[editor's note: I originally wrote and sent this note from my Peek June 21, 3 days ago. It actually hit ping.fm, but never posted to WordPress. A copy I sent to myself hit my inbox, but I noticed that my Yahoo mail sentbox is completely empty for the past 14 days. The fact that draft emails are dated the day they are sent, but ordered by the day they were first written, makes it all but impossible to find the email in the Sent box. About half my blog posts disappear down the memory hole like this, and I spend a lot of wasted time checking sent email boxes on the Peek, forwarding emails to my inbox, copy and pasting to my blog.
I repeat HALF MY BLOG POSTS FROM THE PEEK DON'T MAKE IT. And the thing is, I can verify blog posts; emails, I cannot. I can call people and ask if they got my emails, but at that point why bother emailing them, and why bother having a Peek in the first place?! There is no way of knowing if my emails are going through, or if they are disappearing down the memory hole too. Like I said, my Yahoo sent box is EMPTY between June 10 and today. 2 weeks of sent emails are not there. For a device that's supposed to make life convenient, it is terribly inconvenient.I would love to love this thing, but every time I try to say something nice about the Peek, the Peek goes straight to EPIC FAIL.
I therefor amend the following blog post with this very important suggestion:
Improvement #1- GET THE DAMN THING TO WORK PROPERLY!]
The problem I have with surveys is that I usually don’t think about them all that much umtil after I’ve done them. Which means that I usually put stupid useless answers on the survey and the thoughtful answers go into the memory hole. This has been no less true of the survey I just took for the Peek.
Having had time to reflect about what improvements I would build into the service or the device, I have to say that my initial complaint about sms service wasn’t the best. Not that it wouldn’ be bad, it’s just not the best suggestion I could make for a startup looking to hold down costs and increase revenue during a crippling recession. Instead, I have five specific fixes that would be better implemented.
First off, round off the corners on the included cover. When you put the Peek inside, those corners on the protective cover get pretty sharp in the pocket. And while we’re at it, how about a warning that we’re hitting the max length limit on messages we’re composing?
Another quick fix is to remap the ^ symbol onto a key, possibly the shift 5 position (%). This marks the first time I’v ever use the % symbol, and yet every day I use the ^ symbol with ping.fm. 14 key entries (3 scroll wheel pushes, 11 scroll wheel turns, 2 submenus) for such a common use character is silly, especially when the peek website specifically mentions ping.fm as a mobile email blogging/social networking solution.
Speaking of ping.fm, forming a tighter strategic partnership with ping.fm would be nice. While email is the core function of a Peek device, ping.fm is the killer app. When people invariably ask, what else does the Peek do, ping.fm is the answer. It takes your simple email device and plugs it directly into your blog, twitter, and facebook. Instead routing messages from your Peek to your email to ping.fm, I’d see if there was a way to route it directly from the Peek’s servers into ping.fm’s servers. Failing that, I’d see if there was a way to reduce dropped messages between the device and ping.fm’s services. Or at least put together a handy easy to follow faq and guide, and make it the official Peek service partner. It took me a week to figure out how to blog from the Peek. And I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve thought about dropping the Peek over dropped blog posts.
The last suggestion is little out of left field, but I think the logic hold up well: build a bigger Peek. Just bigger, not more powerful or functional or more feature rich, just bigger. Why? The current hardware is just too small for me to give to mom. All she does is check email, that’s pretty much the extent of her interneting. And when you design for the older crowd, simple is better. What could be simpler then a email only device with a flat $20 monthly fee. The hardware just need to be bigger and easier to read. Portability isn’t so much a concern, so don’t worry about the weight or size issues here. Don’t change a thing about the software or the hardware capabilities, just make the dang thing twice the size of the current hardware (keys, screen, font size) and you’ve got senior citizen gold. I mean, they’ll need something to do now that TV doesn’t work anymore, right?
So there you have my crackpot ideas on how to improve the Peek experience. Next week I lose all sanity and buy an Amazon Kindle 2.0, because I heard a rumor that there’s a primative beta web browser built in.
