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Daily Crunch: Dust

Posted: 03 Feb 2012 01:00 AM PST

The Peek Bites The Dust

Posted: 02 Feb 2012 01:33 PM PST

peek-9

You may remember the Peek, a device that showed up back in 2008 (so long ago, now!) offering nothing but email. That’s right, nothing but email in an age when smartphones were already becoming popular, and the iPhone was changing the way people thought about interacting with their data.

In a way, it was genius: limiting the service and the device made it easy to explain and simple to use. It does email, period. An interesting tack, and one that kept them rolling for a few years, but alas, Peek is finally going to take the big sleep.

Despite revising the hardware and switching up the pricing, the Peek couldn’t maintain relevance in the face of smartphones and tablets. There was always the question of whether it was a legitimate market at all, but I object to that objection. I think it’s a brilliant proposition, and one many people found useful. But you just can’t fight progress, and while phones and tablets got more capable, they also got easier to use.

Ironically, it might have been trying to compete that made the Peek at last irrelevant. The people who liked it didn’t think of it as a less-capable smartphone, but as a single-purpose device, like a fork or a measuring tape. That value proposition, focus, is something we’re seeing in practice in single-purpose sites like Imgur and so on. But the philosophy of the mobile phone as Swiss army knife has taken over in the hardware field, so devices like the Peek got left behind.

The Verge talked to the CEO, and he said that there are a few thousand devices lying around in warehouses, and he’d like to put them into the hands of interested hackers. The Peek 9 was a perfectly workable piece of hardware, though not particularly powerful, but perhaps it could be made into something interesting or useful by a little creative coding. Head over there for more info.

Update: It should be noted that this isn’t the end for Peek the company, only Peek the service and line of devices. Peek Inc actually just closed a big funding round to fuel its work bringing smartphone-type software to low-cost mobile devices. We’ll report more on that as the story develops.

The $199 PlayBook Returns For A Limited Time

Posted: 02 Feb 2012 12:20 PM PST

benjy

Back in November, there was a run on PlayBooks when the price was briefly reduced to $199. For a tablet that started out with a premium price, the deal proved enticing to many buyers. And again at the beginning of January, with a slightly odd promotion pricing all models at $299. Well, they’re at it again: until the 11th, the PlayBook is priced to move: $199 for the 16GB version, $249 for 32GB, and $299 for 64GB.

Unfortunately, the device won’t be shipping with the 2.0 version of the PlayBook software that we played with at CES. They will be rolling out the update soon, though.

Now, despite the protracted beating that this poor half-baked tablet has received, I have to say that at $200, with the new OS, this is a really good deal. For the price of a Nook or Fire, you get a device with much better specs and some big-boy productivity software. If you want games and apps, it’s obviously not a good choice. But if you use a BlackBerry and are interested in time management, email, contacts, syncing, and all that lovely stuff, the PlayBook is now a fairly practical buy. For $200, that is.

I sincerely doubt this is the last time the device will be on sale, though, and there are of course plans to obsolete it later in the year, at which time it will be going for peanuts. So there’s no pressure to buy, though if you’ve got a pair of Benjamins burning a hole in your pocket, I can think of worse ways to spend them.

Steve Jobs Impersonator With Angel Wings And Halo Used To Hawk A Worthless Android Tab

Posted: 02 Feb 2012 08:51 AM PST

jabs

Bad taste. Is nothing off-limits anymore?

I’m always up for a good satire but this Action Electronics’ video promo airing on Taiwanese for the Action Pad misses the mark. It’s not the turtle neck, stage, or even the premise. For me it’s the angel wings and halo. The little props takes the ad from a tasteless parody to an absurd stunt. But personal feelings aside, this company won. Their ad spot went viral and the Action Pad won’t go unnoticed.

PC World spoke with an Action Electronics’ spokesperson who indicated they’re not trying to “use his death.” She added “This is not meant to make fun of Jobs.”

The tablet in question is just another budget 7-inch Android tablet. It runs Android 2.3.3 and costs 6990 yuan ($236 USD) — nothing special besides the marketing.

The commercial started airing on Taiwanese TV late last month. The company even held a mock press conference with the impersonator, which is slightly less offensive because of the lack of angel wings and halo.

Apple is known to aggressively defend its image and Steve Jobs likeness and generally quickly releases the legal hounds. But this is a slightly different case. This isn’t a Steve Jobs action figure. This is some company, desperate to sell their wares, turning to a dirty tactic that they knew would go viral. It’s hard to hate on swaggering bravado even if the result is fucking ridiculous and rude.
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