Gizmodo 
Enter your username and password.
Tip your editors:
tips@gizmodo.com
Editorial Director:
Brian Lam | Email | Twitter
Editor:
Jason Chen
Email | AIM | Twitter
Features Editor:
Wilson Rothman
Email | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor:
Jesus Diaz
Email | AIM | Twitter
Mark Wilson, Reviews
Email | AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Matt Buchanan
Email | AIM | Twitter
Adam Frucci
Email | Twitter
Sean Fallon
Email | Twitter
Jack Loftus
Email | Twitter
John Herrman
Email | Twitter
Dan Nosowitz
Email
Chris Mascari
Email
Danny Allen
Email | Twitter
Columnist:
Brendan I. Koerner
Interns:
Don Nguyen
Email
Chris Jacob
Email
Comment Intern:
Nick Ellenoff | Email
Comment Account Questions:
Comments@gizmodo.com
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
09/29/09
09/28/09
If you add calling features like skype or something like that, I will gladly pay for it.
Yet paying $300 checks you into a lifetime contract with a device that may soon become obsolete
I'll Pass On This One.
09/28/09
09/28/09
09/28/09
09/28/09
Actually, isn't that contradictory?
09/28/09
09/19/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
09/18/09
Briefly: It's cheaper, and I don't like all-in-one devices with a single point of failure.
A $50 smartphone still comes with an expensive plan, and in my line of work and my lifestyle, I won't ever need $60/month worth of services from a mobile device. The Peek is cheaper than any unlimited messaging plan I can get on my phone, and does e-mail without extra data charges.
For a cell phone and the Peek, I spent a total of $20 on hardware, and my combined cell/Peek bill is less than $35/month. This month was slow - only $26.
Besides that, I just prefer things that do one thing well and are practically expendable. I don't want my mp3 player or portable gaming to drain my phone's battery, or to have to stop talking on the phone to send an e-mail.
EDIT: I nearly forgot to mention that Google Voice has made it possible for me to leave my phone at home most days and live off the Peek.
@Fractal the Meek: PeekFeed, PeekSocial and AskPeek (built off the even more excellent Ent) have been around for months as third-party services; PeekMaps opened up to all Peek users last month. The only new thing here is first-party promotion outside of the forums. Almost all of these services were put together by users and adopted by the community. The simplicity is still there, but these services let users add features a la carte. None of them are more complicated than sending an e-mail to an address to subscribe to a mailing list.
09/18/09
Then again... I wonder if people would buy something like an iPod Touch that was always connected but had no requirement for monthly minutes.
07/17/09
The devices themselves were too expensive at the time, so we didn't even consider them when the program was available. Then, the pricing scheme disappeared only to be replaced by grumblings of a re-up sometime in the future.
I think they did do that re-up with Costco or some other major retailer, but nonetheless it was on a limited scale and we found out too late. Lifetime pricing genuinely makes this thing interesting.
What's harder to get over is the fact that we would probably want to trade our iPhones for touches (especially given our app investments) and downgrade to basic no-frills phones, but then we instantly have three devices to contend with instead of one sweet, sexy, elegant expensive to keep wonder. Still, lifetime pricing makes it something we would consider nonetheless, especially when we just want to remain connected on a limited scale.
Then there is international travel. If this thing was supported internationally, it would almost be a no-brainer. I realize that's difficult for them to implement -- not to mention expensive -- but an interesting model would be for all customers (lifetime or monthly) to have the option of paying a one-time fee depending on the length and location of travel. So if we were going to England for two weeks, we could pay, say, $15 each and we would have service there for that period.
It occurs to me, we're probably not the demographic Peek is looking to cater to. Shame, really, because they really have an interesting thing going for them.
07/17/09
07/09/09
What it really needs, above all else, is Twitter integration. If I could send and receive Tweets on this thing, as well as being able to search the site, it would suddenly be a really cool device. There are currently email hacks in place where you can send an email to a third party server and it'll post your tweet for you, but it just isn't quite good enough for daily use.
Other than that, the obvious IM clients would be a nice touch.
There are currently some actual worthwhile hacks in place, like an email address set up that you can email a search term and it returns you the relevant wikipedia article in under a minute. If they could take those kinds of services and build an actual UI around them instead of forcing you to remember text commands for email subjects, then this thing could really be genuinely useful for people who don't pay for smartphone data plans.
07/09/09
07/09/09
07/09/09
... and this commenting system is laggy when I type something.
07/09/09
good luck with your endeavor, boys.
07/09/09
07/09/09