Peek sux! It doesn't work and I'm gonna 1-star it's ass!

It saddens us that Peek has so many bad reveiws at the App Store. Most of them are simply because the user can't get it to work the first time.  What makes it worse is that this is primarily an iPhone issue that has nothing to do with Peek.  We know we have thousands and thousands of happy users out there, and only if we could get them to rate us. But as always, the angry customers are most often the ones that take the time to write a review...

So...again...this is how to solve 99% of Peek's 1-star reviews...

Q: Peek sucks! It doesn't work!?

A: 50% of Peek problems are solved by simply restarting the iPhone.  The other 50% are taken care of by reinstalling Peek.

Q: How do i reinstall?

A: 

1. Press and hold the Peek icon until it starts to wiggle. Tap the 'x' on the icon and confirm its removal.

2. Download Peek from iTunes or from iPhone App Store (you won't be charged twice)

3. Enjoy Peek!

Q: Peek Starts but just keep on loading?

A: Peek needs to know where you are. You have to enable "Location Services" in your settings pane. 

Q: It still just says "loading?

A: You have to have a internet connection (Edge, 3G or Wifi) for Peek to work. Check your connection. And when you have checked it, check it again.

Now my friend...go and write a nice review on the App Store!

PEEK 2.0 Release Delayed

Sorry...we goofed.

Though we have been working extremely hard to put the finishing touches on our upcoming Peek 2.0 upgrade, there have been a few unexpected delays. Last Friday we were hoping to announce a May 12th submission of 2.0 to Apple for review and publication. Now it looks like it will be closer to the end of May. We’re very sorry to our customers for the change and we will continue to work as hard as we can to have the new version in your hands as soon as possible.  

We’re a very small company and we simply don’t have the resources to ‘throw more bodies’ at the technical challenges when they surface.  So we thought the best thing we could do is just be completely honest with you and let you know that a few things have taken longer than originally expected. We are totally committed to making this new version a massive upgrade to the current one and we don’t want to sell you short on some features just to have it out a few days earlier.  

Thank you again for all the feedback our users have provided us.   We have definitely taken your comments into consideration while creating the new version of Peek. Another big thanks for your patience.  We are doing everything we can to reward you for it.   To avoid the potential for any future confusion, we will withhold any more announcements until we actually submit Peek 2.0 to Apple.

Our sincerest thanks and apologies...
The Peek Team

PEEK 2.0 is coming soon!

Includes:

-  Full Chat Histories
-  Friends List
-  Expanded User Profiles
-  Audio Messaging
-  Optional Facebook/Twitter Integration
-  Faster Messaging & Easier Navigation… and Much More!
 
Look for a release date to be announced next week. 

PEEK is up and running again!

Go Peeksters, Go!

Sorry for the interuption. Hopefully this will not happen again.

PEEK service is down for the moment!

Hey Peeksters!

The server that hosts PEEK is currently down. The tech-people at the thec-place are doing tech-things to sort this out and we hope to be up and running in an hour or so. Sorry guys!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOMMY!

Tommy W., Co-Founder and Chief System Architect for PEEK is turning 3 today! I don’t know if the age is accurate but I got it off his Peek Profile – where everyone tells the truth, right?  Tommy is too busy working on Peek 2.0 to celebrate today so send him a birthday greeting if you can.  

Oddly enough, it happens to be my birthday as well. I’m Christer, Chief Blogger and Head of All Things Unimportant here at Peek. Unlike Tommy I DO get out frequently.  I’ll be celebrating all day on a beautiful beach in South America so no need to send me any birthday wishes. We at Peek believe in balance.  That’s why Tommy works and I play.

Cheers...  C

PEEK Tagged as "Staff Favorite" in US App Store

After these last 10 days, you’ll never convince me that App Store positioning doesn’t matter.  In the same day, PEEK found itself on the front of the “Staff Favorites” list in the US and the top of the “New and Noteworthy” section in Australia.  Instantly we saw sales of PEEK go up several hundred per cent in each country!  It’s clear that most iPhone/iPod users periodically check the app store and don’t go much further than the front page – and with thousands of apps out there, who can blame them?!  

We certainly understand this and are grateful to be more visible for the time being.  We are also a bit confused by the seeming randomness of the whole App Store process including who makes these decisions and why for each store.  For example, we have been the #1 paid social app in several countries but were never mentioned in their “New and Noteworthy” sections.  Now we’re there and have little idea why...but we ain’t complaining!!  

After our initial frustration in the first weeks, we realized that this process was more or less out of our control.  Instead we decided to focus on the only thing we COULD control which was to make PEEK the best Social App in the world.  We realize we have a long way to go in order to accomplish this and we have taken your comments and suggestions very seriously.  

‘FRIENDS’ LIST and better Message History – we know, we know.  We’ve heard it from all corners of the earth!  These are features we actually planned from the start but we just wanted to make sure the anonymous element of PEEK wasn’t lost in the process.   That’s why the decision was made to release the first version without it. But rest assured it will be part of Peek 2.0! We are also hard a work on many other great features.  

Uhh, let me correct that...TOMMY is very hard at work!  I’m currently on a beach in Punta del Este, Uruguay.  Hey, it’s a rough life, I know, but someone has to be the International Ambassador for PEEK!!

¡Nos Vemos!   C

Kiwii's and Aussies loves to sneak-a-PEEK!

Peek is now No 1 paid social app in New Zeeland and No 2 in Australia!!! I'v been sending pics of snow to people "down under" like crazy. They can't get enough of it!

See you out there! Keep on Peek'n.

PEEK Announces First Upgrade

Many Peesters have been kind enough to pass along their ideas for improvements – and we’ve been listening!  The result is PEEK 1.1 which will be available in the App Store any time now.

From the day we came up with this whacky idea to the day we launched it, our motto has been “Keep it Simple...”  We wanted to create an app that was sleek, fun and extremely easy to use!  The plan was that once people got used to playing with PEEK they would naturally want to expand on it.  Then PEEK would continue to evolve based largely on user feedback.  

We are currently hard at work on many new features that will soon be available but we saw some things that we wanted to change right away.  Most of these ‘fixes’ have come from your feedback and include:  

• Better picture quality.
• Improved “Last Message” posting.
• The ability to receive messages while your iPhone is in ‘Sleep’ mode
• Several minor bug fixes
  

We hope you enjoy your “New & Improved” Peek experience and we will soon be adding many more features.  Keep the comments coming because we are counting on our loyal users to help drive PEEK to the the App Stratosphere.

Thanks!

'PEEKONS' Offer Users A Place To Meet

The PEEK Beacon (or Peekon) is a new feature that allows any user to post photos to a single page for anyone to see.  The Peekons show up on the main screen as White Stars and they represent different cities around the globe.  You don’t have to live in one of these cities to publish a photo so feel free to send a picture of your living room to Moscow, your pet to Tokyo or your Grandmother to Chicago.  We are also working hard to make these into live Chat Rooms for any Peekster to indulge in.  The Chat Room feature should be available in a few weeks but Photo Sharing is available now so have some fun and let us know what you think!

No 1 in Sweden! - Go PEEK Go!

Wow! This is amazing. We knew PEEK would be a hit, but we could never guess that it would top the charts in such a short period of time. Thank you Peeksters out there! Keep spreading the word and throw out your twitter-apps from your iPhones,  they are so fourth quarter 2008...

PEEK Hits #1 In Denmark!

Danes Know a Good Thing When They See It

Recent studies have revealed that Danes are among the most intelligent people in the world and today we have further proof.  In a single day, PEEK shot all the way to the top of the charts for paid Social Apps on the Danish App Store.  We have also moved up into the Top 5 in Sweden and Germany, proving there are highly intelligent and curious people everywhere. Seriously, a big “Thank You” goes out to ALL Peeksters for using, enjoying and sharing this app.  Let’s keep the PEEK Revolution Rolling!!

Italian Peekster Shares Emoji Hack for PEEK!

Many thanks go out to Bruno Federico, also known as ‘ic4’, a Peekster from Italy who turned us on to this great way of adding Emoji to PEEK. Now you can have a Huge assortment of playful icons to include in your text messages!
 
It takes a few steps but here are the complete instructions:
 

1)   Go to the iPhone App Store and download “Spell Number – Emoji for Free”

2)   Open the program and type in this exact number sequence:  9876543.21
 
3)   Tap the “Return” key and close the Spell Number program
 
4)   Go to Settings on your iPhone and open the following menus:
 
    General / Keyboard / International Keyboards / Japanese
 
5)   Turn the Emoji tab to “On” and exit settings
 
6)   Now return to PEEK and when you go to type a message, you’ll see a Globe icon next to the space bar. Open this to find hundreds of great icons to use in your messaging.  Be sure to look at every category and scroll through each one to see all the icons.
 
Good luck and a Thousand Thanks to Bruno for telling us about this excellent addition to your PEEK experience.  Forza Azzurri!

TOP 10 IN EUROPE!

From its launch just a few days ago PEEK has seen downloads from all over the world.  In Europe, the app seems particularly strong in Germany and Sweden.  We’re proud to say PEEK has cracked the TOP 10 LIST of paid social apps in both countries. U.S. downloads continue to rise as well and the positive reviews keep coming it.  
 
We want to sincerely thank ALL of you who have downloaded and experimented with PEEK. Many of you have offered excellent feedback as well for which we’re very grateful.  Our intention was to open with a fun and extremely simple app that just about anyone could figure out right away.  Our goal was to get people using it first and then to evolve the app based upon the customers’ feedback. The PEEK crew thanks you! Keep spreading the word.

TWO DAYS AND STILL SMILING

The 48 Hour Report

I’m not the superstitious type but earlier in the week, the thought of today’s date did cross my mind.  When you’ve got so much riding on something there’s a tendency to worry about things that would never otherwise think about.  In our case it was things like: “What if Bill Gates decides to buy Apple and shuts down production just out of spite?”  “Why did Tommy shave his head last month and start talking with increasing interest about Buddhist monasteries in Cambodia?” “What kind of affect do you think that asteroid hurling towards earth could have on iPhone sales?”
 
Those of you who have had children know that your overwhelming concern for that child’s safety and welfare can lead to the most bizarre cautionary scenarios that have little or no basis in reality. With that said, we have spent the last couple days glued to the computer in shifts just to make sure everything is running smoothly.  Much to our relief, things have gone really well.
 
The steady stream of downloads is increasing with each day and the feedback we’re getting is extremely positive.  To use the parenting theme again, the birthing process is over, mother and child are doing just fine, and we enter the weekend with the anticipation of watching baby PEEK taking her first steps.  

C

THE ANATOMY OF A LAUNCH

A little back story…

In September of 2008, three guys sat in a Stockholm restaurant and started scribbling on a piece of paper.  In about five month’s time, those barely legible scratchings would become the new iPhone application PEEK.  
 
Actually, Peter and Tommy had been tossing around various ideas for about a year but they realized things were getting way too complicated.  From experience with other apps they knew that too many functions often meant too much confusion on the part of the user – not to mention more things that could go wrong.  So they went back to the drawing board and returned to basics.  
 
Months of agonizing labor ensued.  Tommy, PEEK’s programmer, essentially chained himself to the computer while Peter came up with all the design elements and slipped Tommy an occasional meal.  
 
The third (and newest) addition to the team was Christer, your friendly blogger.  You see, as critical as those other guys were, it was my contributions that were actually the most important to the success of the app. Since both Peter and Tommy have forgotten more about computers than I’ll ever know, I became the de facto Crash Test Dummy. Their motto was, “If Christer can understand it, then any knucklehead can figure this out.”  
 
What emerged was PEEK, a very simple way of communicating with people all over the world…so easy even I can use it.
 
Wednesday, February 11th – PEEK goes live!
 
Okay so PEEK is finally ready to release and it has even been given the blessings of Apple. Now the real work begins.  How do we compete with the other billion or so apps out there all jockeying for position in the vaunted App Store.  Will they love us?  Hate us? Even hear about us?  
 
We made the decision to hold off on any press releases until we had it out for a few days. There was a feeling that we just wanted to see what would happen without any word at all.  The three of us were talking on the eve of the opening when suddenly there was a download!
 
How did that happen? We’re not even launching until tomorrow morning!  Oh yeah.  It IS tomorrow morning on the other side of the world.  Well that was a good sign – but no guarantee for future success.  We tried to get some sleep that night knowing there wouldn’t be much in the days to come.  
 
Wednesday was fantastic.  Maybe people weren’t downloading PEEK by the tens of thousands but we were encouraged that these initial brave Peeksters were popping up all over the globe. Tommy had built a little tracker so we could observe where the downloads were going and it was so much fun every time the name of a new country would came up.  Who knew they had iPhones in Bhutan?
 
So who’s Peeking? Who knows?  Since it’s an anonymous app, you could be talking to anyone. In fact, a Washington insider today confirmed our suspicions that a user named Ewen Charge could be the president himself.   We’ve already suggested “Free PEEK to all” as an essential component to any economic stimulus plan.
 
Happy Peeking!            C

Peek is launching tomorrow!

The most exciting invention since the Chia Pet! 

Peek is on iTunes Appstore tomorrow.