark, a flicker can be seen through Karotz in about the same location most likely the network wireless light. The USB port does not support USB 3.0. Also, there is no AUX in or LINE OUT jack for your portable media devices.
Karotz wake and sleep times are in military format, which means the 24 hour clock. Many Americans and Canadians are not really used to this standard, as it is more European based. A nice AM/PM addition for us who are not used to military format would be a welcome addition. When it hits the wake up time, Karotz LED turns on, its ears move, and it starts to blink green. When it goes to sleep, it puts its ears to the side, and turns off its LED. Pressing two times on the Karotz button wakes Karotz up from its sleep.
On the Karotz website, you can also personalize your “Objects”. You can create an avatar and name for your Karotz. With avatar personalization, you can customize the body, ears, background, and face to show the Karotz community.
Under My Contacts, you can browse the Karotz Directory to add new contacts to your list. This is apparently supposed to tie in with the Karotz to Karotz feature, which will be interesting to see. One thing I did find is that when a user adds you as a friend, you don’t get any notification either than on the website where it gives a list of people who want to add you as a friend. If Karotz would say that “XYZ wants to add you as a friend, do you accept” and you would press the Karotz button and say yes or no, it would be another usability enhancement.
In terms of customer support I found it slightly lacking here. English support isn’t all that great, yes Mindscape is trying, but they really need to get their English forums up and running as soon as possible. Currently, it is only in French. Karotz does have its own Facebook pages, one is more marketing based (Facebook.com/KarotzSmartRabbit) which updates quite a few times daily on new contests on Karotz and just information. One downside however, is that the wall has been disabled. Customers who want to ask questions or give comments regarding Karotz cannot do so. The Discussion feature on the page is still there, but isn’t being used that much, the current questions are not being answered by anyone.
Karotz also has something called their “Karotz Community”. It is a Flash based web application where you can chat with other Karotz members and move around rooms and stuff. It is like Habbo Hotel. When it first came out, it was used a bit (about 20 members a day), and updated about every week and a half for new features and such. Now, I just found it to be totally dead, with no updates, or anything. Mindscape staff used to hang out in there answering random questions about Karotz, I have not seen them in there in months. The other downside of this, it is quite slow (on a 3rd party server from the developer), and it is only in French at this time. It is said to have Spanish, German, and English support “Coming soon”, however, this coming soon has been there for quite some time. At launch, it was called “Karotz E-Dating”. However, from the feedback its beta users have given regarding why is this a dating portal, it was quickly changed to Karotz Community with the dating features being removed and/or renamed to be more appropriate.
Karotz configuration can be an issue. Many users have complained on the forums that the USB driver just doesn’t work and they cannot even set up their Karotz. I have not personally had this issue yet, but many users have complained on the Karotz Community forums regarding this. Setup overall, is user-friendly.
Karotz will be able to read the Facebook statuses of your friends. The current applications are available:
Karotz Controller:
With Karotz Controller, I found it to be a bit buggy. It currently works for Apple iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and Android (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mindscape.karotzcontroller&hl=en) It basically lets you control your Karotz’ ears movements, the LED color, control multimedia (music from USB drive and radio stations). It also lets you take pictures via the webcam and type messages to it using TTS.
What I found buggy was the color of the LED. It isn’t exactly RGB. The outer shell of Karotz has a strong impact on what color you see on the outside. RGB Red for example can come out to be a light red/pink. Mindscape told me that they have modified the RGB values slightly, so you really have to guess what true red is in terms of Mindscape’s RGB values. In regards to the picture taking using the webcam, it’s too fast, and it just keeps taking pictures until you tell it to stop. The bad part, however, is that it doesn’t save the picture or hold it in memory somewhere for you to decide which are the good pictures, which are the bad ones, you have to be really quick and click Share and decide what you want to do with that picture. If you do nothing, or forget to push share, that picture you just took with Karotz is history. In regards to the music, it doesn’t play AAC+ streams. I am thinking this is due to licensing issues and Mindscape doesn’t think it’s important enough of an investment for the Karotz product. What I found with Karotz Controller and Multimedia, is that the Radio Stations it gives are minimal. You do have the ability to add a radio station to the Karotz Controller, however, this requires you to type the entire stream URL’s into the application, which can be long, and isn’t really use friendly to be honest. With the new radio station applications that I have personally made and added to the Appz Store, there should be WAY more listings here, or to make things easier, connect to the Shoutcast Directory and dynamically pull a list of these stations and feed them to Karotz. The other issues I have found with Karotz Controller is that when for example, you have an RSS Feed going on and you try to launch Karotz Controller, the application will say that you are already connected with Karotz.. and it will force you to re-login to the application. Karotz Controller’s description in the iTunes Store is in French, however, the application is in English. There just needs to be much more functionality here, and on more mobile operating systems, like Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry.
Karotz Weather:
This application I personally find really useful. However, what I am finding is that with the ASR (Speech recognition) on launching this application by saying “Weather” it doesn’t work. I also have an application installed on my Karotz called “Radio 1Power” and it thinks that is what I am trying to say. It also doesn’t tell you when the information was updated for Weather, which I think would be really useful. It shows you what the weather will be as well using its LED. For example, “showers” would be a pulsing blue LED, cloudy would be the “white/grey” LED, sunny is yellow.
Karotz At Home:
The purpose of the application is when your kids come home from school, they would either push Karotz button and say “At home” the webcam would then launch and send a text or email with the picture to a defined address or number. It has a good purpose, however, I found that the “Text” functionality isn’t there. Maybe it’s cause I am in Canada, and this only works in France.
Twitter:
Basically what the Twitter application does is read off a user’s public tweets from a certain Twitter account. It can also read Direct Messages as well. It’s good, but what needs to be added is the ability to write tweets from your Karotz. Like, for example, you arrive at home, you launch the At Home app, you say, Hi guys, I am safe at home. It a) Sends this message with what you said translating that into text, pushing that to Twitter as a tweet, sending that via SMS or Email with your picture to the address. Even cooler, it should use Twitter’s Picture functionality to upload that picture to TwitPic for example with a link to the picture. This should be done, but it isn’t there at the moment.
Karotz Stores And Songs:
This application isn’t out yet, but it sounds interesting. What Mindscape has said this application will be is that you can “choose stories and songs that you like and record them on your computer. Your Karotz can play them back to your child at any time. The application uses your computer's microphone.” Ok, good idea, but Nabaztag had actual books you could buy that had an RFID chip that would read the entire book out loud. An even better idea than recording and purchasing, is to liaise with an Audiobook company like Audible, where a user can purchase certain Audiobooks and they will be uploaded to Karotz, or even better, stored on a server. Your Karotz account will authenticate which books you are allowed to play and they will be streamed right to your Karotz. This would be a good feature for Karotz to have, but they do not have this yet.
Karotz to Karotz:
This is something that I am looking forward to. The application will be available in September 2011. What it will do, is using VOIP it will call another Karotz from the Karotz Directory. An example is like you would press the Karotz button and say “Call Alex” and it would call Alex. If Alex is available, his Karotz would ring. He would then press the button and you would have a conversation going on. If Alex isn’t available, it would then leave a voicemail on Karotz with its LED pulsing saying message waiting. Users can also use an RFID tag and define it that when scanned, will call a certain contact. This I like, and I cant wait to try it. What would be even cooler, is if they could partner with 3RD party IM companies like GTalk and Skype, that a person could call a Karotz via Skype, and perform the same type of functionality. Vice-versa, a user could press the Karotz button and say “Call Skype Alex” and have an audio conversation with them. Because Karotz has a webcam, it can do streaming video, maybe not that well, but it will serve the purpose. Karotz could practically act as a conferencing solution with Skype.
Karotz Phone:
With Karotz Phone, a user can call their Karotz using their smartphone. Useful yes, but it doesn’t work vice-versa. What I mean is, you can’t press the Karotz button, say Call Jim, and it would ring Jim’s smartphone. If this was there, it would be cool. However, since the application has yet been released, I really don’t know if this functionality is there or not. We will have to wait and see.
Facebook:
Same type of thing as the Twitter application, it reads off your friends Facebook statuses. The application doesn’t say if it reads off Facebook Messages or not, so I really don’t know. If you could update your Facebook Status via voice and it would translate to text that would be cool, or if you could write a wall post, or leave a message to a certain contact by using Speech to Text, that would be a beneficial feature.
Moods:
The Moods application will say random things throughout the day to make you laugh. I found that many of the phrases were marketing related to say for example “I heard my friends got new Earz for Christmas, I didn’t get any though”, or “I sure could use another friend”, things like that to basically get the consumer thinking into buying accessories. A good idea yes, but if the phrases were updated daily, it would be worthwhile installing to Karotz.
Wake Up:
The application “Wake up” will be available in September. What it is said to do is wake you up at a certain time. At this time, I don’t know much more what this application will do? Does it play music to wake you up? Say phrases? Personally, I created and submitted my own application called “Wake Me Up” that will read off a random phrase to wake you up. You do have to define what time the application will run, and this time has to be the same time that Karotz wakes itself up. As of writing, the Karotz “wake’ API feature doesn’t work properly, this may be why the official “Wake up” application has been delayed till September.
Horoscope:
Simply put, Karotz will read out your horoscope. You define what your sign is through the application settings, and Karotz will read it out loud for you when you want.
My RSS:
I found RSS to be a bit.. well buggy, and it really isn’t entirely Mindscape’s fault. There are many different kinds of RSS feeds, and how Karotz parses this, well is interesting. For example, I found that Karotz has a hard time parsing different feeds and will actually read out “ ” on occasion.
My WebRadio & My Podcast:
This application is pretty good. You put the name of the stream in, its stream URL, and push save. Each profile is a different stream, so you can really get busy creating all of these, until well, Mindscape updates the application and there goes all your profiles. The issue with this application is how Mindscape defined what a URL is… let’s say that TrustedNerd had a radio station, the URL will not be http://www.trustednerd.com this isn’t what you would put in there, instead.. it would directly to that streaming file like http://www.trustednerd.com:8000/listen.pls or, trustednerd.com/listen.m3u or listen.asx. The other thing that Mindscape failed to add in here was that it doesn’t play AAC based streams.
Music Player:
Good application, but the functionality could be better. Instead of having the songs on a USB drive, why not use the cloud. Cloud based storage where a user can upload some music (price defined by how much storage you want), and Karotz would stream the songs from the cloud. This I find personally, to be an easier to use and friendly approach to this.
Tai-Chi:
I honestly, didn’t find much purpose of this application. It moves its ears around while playing some Tai-Chi music. Ok? And? This is pretty much all it does.
Demo:
There is really no need to download and install this application except for having it in the retail environment to sell Karotz. It doesn’t really do anything except for giving a brief demo of what Karotz does.
The other applications Mindscape is said to come up with are the following:
- Family Quizz: Play with your family and answer 2,000 questions.
- Karotz Community: Can be accessed from iPhone / iPod / iPad.
- But, Karotz Community is Flash based. So I don’t really understand how it can be accessed from iPhone, iPod and iPad as we all know how Steve Jobs does not allow Flash on these devices? If by Karotz Community they mean the Forums, then yes it would work. Only downfall, the “Community” and “Forums” are currently only in French.
Applications coming later:
- Alarm clock: The development will take some more time, because we would like the alarm clock to work even when Karotz is not connected to the Internet.
- Reminder: We still have some work to do to get Karotz able to store messages. This is an embedded application that needs an additional development.
- Karotz Wedding: We need to define what this application should do. We would like it to do more than just synchronize the ears and the LED. If you have any ideas please post them in the comments section!
- Rabbitcasts: We have to define the options of this application.
- Traffic: We are currently working on the options of this application, because we want it to provide a richer service than just a color code for the national highways.
- Stock Exchange: We are working on the specification of this application’s options.
There are many more applications that I and other developers have made for Karotz and are available on the Karotz Appz Store. I found the Javascript SDK to be pretty easy to work around and make applications for. It has a lot of features to work with. Documentation however for the SDK is minimal and needs a big update. There isn’t any good documentation for the Karotz VM for Linux at all, and as of current writing, the Karotz Dev Google Groups is primarily in French. There is very little documentation for what audio codecs Karotz supports, how to get ASR to work properly, etc. Another thing regarding the Karotz Lab and API is because many Shoutcast streams are blocked in certain countries due to content licensing restrictions, when a developer submits an application to the Karotz Lab, it can take a while. From personal experience I have found that radio applications I submit have failed testing in France because it is blocked from there. However, the application works in North America where the developer is, and vice-versa. If quality assurance / approval of Karotz Lab’s applications were based on community moderation, the process would be faster, which gives an added benefit to consumers and it would expand the testing field to see where the application works, and where it doesn’t in some cases.
In regards to apps, this is where I found a major issue. Whenever a developer updates their application, and you have a previous version installed on Karotz where the descriptor is changed. Like for example, let’s say that on launch, the My Webradio application didn’t support LED, now it does, and you created all these new profiles for your custom radio stations, you click update, and what happens? All of your content is erased. I have found in many cases when you do an update, they aren’t automatic, and in any case, it will delete your profiles and any saved configuration settings. It could be down to changes in the applications screen.xml and descriptor, but really why would changes for screen.xml require an entire applications profile(s) to be erased, or even if the descriptor was changed for a different access request? Updates that the developer has done to screen.xml (the application configuration page), and the descriptor.xml(what access the application has on Karotz), require a manual update. It will show a green icon in your “My account” for Apps. There is no “Update all” feature here for users who have many applications installed on their Karotz. I just found the whole updating process to be cumbersome and not user friendly.
Overall, Karotz really is worth the investment. It is truly a smart rabbit. It’s a solid product but it just requires a few little fixes here and there in the firmware to make it gold. The good thing is, all of these bugs, except for the light leakage can be fixed with a firmware update. And who knows, maybe Mindscape can find a way to shut off that network light when Karotz is asleep? Mindscape’s acquisition of Violet and creating the Karotz was a really good idea. Overall I will give the Karotz Smart Rabbit a 5/5 rating. Reason being, it’s a very good product and the issues I mentioned are not substantial. The product works; it does what it needs to do. A few applications can use some more functionality, the customer support issues can be resolved, the website can be fixed and the firmware can be easily updated. For more information visit Karotz.com or find them on Twitter @karotz or on Facebook @ Facebook.com/KarotzSmartRabbit.
We will be updating this review as firmware updates and application updates progress. Keep tuned to this review for more updates on Karotz.
