TwitterPeek: the World's First Twitter-Only Device

Mobile e-mail device maker Peek has partnered with Twitter to bring you the world's first dedicated Twitter device: TwitterPeek. The new handset lets you send and receive tweets and direct messages, follow new users, and view images sent via Twitpic. TwitterPeek features a 2.7-inch by 4-inch color screen, a full QWERTY keyboard, and no-contract nationwide unlimited wireless coverage.

By Ian Paul
Tue, November 03, 2009

PC World — Mobile e-mail device maker Peek has partnered with Twitter to bring you the world's first dedicated Twitter device: TwitterPeek. The new handset lets you send and receive tweets and direct messages, follow new users, and view images sent via Twitpic. TwitterPeek features a 2.7-inch by 4-inch color screen, a full QWERTY keyboard, and no-contract nationwide unlimited wireless coverage.

Twitter Bible: Everything You Need To Know About Twitter
Slideshow: Twitter Tips: Five Best Apps to Manage a Company Account

Available now from Amazon or TwitterPeek.com, this Twitter-only handset sells for $100. That price includes six months of free wireless service; monthly access will set you back $7.95 per month after that. Big spenders, though, can pay $200 up front for TwitterPeek and get lifetime wireless coverage.

What TwitterPeek doesn't have

From the sounds of it TwitterPeek leaves a lot to be desired. TwitterPeek allows you to send and receive tweets, but lacks a search function. So if plan on using this device to track tweets about your business, you will miss out on any conversations using hashtags--a user-created system of cataloging tweets by subject--or other conversations that don't include an @reply to your company's Twitter account.

TwitterPeek is also lacking a Web browser, which means you'll be left out of any conversations happening around a particular blog post or news item. So a tweet like, "Dog Lovers - you'll Dig this! bit.ly/4prwrb" will be useless on TwitterPeek. Plans are in the works to allow you to preview Web pages within TwitterPeek, but that will still leave the device crippled if you won't be able to get a complete view of what others are looking at.

Better Alternatives

With so many other Twitter-capable devices out there, I have to wonder about TwitterPeek's appeal. You can already get Twitter on any smartphone or feature phone with Internet access, and you can also send and receive tweets using SMS.

If you don't want to be stuck with high data fees typical of most smartphone plans, there are cheaper alternatives from Peek such as the Pronto for $60. This email-centric device will also let you send text messages, and access Twitter via Ping.fm. It's still a stripped-down device, but at least you can use it for three different functions, all with a cheaper price tag.

So what do you say? Has TwitterPeek got you excited? How many of you out there plan on grabbing one of these devices? If I had to guess, I'd say not that many.

You are here: Technology Topics » News

Most Recent Technology Topics Stories

White Papers »

Has Your Server Infrastructure Kept Pace with End User Demands?

Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Business Centric DLP

This report, by Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group, examines the need for a new business-centric approach to DLP in order to align business and security requirements.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Deliver Private Cloud Database as a Service with VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.

Reliable Disaster Protection with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.

Introduction to VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter