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Peek (mobile Internet device)
Encyclopedia
Peek Inc. is a mobile technology company headquartered in New York, NY. Its flagship product is the Peek 9, the 2010 version of its mobile Internet device that originally debuted as an email-only mobile handheld device
in September 2008.
-- Rob Gray
(Virgin's first head of product marketing), CEO Dr. Amol Sarva
(Virgin's first head of non-voice applications and its finance director), and John Tantum (its first employee and first President ). The company has offices in New York, NY, New Delhi, India and staff in Arizona
, California
, and Toronto, ON.
devices that may offer voice, SMS, email, etc., Peek is a "diverged", special purpose product that is designed just for mobile e-mail, in the way that Flip Video cameras are for video only or Amazon Kindles are for reading only.
In 2009, Peek launched the Peek Pronto, which made the Peek email service real-time and added SMS
. In 2010, Peek refreshed the lineup with the Peek 9, product, which adds Twitter, Facebook, Maps, Weather, and other real-time web service utilities. Peek 9 is still not a voice phone or web browsing device.
The Peek service operates anywhere in the world with GSM networks over GPRS data connection. In the United States, Peek operates primarily on the GSM wireless network operated by T-Mobile
. There is a flat monthly service fee for unlimited email and SMS with unlimited accounts on the Peek 9. The fee ranges from about $10/month up to $20, depending on the plan selected.
Peek's messaging services include link previewing and attachment viewing for images, office documents, and PDFs.
stores across the United States. On September 12, 2008, Peek received its first review in a major outlet when David Pogue called it "sweet", "simple", "elegant" and predicted that Peek's model would win "quiet, gradual popular acceptance by normal people".
In April 2009, Peek launched their second device, the Peek Pronto, which supports Push email
('instant' delivery), Microsoft Exchange
, increased support for email attachments (PDFs, DOC and pictures), and unlimited texting support.
TwitterPeek, introduced in November 2009, is a mobile device that allows users to send and receive tweets using Twitter
. It is the first Twitter-only mobile device. It went on sale on November 3, 2009.
In 2010, Peek refreshed its lineup with Peek 9 -- adding Facebook, Twitter and other social and news features.
In 2011, the first 3rd party handsets launched from fast-growing producers such as MicroMax in India. The Peek software brings smartphone features to these low-cost handhelds.
Locosto chipset with an ARM
core. It uses a customized, lightweight operating system
nicknamed "Peekux" which is based on Nucleus RTOS
by Mentor Graphics
The Peek client firmware is C/C++ code written for the TI environment. Flavors of the Peek application for alternative operating environments from other RTOSes, to BREW, to Windows, to Android have all been spotted.
The core of Peek's real time mobile messaging platform is a cloud application. The environment is a conventional web application LAMP stack and relies in part on Amazon Web Services.
selected Peek as one of the 50 Best Inventions of the Year 2008. It was voted on Time.com as the #1 entry in the Gadget of the Year review.
Elizabeth Woyke of Forbes
wrote, "at a time when the economy is melting and one-time bankers are on the street [Peek] is betting customers will embrace the no-fuss simplicity - not to mention the modest price - of the Peek."
Tony Long, a journalist of Gadget Lab from Wired.com reviewed Peek as a device that "delivers peak email performance" and that using the device was "a breeze... even without operating instructions". He recommended the Peek device to those who would like access to their "e-mail from time to time, or if [they] believe that simplicity in all things is the key to life".
Wired Magazine's December 2008 issue named Peek their #1 Gadget on their "Gear of the Year" review: "Not every gadget needs a carnival of features. Take the Peek, which tackles just a single task: mobile email. No phone, no browser, no camera—and no apologies. It won't satisfy convergence-rabid smartphone fetishists, but for the rest of the world (i.e., the majority of it), this one-trick pony is a godsend. In terms of looks, its slim profile stands up to the big boys. But the real treat is the interface."
After the Peek Pronto launch, International Design Magazine featured Peek Pronto on the cover of its 2009—and final—Annual Design Review.
TwitterPeek, on the other hand, met broad skepticism in the press. CNN.com 2009 Year in Review listed it as one of the top 10 biggest technology failures of 2009. Gizmodo
went as far as to name TwitterPeek as one of the "50 Worst Gadgets of the Decade."
In 2010, Peek 9's enhanced features were met by Engadget's reviewers as "dancing with a full list of features" and "Peek 9 is nine times faster than Pronto, adds PeekMaps, weather, Twitter, and Facebook". TechCrunch's gadget reviewers said Peek 9 "brings a whole new level of cool to the not-a-smartphone device. It seems nearly everything is updated from the mail service to the hardware. It’s a mighty big update for Peek, but somehow all this goodness rings up for less than the previous generation — even the service plan is cheaper now."
Handheld device
A mobile device is a small, hand-held computing device, typically having a display screen with touch input and/or a miniature keyboard and less than . Early pocket sized ones were joined in the late 2000s by larger but otherwise similar tablet computers...
in September 2008.
Company
Peek was founded in 2007 by three of the first four employees at Virgin Mobile USAVirgin Mobile USA
Virgin Mobile USA, Inc. is a wireless communications services provider based in Warren, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 2001 as a mobile virtual network operator, Virgin Mobile USA, Inc. commenced operations under the Virgin Mobile brand in June, 2002...
-- Rob Gray
It (novel)
It is a 1986 horror novel by American author Stephen King. The story follows the exploits of seven children as they are terrorized by the eponymous inter-dimensional predatory life-form that exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It"...
(Virgin's first head of product marketing), CEO Dr. Amol Sarva
Amol Sarva
Dr. Amol Sarva is an American mobile entrepreneur and technology policy advocate.-Business profile:Dr. Sarva is an American entrepreneur and technology policy advocate known for founding two significant mobile service companies, Virgin Mobile USA and Peek.At Virgin, he was one of the three earliest...
(Virgin's first head of non-voice applications and its finance director), and John Tantum (its first employee and first President ). The company has offices in New York, NY, New Delhi, India and staff in Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, and Toronto, ON.
Peek device and software
Peek is an alternative to multi-featured smartphones that provide a variety of services and applications at the cost of greater complexity and higher prices. Unlike traditional convergedDigital convergence
Digital convergence refers to the convergence of four industries into one conglomerate, ITTCE .This provides new, innovative solutions to consumers and business users...
devices that may offer voice, SMS, email, etc., Peek is a "diverged", special purpose product that is designed just for mobile e-mail, in the way that Flip Video cameras are for video only or Amazon Kindles are for reading only.
In 2009, Peek launched the Peek Pronto, which made the Peek email service real-time and added SMS
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
. In 2010, Peek refreshed the lineup with the Peek 9, product, which adds Twitter, Facebook, Maps, Weather, and other real-time web service utilities. Peek 9 is still not a voice phone or web browsing device.
The Peek service operates anywhere in the world with GSM networks over GPRS data connection. In the United States, Peek operates primarily on the GSM wireless network operated by T-Mobile
T-Mobile
T-Mobile International AG is a German-based holding company for Deutsche Telekom AG's various mobile communications subsidiaries outside Germany. Based in Bonn, Germany, its subsidiaries operate GSM and UMTS-based cellular networks in Europe, the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...
. There is a flat monthly service fee for unlimited email and SMS with unlimited accounts on the Peek 9. The fee ranges from about $10/month up to $20, depending on the plan selected.
Peek's messaging services include link previewing and attachment viewing for images, office documents, and PDFs.
History
In September 2008, the original Peek email device launched in TargetTarget Corporation
Target Corporation, doing business as Target, is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the second-largest discount retailer in the United States, behind Walmart. The company is ranked at number 33 on the Fortune 500 and is a component of the Standard & Poor's...
stores across the United States. On September 12, 2008, Peek received its first review in a major outlet when David Pogue called it "sweet", "simple", "elegant" and predicted that Peek's model would win "quiet, gradual popular acceptance by normal people".
In April 2009, Peek launched their second device, the Peek Pronto, which supports Push email
Push e-mail
Push email is used to describe email systems that provide an always-on capability, in which new email is actively transferred as it arrives by the mail delivery agent to the mail user agent , also called the email client...
('instant' delivery), Microsoft Exchange
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server is the server side of a client–server, collaborative application product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure products...
, increased support for email attachments (PDFs, DOC and pictures), and unlimited texting support.
TwitterPeek, introduced in November 2009, is a mobile device that allows users to send and receive tweets using Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
. It is the first Twitter-only mobile device. It went on sale on November 3, 2009.
In 2010, Peek refreshed its lineup with Peek 9 -- adding Facebook, Twitter and other social and news features.
In 2011, the first 3rd party handsets launched from fast-growing producers such as MicroMax in India. The Peek software brings smartphone features to these low-cost handhelds.
Technology
The Peek device was designed by Peek in partnership with IDEO and BYD, and its architecture is based on the Texas InstrumentsTexas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
Locosto chipset with an ARM
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...
core. It uses a customized, lightweight operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
nicknamed "Peekux" which is based on Nucleus RTOS
Nucleus RTOS
Nucleus OS is a real-time operating system and toolset created by the Embedded Systems Division of Mentor Graphics for various central processing unit platforms. Nucleus OS is an embedded software solution and is in an estimated 2.11 billion devices worldwide.Development is typically done on a...
by Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics, Inc is a US-based multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation for electrical engineering and electronics, as of 2004, ranked third in the EDA industry it helped create...
The Peek client firmware is C/C++ code written for the TI environment. Flavors of the Peek application for alternative operating environments from other RTOSes, to BREW, to Windows, to Android have all been spotted.
The core of Peek's real time mobile messaging platform is a cloud application. The environment is a conventional web application LAMP stack and relies in part on Amazon Web Services.
Reception
When Peek's first device launched, TimeTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
selected Peek as one of the 50 Best Inventions of the Year 2008. It was voted on Time.com as the #1 entry in the Gadget of the Year review.
Elizabeth Woyke of Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
wrote, "at a time when the economy is melting and one-time bankers are on the street [Peek] is betting customers will embrace the no-fuss simplicity - not to mention the modest price - of the Peek."
Tony Long, a journalist of Gadget Lab from Wired.com reviewed Peek as a device that "delivers peak email performance" and that using the device was "a breeze... even without operating instructions". He recommended the Peek device to those who would like access to their "e-mail from time to time, or if [they] believe that simplicity in all things is the key to life".
Wired Magazine's December 2008 issue named Peek their #1 Gadget on their "Gear of the Year" review: "Not every gadget needs a carnival of features. Take the Peek, which tackles just a single task: mobile email. No phone, no browser, no camera—and no apologies. It won't satisfy convergence-rabid smartphone fetishists, but for the rest of the world (i.e., the majority of it), this one-trick pony is a godsend. In terms of looks, its slim profile stands up to the big boys. But the real treat is the interface."
After the Peek Pronto launch, International Design Magazine featured Peek Pronto on the cover of its 2009—and final—Annual Design Review.
TwitterPeek, on the other hand, met broad skepticism in the press. CNN.com 2009 Year in Review listed it as one of the top 10 biggest technology failures of 2009. Gizmodo
Gizmodo
Gizmodo is a technology weblog about consumer electronics. It is part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton and is known for its up-to-date coverage of the technology industry, along with topics as broad as design; architecture; space and science....
went as far as to name TwitterPeek as one of the "50 Worst Gadgets of the Decade."
In 2010, Peek 9's enhanced features were met by Engadget's reviewers as "dancing with a full list of features" and "Peek 9 is nine times faster than Pronto, adds PeekMaps, weather, Twitter, and Facebook". TechCrunch's gadget reviewers said Peek 9 "brings a whole new level of cool to the not-a-smartphone device. It seems nearly everything is updated from the mail service to the hardware. It’s a mighty big update for Peek, but somehow all this goodness rings up for less than the previous generation — even the service plan is cheaper now."
Peek Pronto end of life
On October 14, 2010, older Peek devices were disconnected from the network and Peek claimed that it offered all its users a free, new replacement Peek 9 device; but on the contrary the devices were sold for a dollar and also included a small shipping charge. All users who did not convert to the new Peek9 were no longer supported even though they had paid their bill in advance. The act of removing all Peek Pronto devices from the working network has been the subject of much animosity and discussions regarding the business practices of Peek Inc.Peek Cloud
During 2011, the first devices in the US and globally running the Peek Cloud platform launched with real-time mail as the primary feature. These devices are low-cost featurephones or 3G tablets, all made by third parties other than Peek.External links
- Peek company website
- Review: Peek puts email in your pocket and removes voices from your head - Boing Boing Gadgets review