Nobody was really sure what to make of Nabaztag. Nobody seems really sure what to make of Karotz either, but I do know three things: it's a rabbit, it does Internet, and it has cute ears that wiggle.

From what I've heard, Karotz (get it?) is essentially just a Nabaztag rabbitized computer that's inherited a new name thanks primarily to the bankruptcy of the original Nabaztag company several years ago.

You're probably wondering why you might want to buy one of these, and you're not alone. Karotz is connected to the internet, and it's able to check out stuff like RSS feeds and then communicate them to you in a number of different ways. If you're boring, you can just have Kartoz read through the news or whatever in a decidedly un-rabbity voice. If you're less boring, Karotz can be set up to display relative and/or binary data by changing its color and moving its ears. For example, you could set it up to check the weather every morning and glow red if it's warm out or blue if it's cold, or you could set its ears to droop in proportion to how terribly the stock market is doing.

This is all stuff that Nazbawhatever was able to do before, though. The most interesting new feature seems to be that Karotz is capable of making phone calls directly to other Karotz, and even out to land lines and cell phones. There's an app store for Karotz, it's easy to program yourself, and it even comes with a set of little mini Karotz with RFID tags that the big Kartoz can 'sniff' to get it to do certain pre-programmed things. Cute.

Feel free to spend $130 on Karotz when it becomes available in March, just make sure not to ask yourself why. C'mon, you know you want to — look how adorable it is!