Our first auction was concluded with a 'buy it now'  our second is about an hour from finishing http://www.ebay.com/itm/111227424830?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

After that, we have one more to sell and that will probably be all unless our journalist friends who didn't write about us bother to send theirs back.

I have finally started listing the PengPod 1040 demo units themselves.  Its just one for now and I'll start another probably ending Sunday.  We might get two more units later, assuming the reviewers who never actually wrote anything send theirs back as well.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=111225704067

We have been auctioning off older random devices and refurbed or non working PengPods and will continue to do so until we clear our stock.  

Also some general news.  I have moved the site back to godaddy so it will be a little slower.  I moved the forums and all so everything is preserved.  I am trying to get the downloads back up but either my local connection of godaddy is blocking me, I will try them piecemeal to see if I can slip by whatever is filtering me but I dont know how long that will take.  I haven't been approving user accounts on the forums, we still get 100s of spam signups a day but with the slower hosting is next to impossible to clear them, all the admin screens load very slowly.  So for now, I'm just not going to be adding accounts unless contacted directly with a request.  Existing accounts should still work.

Well, we didn't make it.  First I want to say thank you to everyone who contributed and helped spread the word about the PengPods.  There will be a chance for a few people to own one, read at the bottom if you interested.  

One of our commercial customers said it best "IMO one of the things which is very wrong with the world we live in is that there are no Linux tablets.  I regard what Ubuntu and KDE are doing as ineffective.  It is solutions which drive the market, not desktop eyecandy."  This pretty much sums up our feelings on the matter as well.  Unfortunately we built all our plans on the media responding the same way to us a second time.  The response we mostly got was "We don't write about crowd funders because there are so many, let us know if you succeed." if we got any response at all.  Not very useful.  If we had known the world had turned we might have made our plans a little differently.  We had a much better response per visitor to the PengPod 1040 than the 1000/700 but just couldn't get those visitors like before. 

Enough about what might have been though,  I know everyone is going to ask about plans for the future.  Basically we are going to be shutting down, though we might still take on some consulting work for commercial customers.  We will not be able to offer the PengPod 1040 for general sales.  Had the 1000/700 not been discontinued, we might have limped along and brought out an A20 dual core option.  That is not going to be possible now, we spent too much money on the crowd funder.  I might have a longer break down of thinks we tried and learned if anyone is interested, but at the moment we are pretty busy wrapping things up and job hunting. 

We will be clearing out our inventory including some working PengPod 1040s, defective or refurbished PengPod 1000s/700s and various demo units, test units and samples from manufacturers we considered for the project.  It will all be sold on ebay http://www.ebay.com/usr/nicstix.  If you are interested in a bulk purchase of 3 devices or more of anything listed, please contact us directly.  I will post more links as once the PengPod devices are listed.

The deadline has been extended.  Crowd-funding will remain open until Saturday the 26th of October.  The cnet article has brought renewed interested and we are seeming more tweets and post, so please help us spread the word and take advantage of this momentum to reach our goal! 

So we've been posted on cnet and hopefully it will bring more attention.  We have been talking with the Indiegogo people and it turns out we can extend our crowd funding time.  I think we are going to do this to get these latest stories the chance to spread and hopefully spawn more.  This will of course impact our delivery time frame, which was pretty optimistic in the first place, however I think everyone would be happier to be able to get one, even a few weeks later than not get one at all.

I will post some more details once we finalize the time extension and estimate our new delivery time frames.

We have made it onto slashdot.  This is probably our best chance to pick up some momentum and get the funding really going.  If you haven't yet, please tell people you know and let places you go for tech news about the PengPod.  From our first crowd funding experience we learned once one place has picked it up, many more will follow.  Ubuntu edge was raising something like 300k a day, while of course I don't think we will ever get that kind of response (or media attention) it does show we can reach our goal quickly and that enough Linux enthusiast are out there, they just need to know about us!

Just a quick status update.  The numbers have been growing very slowly, which is probably obvious to everyone.  We still have plenty of time though and from the numbers we can analyze, people like the PengPod1040 MUCH more than our original PengPods on a per visitor basis. Last time the funding went slowly too until we got our first story on slashdot and a number of articles followed.  That cycle pretty much carried us to our goal.  So we think there is still plenty of time, we just need a big story to get things going.

So again we are asking to help us spread the word.  Tell people you know and make sure to contact any groups that might be interested to make sure they know about the PengPod.  If you are active in forums, on IRC or have a source for tech news make sure you let them know what you think of the PengPod and ask they help spread the word to make it a reality.  Now is the time.

I got this from customer of ours recently.  Its picture of a PengPod700 working as a navigation system, customers description below.  This is another great example of the versatility of the PengPods and what can be done when you have full source control of your system.

"PengPod with Linaro and Navit application, powered by GPSD and a Globalsat BU-353 GPS module
Photo below

6 months ago, I don't think it could be done...

Matt Brown"

Most people that would want a PengPod still don't know it exist!  Help us spread the word about the PengPod1040 and you could get one free!  We are giving away one free PengPod 1040 to whoever refers the most contributors!  If you win and have already contributed for a PengPod1040 you will have the choice between a refund or an additional PengPod 1040.  Details: Will be selected based on highest total contributions referred a single account, total users referred will be used as a tie breaker if needed.  Does not include any duties or taxes required to receive the device.

Here again is the link for our crowd funder.

Thanks for helping up spread the word!

Don't forget our crowdfunder is still going on.  Please help us spread the word and tell all the Linux/Android enthusiast you know about the project.  

The PengPod 1040 is now running Ubuntu Touch, you can see a demonstration video here.   3D Acceleration is working through libhybris.  There is still some integration to do but most of the big features are working.  As many of you know, Ubuntu Touch is still under development, so there are still a lot of bug fixes and such coming out.  We are going to be keeping up with the latest improvements as they come out and fine tuning our port.  So expect more news and videos as we make improvements.  We should be able to use this as a third boot option from the PengPod dual-boot boot loader, I guess we should really call it multi-boot. Its probably not going to be installed by default though.  We are still exploring the legal issues around distributing it now that we have resolved the technical issues.  You can learn more about the status of the various images at the wiki page here.   

I know we weren't putting out much news this last week or so.  Basically we had buried ourselves in getting the Ubuntu Touch port working.  So we will be a lot more active now, working to promote the crowdfunder and make the PengPod 1040 a reality.

Just a reminder we are having our weekly webex Q&A today at 2 pm EST, which is about 30 minutes from now.

You can find it here

https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/detail?uuid=M2CA2N3X1XBGE98CK9M8DGH6HT-E11J&occurrenceID=1379354400000

Our reddit AMA is online

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mc338/iama_founder_of_pengpod_a_company_offering_dual/

Opensuse is running on the PengPod 1040.  Its pretty basic at the moment, xfce an the menu and bars and mouse sized.  It does boot up provide a starting point.  We are hoping someone more familiar with the distro will want to come in and polish it up a little and maybe act as a community maintainer.  Please let us know if you are interested.

Also a reminder, our reddit AMA is starting in about 40 minutes.  I'll post a link up here once we start it.

We've got the Arch image working on the 1040.  It just boots to a prompt.  After looking through some Arch documentation, I think we are going to leave it at that for the moment.  I think most Arch would prefer the blank slate.  Feed back welcome, its not a distro any of us are really familiar with.

Also just a reminder we will be hosting a reddit AMA tomorrow around 4pm EST.  I'm not really sure how to link to one of those but it will be in here http://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/  just search for PengPod.

You can log in now on webex to see a live webcast about the PengPod 1040 with Q&A

https://meetings.webex.com/collabs/#/meetings/detail?uuid=M3HWTMHQOCFE2D3GHSH5DXA2FD-E11J

We didn't annouce to make sure there were spots but its now openly available.

The wait is almost over! We will be hosting a media event at 2 pm EST, after the media event we will then be posting photos of the new PengPod and a recording of the media event!

You'll Have to wait till tomorrow to see pictures, but in the meantime you can check out the Specs of the all new PengPod1040.

/products/pengpod1040

Introducing the PengPod1040, the tablet that will change everything. This unique product will transform the PC and Tablet world by merging both elegantly together to fit any lifestyle. Use the same high-powered quad-core PengPod to play your favorite Android game or watch your favorite movie on PengPods brilliant Hi-Def screen. After you’re done playing and want to get back to work just switch over to Linaro OS (Ubuntu arm); now you have the capability to do anything you would normally do on a PC right on your tablet like creating excel sheets, presentations, etc. Now as a consumer you can have the best of both worlds thanks to the PengPod.

We have had a lot of questions about the 1000.  Our supplier is no able to provide an A10 device that works with our image.  There are still some A10 tablets floating around for sale new but they have different, closed source touch screens and nand chips.  At this point, since we are so close to offering something new, we are just going to discontinue the line.

We have some stock of 700s but once those run out, I think they will be discontinued as well.

Keep checking here for more news, should be a big announcement withing the week.

Do to new integration to better serve our community our website registration and log in my not always work today. If this is the case please come back later and try again. I will let everyone know when the integration is complete. Thank you for your patience we have the best community!

None of this maintenance is affecting the PengPod store /pengstore

Tech Team