Dear Friends and Backers!

Thank you to everyone who provided lightning quick feedback to support@owithme.com after receiving the product and trying it out! We wanted to share with all of you a summary of first impressions.

*Looking good!* The packaging, look and feel of the THE O's have received an overwhelmingly positive response. Thank you! In addition, we got some great inputs for the next batch of packaging to provide more thorough instructions to help customers get started.

Love for the metal keychains. Thanks so much for the many lovely email messages and the great social media shout outs! We were also made aware, however, of quality issues that have effected a small number of keychains.  

Keyring mismatch: In the box with the keychain accessory, we included a ring that matches the color of the accessory. Unfortunately, the ring that was added to the pack in some cases is slightly bigger than what we had specified and had received with our samples. As a consequence, some of you told us that the accessory does not move totally freely in the loop at the top of the accessory. 

With more investigation, we noticed the ring is thinner on one side and can be eased in in almost all cases. Where this doesn’t work, a regular key ring works just fine. We are addressing this with the factory and it will be fixed for the next production run

Hand finishing: Even though all keychain accessories were made from the same mold, it seems that there is a slight variance with the hand finishing of the clasp. With feedback from you, it sounds like a small percentage do not close securely when an O is inside and it may cause the accessory to pop open during use. 

Please double check yours as we want to avoid any unpleasant experiences. We also want to understand better the scale of the problem so we can report this back to the factory. We will of course send replacements for all faulty pieces.

Major improvements on mobile apps. The first mobile app experience was disappointing for some, because of false notifications and other incorrect status information in the app. Thanks to detailed reports of issues by some of you, we were able to identify 3 main root causes:

• GPS is too inaccurate, causing the app to believe you have left your house 
• Quite often, you connected to a different O than what you thought 
• Spontaneous Bluetooth resets and other random events by the phone

As of today, the next version of the app is available! We strongly recommend to download it and try it again. To counter the above, we have implemented safe places by wifi, color indicators on the main screen, connectivity exception handling and parameter changes on the chip.

On Android, we have experienced a variety of issues specific to certain types of phones and old Android versions. Not all, but many of these issues should be fixed now, too. We are continuing to work on this!

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who helped during this first improvement cycle. As we mentioned before, we will have a new app version available every 2 weeks and rely on your feedback to know what to focus on! 

With kindest regards, 

Rose, Christian & THE O team

Dear Friends and Backers

Finally, finally, finally! THE O has been shipped to the vast majority of you. A short automated email with a summary of your shipment should have arrived in your inbox by now.

Time to get started! Here's what we recommend you do when you receive your reward:

1. Unwrap it, touch it, feel it! :) Then download the app on your phone using these links:

iOS - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-o-app/id1095894818

Android - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details…

2. Make sure Bluetooth is switched on and follow the instructions to connect the first O on your phone. Make sure you only pull out one plastic strip to begin with!

3. Test the basics:

• Leave your connected O behind and walk away from it with your phone to see how long it takes on your phone to receive an alert.
• If you are at home or in your office, we recommend you make it a "safe place" in the menu - notifications are muted in all safe places. If you walk away from the same item again within this area, you don't get an alert.
• If the item is your wallet or another belonging you never want to leave at home, tap on its icon on the home screen which will take you through to the item screen. Here, press the "essential" button. Every time you leave your home, we will check for it - have a go by walking out of your home without it to get a reminder. 

O! and for coat checks in museums and restaurants, you can choose to mark your item "safe for now" directly in the notification center - we will mute notifications, but alert you if you leave the place without it.

We received and incorporated a lot of feedback during the product design phase. That helped us to make the device even better and we like to think of you all as “co-creators” of THE O. To express our gratitude, we added a special "hall of fame" page on our website to acknowledge you all as part of our extended product development team here: www.owithme.com/kickstarter. So next time someone asks you if you have ever made a wearable tech product, you can confidently say yes - and prove it! :)

And there is more you can do now! An astonishing 75% of you stated that you wanted to get involved in testing and improving the app. While we could only involve a small number of you to help us with our prototypes, now is your time! We will send updates to the app stores roughly every two weeks from now on based on your feedback. Please send any feedback or feature requests to support@owithme.com and we will keep you posted about the progress! A new version of the app with design improvements is already scheduled to be released within the next couple of days.

Please also give us your thoughts about the packaging, your first impressions about the design of the device and the accessories. What do you like about it? What would you like to change? We can’t wait to start this phase of product improvement together with you and hear your thoughts!

As always, thanks so much for your continued support!

Rose, Christian and THE O team

Dear Friends and Backers

Finally, finally, finally! THE O has been shipped to the vast majority of you. A short automated email with a summary of your shipment should have arrived in your inbox by now.

Time to get started! Here's what we recommend you do when you receive your reward: 

1. Unwrap it, touch it, feel it! :) Then download the app on your phone using these links:

iOS - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-o-app/id1095894818

Android - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.owithme.theo

2. Make sure Bluetooth is switched on and follow the instructions to connect the first O on your phone. Make sure you only pull out one plastic strip to begin with! 

3. Test the basics:

• Leave your connected O behind and walk away from it with your phone to see how long it takes on your phone to receive an alert.
• If you are at home or in your office, we recommend you make it a "safe place" in the menu - notifications are muted in all safe places. If you walk away from the same item again within this area, you don't get an alert.
• If the item is your wallet or another belonging you never want to leave at home, tap on its icon on the home screen which will take you through to the item screen. Here, press the "essential" button. Every time you leave your home, we will check for it - have a go by walking out of your home without it to get a reminder.

O! and for coat checks in museums and restaurants, you can choose to mark your item "safe for now" directly in the notification center - we will mute notifications, but alert you if you leave the place without it.

We received and incorporated a lot of feedback during the product design phase. That helped us to make the device even better and we like to think of you all as “co-creators” of THE O. To express our gratitude, we added a special "hall of fame" page on our website to acknowledge you all as part of our extended product development team here: www.owithme.com/kickstarter. So next time someone asks you if you have ever made a wearable tech product, you can confidently say yes - and prove it! :)

And there is more you can do now! An astonishing 75% of you stated that you wanted to get involved in testing and improving the app. While we could only involve a small number of you to help us with our prototypes, now is your time! We will send updates to the app stores roughly every two weeks from now on based on your feedback. Please send any feedback or feature requests to support@owithme.com and we will keep you posted about the progress! A new version of the app with design improvements is already scheduled to be released within the next couple of days.

Please also give us your thoughts about the packaging, your first impressions about the design of the device and the accessories. What do you like about it? What would you like to change? We can’t wait to start this phase of product improvement together with you and hear your thoughts!

As always, thanks so much for your continued support!

Rose, Christian and THE O team

Dear Friends and Backers!

"Barring any unforeseen events, you should have your Kickstarter rewards in your hands by 15 April 2016." - ummm... us.

Despite our best efforts, there has been not one, but several incidents and complications that are about as "unforeseen" as it gets. In summary, this means that you will have to wait a few more days to receive your O’s. In fact, minutes ago, we received the confirmation that all goods passed US customs, the last hurdle, and that everything will be in our warehouse early next week. Send outs will start immediately thereafter for everyone that provided a complete and correct address and phone number.

We do not want to make excuses and we apologize for having to let you wait a little longer. But we thought you might enjoy hearing about what happened to the O's that you helped bring to the world.

Firstly, there were many more new challenges with paperwork to get the product out of China and into Hong Kong. But when finally everything was ready, the O’s got stuck in customs again. The reason for the delay was very different this time.. One of our manufacturing partners sent us this note:

What can we say? You can learn more about this Chinese Holiday, here on Wikipedia. 

But that was not it. We had a serious moment of shock when a shipping company dropped our keychain packages into the sea. Or at least that’s what it looked like.

Thanks to the double layer of plastic the keychain boxes were wrapped in they were perfectly unharmed, which was a big relief. And the final packaging came out really nicely as you can see. But the process of unpacking and packing them again in clean, dry boxes caused yet another delay.

Other than that, we have successfully delivered a first version of the app to the app stores as scheduled. We have already started releasing frequent updates with fixes and improvements.

In our last update, we talked about our efforts to curate and create content for THE O community, centred around the science, philosophy and art of 'smart living’. Our Digital Marketing Intern is a double major in Psychology and English and she has written a great blog post for us all about the perils and pitfalls of multitasking. If you are interested in getting more done with less time, check it out by clicking here.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your continued patience. We can't wait for you to finally receive your O's! 

Rose, Christian and THE O Team

Dear Friends and Backers!

Lots of things to update you about...

Shipping 

The moment we have all been impatiently waiting for has finally arrived! We have a confirmed shipping timeline. THE O is expected to pass Chinese customs and be ready in Hong Kong for shipping to the US on 31 March 2016. From there it will take 5 days to get to our warehouse. And then to your door within another couple of days, depending on your location. Barring any unforeseen events, you should have your Kickstarter rewards in your hands by 15 April 2016. 

IMPORTANT: if you have changed your mailing address since we asked you for it in the survey, please log in to Kickstarter and change it (the link is on our campaign page, next to your reward). Also, despite several follow ups from Kickstarter and emails from us, a few of you still have not filled out the survey at all. Without your address there, we can’t send your reward : (

New Website

Making the best product we can and getting it to you as soon as possible - despite several small and a few big obstacles - has been our number one priority since the Kickstarter campaign ended. We now have to catch up with some housekeeping. We are happy to announce that we have a much improved version of our website ready to show you. Please have a look at the preliminary version here: www.owithme.com. A couple of things are still missing and are being added as we speak. We highly appreciate any kind of feedback in the meantime! 

Community Value

With your help, and the help of future customers, we would like to engage and actively contribute to a discussion about how science, technology and good design can help to improve people’s lives. How we can overcome handicaps, extend our capabilities, make better use of our time, be more mindful and, eventually, happier.

Under the umbrella of “Live Smarter. Be Carefree.” we have started to curate high quality content on our facebook page and will complement it with food for thought on our own blog starting next week. Please take a second to click here and give us a like - we would appreciate it a lot! 

If you have friends interested in leading happier lives (or friends that should be...), you can send them an invite from our page: 

App Development

Some of you have been very keen to know more about THE O mobile app. So here you go: The first official release in app stores is scheduled for 31 March 2016. Beta testing with a handful of you has been extremely helpful to improve reliability and stability. Thanks again to those that generously lent us their time! Apologies to all the others that we could not involve at this stage despite their willingness to support. Rest assured: there will still be a lot more to improve going forward and we highly appreciate everyone’s best detective skills to discover and point out bugs and suggest improvements. We promise to release updates frequently and in a timely manner to quickly make this an app we all love.  

Behind the scenes: Think of your wallet permanently singing a song. When you start walking and it becomes harder and harder to hear it, then - maybe - you are about to leave it behind. Or when you leave your house in the morning, and no song is heard at all, your wallet might not be with you. That’s exactly how THE O works. Just that the song is a number of Bluetooth signals sent from our little devices to the mobile app. An interesting challenge for us was to correctly guess if the wallet is indeed being left behind or if there is something else going on. Because, as with sound, a Bluetooth signal is influenced by the surrounding environment (compare shouting from under seven blankets to shouting from a mountain). To dynamically adapt our ears depending on the situation, we have developed a couple of complex algorithms. We use statistical tests to analyze the signals and we look at contextual information such as your own movement to determine what is happening.

Also, if you have two mathematicians in the team, this is how icons arrange themselves on the home screen to optimize the space :) 

 We’ll be back for another update after the shipment has been made.

Thank you all!

Rose, Christian and THE O Team