Geeky Peek

In episode 2 you saw the bits and pieces of the Peek. We explained why the keypad was so tough to make. The keys weren’t spongy, the scroll wheel was too stiff, the keys were to stiff, and the paint on the keypad was peeling off.

Luckily our main men Tom and Yongsheng took a hold of the reins and made the Peek what it is (and did it on-time and on-budget!!).

Improvements to the Peeks in production from amol sarva on Vimeo.

Check out – http://www.peekservice.com/?c=4&k=1050
Somebody (not sure of the person’s name) is building a bunch of services (weather, news, etc) for the Peek. Very cool stuff!

There is also some discussion on our board about this here – http://boards.getpeek.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=312&page=1#Item_0

We are building an open REST API to our gateway so you developers out there can interact directly with the Peek instead of via the inbox (remove some clutter and remove the delay of the Peek getting it from the inbox). No ETA yet (either really soon like a few weeks or really far like 3 months).

Enjoy!

… and then hilarity ensues. A word of caution, Gabe and Dan are not hardware people. Tom and Yongsheng are the hardware guys who build the innards.

Peek guts. Ooh the guts from amol sarva on Vimeo.

A new edition of Peek TV. This is how to upgrade to new Peek software using the new Peek Betterment Engine.   Step by step, with hilarious commentating by Gabe and Dan.

Part 1 of 2

How to better your Peek with the latest from amol sarva on Vimeo.

And here is part 2 of 2

Peek updater part 2 electric-flash-a-roo from gabe fabius on Vimeo.

We just got our monthly bill from Qualcomm/T-Mobile.  A very small handful of you (< 10) have been naughty little fraudsters.  Well sorry fraudsters, tough noogies, but we closed down your backdoor.

Let me explain… we’re open to hackers.  If you want to hack the Peek, email me and I’ll give you all the access in the world.  If you build apps that cost us some money, we’re totally open to that as well.  We’re also open to heavy users, some people are crazy emailers and that’s totally cool as well.

But nothing irks me more than pure, blatant theft.  Start-up life is long days of hard work.  You are always super careful/cautious about money and you work really hard and count every penny.

So hear me loud and clear fraudsters, we’re not only going to cut off your service but if you do crap like this again we have your address and email address.  I worked many years in Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad and other places where fraud detection/prevention is state of the art… and you are not the first I’ve had to deal with.  I will look up your number myself, phone you and tell you exactly what I think of you.  Be warned.

Everybody,  attached is some new software for your Peek, the 1.08 release.  What’s new in this release:

1.  Performance is much improved (everything should be snappier)

2.  Lots of work on date/time – including that the emails now have the real date/time from when you got them in the inbox!

3.  You can now set your own date & time as well

4.  Device Security Lock.  When you lock your Peek, you can have a password to unlock it.

5.  Way more shortcuts, I’ll post more later about them all.

6.  Typing the ‘character’ in contact list jumps to the names that start with that letter.

7.  Airplane mode so you can turn on/off your radio

8.  A nice little tutorial on registration (I guess not so important to you users who already use it)

9.  A whole slew of improvements & fixes (esp if you are on 1.04)

10. If you are on 1.04 you will lose “Dusk” and gain “Slate” (grey-blue colour)

This software is 1.08.  If you are on 1.04 I definitely recommend you upgrade.  You can check if you go to Peek Manager->Device Info->Software Version.

This also introduces the new funky Peek Betterment Engine (thats my marketing skillset at work).  This is a tool we designed to try and make the upgrade process seamless.  There are some important things to know about the ugprade process:

Before you start you must reset your device (you will lose all of your emails & contacts… sorry).  Peek Manager->device info>reset device. Super sorry, we will make it possible to upgrade without losing data the next time around.

1.  You must have a cable.  These are special micro-USB cables with a chip in the end, so you have to get it from us (or google around if you know what you’re doing).  You can order one from the Peek boutique here:

http://boutique.getpeek.com/upgrade-cable-for-your-peek.html

2. This does not work on 64-bit windows.  At all.  There is no way to make it work right now.  I will later release a version that works for 64-bit.

3.  I’d classify the Peek Betterment Engine as better than beta… but not quite mature.  So I’d only use it if you have enough tech saviness that if things go wrong you’ll be ok getting special instructions & software from me to recover your Peek.

4.  When the ugprade tool finishes, you must take out your battery and put it back in!  Otherwise your device will just sit there and do nothing and seem dead.

5.  If you ‘brick’ your device, industry terms for the device not powering on anymore, email Gabe and I (gabe at getpeek, dan at getpeek)

6.  Your device is going to be wiped clean!  You will lose all of your emails and contacts.  Sorry 8-(

Ok, so after all of that here is the link:

http://drop.io/Peek108Upgrade

Download the upgrade from there and off you go.

http://flickr.com/photos/nichellenewsletter/3229512334/

Nichelle, the picture taker of this photo, is the first real Peek customer I randomnly met (well actually my wife met her).  It was a very nostalgic moment.  This is her Peek with her cupcakes (apparently she is a professional cupcake aficionado).  She also has a blog here – http://nichellestephens.com.

One thing you will notice is that her Peek has a dark blue background.   We only manufactured a very few with this background option available, so if you have “midnight blue” as a background option you have a collector’s item!  We very early on decided we needed a softer background and settled on the grey/blue (slate) that most of you know.

Personally I use either tangerine or slate (I have 4 Peeks so I get to pick and choose).  Does anybody else out there use the tangerine?  Any thoughts on new background colours?  I dislike ’spring’ because it is the colour of the Oakland A’s and I grew up despising them (Toronto and Oakland had a strong baseball rivalry in the early 90s).

I am going to let out a dark secret – I am Canadian.  The election of Obama has me excited for many technology-related, tax reasons.  You see, in many countries there are deep, fruitful tax credits that heavily reward the technology-oriented entrepreneur.  For instance, in Canada they have several tax-credit programs of which the richest is SR&ED – scientific research & experimental development.  This tax credit pays you back a large portion of salary, overhead for employees, materials and equipment.  On average you get to claim 135% of an employees hours devoted to the project (35% being overhead).  You get back 65% of that value.  Imagine if, as a cash-poor start-up, you got back close to 50% of your spent r&d funds?  Most tech-oriented start-ups are spending a large portion of their funding on r&d that is directly applicable to the tax credit!

Canada is not the only other country with a technology, r&d oriented tax credit program… many others support the entrepreneurial/research-oriented world in this way (UK, Singapore, Germany, to name a few).

It astounds me that the US, or at least some of the tech hub states, do not have a similar tax credit for r&d work.  It is a way to make the US far more cost competitive and stop the global IT offshoring movement.  The fact is that right now the average US developer is more advanced and more skilled than most other countries, sometimes by leaps and bounds.  But the price point can be so drastic that it can be a bitter pill to swallow when hiring time comes around.

So, I hope that the new President has some plan to help the US keep its lead in technology and investigates tax-credit programs proven effective in other countries.

I’ve spent the past three weekends finishing up something so you guys can get on to the long and overdue crashing and testing.  Your world is about to get rocked!!!

-Dan

Anybody got any ideas if any of the carriers provide email to SMS for SMS short codes?  We are trying to get short codes working for everybody, but no luck yet.