Podcast appearances and mentions of chris early

In this short episode there is a discussion on care package rules for their prison.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode I discuss the disappearance of Grace Allison Smith.   Intro created by Chris Early.

In this episode I talk about the crime of Allen Harrison from Huntington, WV in 1892.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode I discuss does serving for our country turn us into cold blooded killers?  Audio from Jack Neel, Richard Ramirez and Jeffrey Dahmer! Music created by Chris Early

THE TIM JONES AND CHRIS ARPS SHOW 0:00 SEG 1 St. Charles County early voting lawsuit dismissed | Tim and Chris early voted today 16:08 SEG 2 Carol Sheahan, Bryan Pieschel, and Jacob Williams from Dogs for Our Brave | TOPIC: Their mission to provide professionally trained service dogs at no cost to veterans who have suffered debilitating injury or illness while in service to our country | Charity Auction and Sip & Savor Event at Twisted Tree on Sundayhttps://www.dfob.org/ 32:17 SEG 3 Chris' Corner is about some trending items that don't harbor good news for the Harris/Walz campaign     https://newstalkstl.com/  FOLLOW TIM - https://twitter.com/SpeakerTimJones    FOLLOW CHRIS - https://twitter.com/chris_arps    24/7 LIVESTREAM - http://bit.ly/NEWSTALKSTLSTREAMS  RUMBLE - https://rumble.com/NewsTalkSTL   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

THE TIM JONES AND CHRIS ARPS SHOW 0:00 SEG 1 St. Charles County early voting lawsuit dismissed | Tim and Chris early voted today 16:08 SEG 2 Carol Sheahan, Bryan Pieschel, and Jacob Williams from Dogs for Our Brave | TOPIC: Their mission to provide professionally trained service dogs at no cost to veterans who have suffered debilitating injury or illness while in service to our country | Charity Auction and Sip & Savor Event at Twisted Tree on Sundayhttps://www.dfob.org/ 32:17 SEG 3 Chris' Corner is about some trending items that don't harbor good news for the Harris/Walz campaign     https://newstalkstl.com/  FOLLOW TIM - https://twitter.com/SpeakerTimJones    FOLLOW CHRIS - https://twitter.com/chris_arps    24/7 LIVESTREAM - http://bit.ly/NEWSTALKSTLSTREAMS  RUMBLE - https://rumble.com/NewsTalkSTL   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I talk about a possible mothman sighting in Lincoln County, West Virginia.  Audio from NBC4 Columubus and WBOY 12 News Music created by Chris Early.

We interview Jeff this week who is author of the Beyond the Headlines series. He also is owner of Scorpion Lair Games where he has created numerous killer theme style games and more.    Music created by Chris Early. Jeff's Book Jeff's Links

The title isn't literally bigfoot in prison, but prisoners that had experiences of bigfoot type activity when they were free.  Music created by Chris Early

Twitter: @podgaverockInsta: @podgaverockSpecial Guest Host: Tal PinchevskyBand of Horses “The Funeral" from the 2006 album "Everything All The Time" released on Sub Pop (US)/Kids Records (UK). Written by Ben Bridwell, Mat Brooke, Chris Early, and Tim Meinig and produced Phil Ek and Band of Horses.Personel:Ben Bridwell - Vocals, guitarMat Brooke - GuitarChris Early - Bass guitarTim Meinig / Sera Cahoone - DrumsCover:Performed by Josh BondIntro Music:"Shithouse" 2010 release from "A Collection of Songs for the Kings". Written by Josh Bond. Produced by Frank Charlton.

Twitter: @podgaverockInsta: @podgaverockSpecial Guest Host: Tal PinchevskyBand of Horses “The Funeral" from the 2006 album "Everything All The Time" released on Sub Pop (US)/Kids Records (UK). Written by Ben Bridwell, Mat Brooke, Chris Early, and Tim Meinig and produced Phil Ek and Band of Horses.Personel:Ben Bridwell - Vocals, guitarMat Brooke - GuitarChris Early - Bass guitarTim Meinig / Sera Cahoone - DrumsCover:Performed by Josh BondIntro Music:"Shithouse" 2010 release from "A Collection of Songs for the Kings". Written by Josh Bond. Produced by Frank Charlton.Other Artists Mentioned:QuarterbackPatrick MaholmesKirk CousinsMarcus MariotaWham! “Wham, Bam, I Am A Man”Neil YoungLittle RichardWham! “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”George Michael “Careless Whisper”Michael JordanLed ZeppelinBob DylanBruce SpringsteenThe White Stripes “Seven Nation Army”ElvisDavid BeckhamShaqMy Morning JacketKings of LeonBand of Horses “Monsters”Band of Horses “Our Swords”How I Met Your MotherHBO's Road the the Winter ClassicMy Morning Jacket “Off the Record”SantanaBand of Horses “No One's Gonna Love You”Perry FarrellBand of Horses “Ode to the LRC”The JordanairesJames Blunt “You're Beautiful”Built to SpillModest MouseFleet FoxesNeil YoungEliot SmithAlice in ChainsScreaming TreeStaindPuddles of MuddCreedWilcoThe  Fruit BatsBand of Horses “Detlef Schrempf”Kid Cudi “The Prayer”The Grouch “Comin' Up”CommonArctic MonkeysGorillazImagine DragonsCage the ElephantWolfmotherGrizzly Bear

In this episode Bruce continues his talk with Jeff about his case.  To write Jeff: Jeffrey Hall #397697 Macdougall C.I. 1153 East St. South Suffield, CT 06080 (You can also set up securus and get free stamps to email Jeff)   Music created by Chris Early

In this episode Bruce talks with Jeff about his case.  To write Jeff: Jeffrey Hall #397697 Macdougall C.I. 1153 East St. South Suffield, CT 06080 (You can also set up securus and get free stamps to email Jeff)   Music created by Chris Early

In this episode Bruce talks with Jose about his interesting case.  To contact Jose go to Facebook Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we talk about Andre Thomas and his case. His case is featured in my new book coming out in April 2023! Mentally Caged: Mental Health Stories from Prison. Music created by Chris Early 

In this episode we talk with Chris about his artwork and his writing.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we talk art with inmate Joseph Rizzo.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we discuss could bigfoot be responsible for some of the people who vanish.  Audio is from the Sierra Mountains recorded in the 70s.  Music created by Chris Early. 

In this episode we discuss the case around Alexis Patterson. Alexis is labeled missing, but does a hitman serving time in Wisconsin know more? Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we interview convicted murderer David Kalac.  Music created by Chris Early.

In this episode we discuss prison life stories and mental health. Earl's Facebook Music created by Chris Early

In this episode Earl talks about what led up to the murder, the murder and after.  Earl's Facebook Music created by Chris Early

In this episode Earl talks about his childhood and life leading up to his crime.  Earl's Facebook Music created by Chris Early.

In this episode we interview true crime collector Dakota ModifiedMermaid as he tells us his story of why he got into true crime collecting among other things.  Music created by Chris Early.

Is what we believe is true in the Sunset Strip Murders? Did Douglas Clark actually kill anyone? Is he innocent? We scratch the surface in this interview with podcaster Dave Coop (Dead Man Talking) where he works with Douglas Clark to show the world all that was covered up in the case.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we discuss with Taci about Roe vs Wade, her transition in prison being a transgender, mass shootings along with other criminal law subjects.  Music created by Chris Early. 

In this episode we interview convicted murderer Nicholas Bryant.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we talk to our buddy filmmaker/author John Borowski. You can stream his work on Tubi for free, or check it out on Amazon Prime.  John Borowski's Store Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we interview Dr. Bill Kimberlin. Watch Me Die (Amazon) Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we interview ex professional killer William "Wild Bill" Holbert.  Music created by Chris Early. 

In this episode we finish up our interview with Joseph "Todd" Rizzo.  Music created by Chris Early

We pick up on part 2 with our interview with Joseph and this episode we talk about the murder so *trigger warning*! Music created by Chris Early

This is our interview with killer Todd "Joseph" Rizzo. In Part 1 we talk about his early life and what led up to his crime.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we discuss a possible new suspect in the unsolved murder of Leah Hickman. Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we discuss Eric Miller's murder and the question he answered for me in his letter.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we share a part of a letter from a recent killer when he discusses life after prison.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode I discuss a little on Hadden's crimes and read a letter from my own collection from him.  Music created by Chris Early.

Darren Graver, Global Workplace Lead at Wise, joins Bold Founder Caleb Parker, to share how his team has recently repurposed their offices for post-pandemic working. We learn about Wise's flexible working policy, and why companies should embrace working from anywhere, including some tips for those leaning in this direction. We also hear why Darren still believes in the workplace, but how he expects work from anywhere to impact corporate real estate portfolios. Darren gives us a peek inside his mindset for creating dynamic workplaces, including his "scientific process" as well as what tech is needed to get it right.   Connect with Darren Graver on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-graver/  Connect with Caleb Parker on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebparker/  If you have any questions or feedback on this episode, email podcast@workbold.co   Value Bombs   80% of our employees want to come into the office zero to three days a week – Darren Graver I call it “workplace without borders” – Darren Graver Since launching our hybrid working model in November last year, we've seen over 21,800 remote working days of employees working from anywhere in the world outside of their home office country – Darren Graver Many of our employees are living in countries where their families aren't based and allowing them to work from anywhere means they can go home and spend really valuable time with family members – Darren Graver Workplace without borders, letting people work anywhere and empowering your people is a massive cultural shift – Caleb Parker We work with a philosophy of autonomous teams. So we empower our teams to make decisions, we empower them to decide what problems to solve – Darren Graver When you are younger member of staff living in larger cities, actually having access to space at home can be quite difficult – Darren Graver Every organization is at different maturity levels, is at different places in its growth. What's right for a start-up is going to be very different to what's right for a publicly listed company – Darren Graver We need to be changing the way we think about the workplace and putting the customer at the centre of the universe – Caleb Parker We need to be able to be comfortable with that mentality of failing fast and learning from those mistakes, and then adjusting and going again – Darren Graver I'm really excited about how you can use technology and modular furniture solutions to create this demand-lead space. I think that's the future - Darren Graver In terms of proper hardware for supporting dynamic workplaces, I think sensors are really the future here – Darren Graver What happens if some people don't want to work from home? And my answer is, talk to your people, talk to your employees, ask them questions – Caleb Parker When we think about space needs, I think it's just about reshaping the spaces that teams have within the building – Darren Graver I read this stat that we are adding the equivalent of New York City to the planet every 34 days – Darren Graver   In terms of landlords and looking at it more holistically from a real estate perspective, I do think we'll see more like amenity rich offerings without doubt – Darren Graver       Resources Why we introduced a hybrid model of flexible working at Wise Ed Catmull's book that Darren references, “Creativity Inc: Overcoming Unseen Inspiration”   Shout Outs  Andrew Farah CEO of Density Kaptivo Liam Doe founder of the Old Bond Store  Chris Early at Telefonica   About Darren Graver https://www.linkedin.com/in/darren-graver/  Darren Graver is Global Workplace Lead at Wise, a publicly held fintech company listed on the London Stock Exchange (formerly TransferWise). Since their founding in 2011, The London based fintech company is a fast growing customer for the office industry. Darren is responsible for designing and executing the company's global workplace strategy across 21 offices. On a day-to-day basis, Darren incorporates industry-leading practices including the design of future workplace environments, introduction of workplace technology, programme and change management.  Prior to his role at Wise, Darren managed the end to end real estate process for global life sciences company, Abcam, while executing on their global corporate real estate strategy to support organic and acquisition growth. Darren is regularly engaged in the future of work conversation and recently reopened the 6th floor of the Wise #london office following a full refurbishment that focused on inclusivity, ergonomics, sustainability, wellbeing and flexibility   Sponsors Fortune Favours the Bold Bold merges property management & Space-as-a-Service to drive asset value and help office customers grow faster. Now part of NewFlex (www.workbold.co)    Future Proof Your Portfolio with NewFlex NewFlex delivers and manages a range of branded solutions for every type of building, in every type of location, for every type of occupier. Including the flexibility to develop your own brand. All enabled by flexible management contracts where we are invested in making money for you. (www.newflex.com)   Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production company for brands, organizations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right equipment, training, and guidance to ensure you sound amazing. (https://www.apodcastcompany.com)   Subscribe to the #WorkBold Podcast https://workbold.co.uk/podcast/

In this episode I discuss my books and read a piece out of them.  Music created by Chris Early

In this episode we talk about Eric Miller's advice on solitude among other things.  Music created by Chris Early.

We back at it again after a necessary brief hiatus. My brothas Ledge, Cheez, Hollywood and special guest Chris Early from Twitter here to chop up the Civil War card taking place in Raleigh, NC on August 28th as well as the Ultimate Madness 4 Semi-Finals coming up this weekend....and some other interesting topics. We appreciate yall tuning in. Peace & Love. God Bless.

We discuss the updates on Chad and what he's been going through in prison here lately. Music created by Chris Early.

In this episode we discuss a little on Eric Miller's case.  Music created by Chris Early.

In this episode we discuss Barbara's case.  Music created by Chris Early.

In this episode we discuss the case around Penny Doe.  Music created by Chris Early.

In this episode we talk about Richard answering questions and we answer them too. Music created by Chris Early.

In this episode we discuss the disappearance/murder Rosie Gordon. Music created by Chris Early.

Rebuilding a Marriage Better Than New (Part 1) - Chris and Cindy BeallRebuilding a Marriage Better Than New (Part 2) - Chris and Cindy BeallRebuilding a Marriage Better Than New (Part 3) - Chris and Cindy BeallFamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Embracing Hope Guest:                        Chris and Cindy Beall                                 From the series:       Rebuilding a Marriage Better Than New                   Bob: Rebuilding a broken marriage is not a simple process; it's not a painless process. But Chris Beall—who is doing it—says it is a worthwhile process to go through. Chris: You're walking through a betrayal—you don't know the where to go. The best thing you can do for other people is not tell a story but live a story. It's not time for you to focus on helping other people. Every day you're going to choose to forgive the other person, you are writing a sentence in a paragraph of a story that years from now will be worth telling—and we do that by submitting to God at every moment of this process of healing. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, August 30th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. If there has been damage done to your marriage, there is a path forward—and it's a path worth walking. Stay with us. 1:00 And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us.  I sent out a tweet a while back and I got a response to it. I'm thinking maybe our guests could help—knowing how I should respond to the response. The tweet I sent out said—it was from when Gary Thomas was here and we were talking about cherishing and what it means to cherish one another in marriage. I said, “Cherishing another person means I'm going to look out for your interests as more important than my own.”  The tweet I got back was from somebody who said, “How do you get there with a lying, betraying husband who has no idea what passion or intimacy is?” I don't know how to answer that in 140 characters—I don't think you can answer that in 140 characters—but it's a very real issue for a lot of people thinking, “How do I fulfill my vows? How do I love and trust and cherish another person when they are a lying, betraying individual?” 2:00 Dennis: That really is a good question—and I'm glad we have the guests that we have on FamilyLife Today.  Bob: So we're off the hook!  Dennis: Chris— Bob: So, we'll let them answer it! Dennis: Chris and Cindy Beall join us again on the broadcast. Welcome back. Chris and Cindy: Thank you! Dennis: Chris is a pastor at Life Church in Oklahoma City. Cindy is an author of a book called, Rebuilding a Marriage Better Than New—and Cindy, you're the expert on this because this is what you've done.  Cindy: One of the things that people often say is, “Well, I'm going to do this to them because they are doing this to me”—so through revenge they are getting back at someone. I believe that when we get back at someone, the first person that we're hurting is God. If Chris sins against me and then I then turn around and say, “I'm going to go cheat on him.” I've wounded the heart of God first—I have broken covenant with Him first—and then I might hurt my husband.  For me, I would say to that woman—or to anyone—you've got to do the right thing regardless of someone else's actions.  3:00 That's it. Someone else's sinful life does not give me the right to sin against my God. That's where I lived. It's not easy. It's very challenging, and I can't say I did it 100% perfect all the time—but I don't want to break my God's heart—I don't want to do that. Bob: You've had the opportunity, over that last half dozen years, to sit down with lots of couples who have gone through what you lived through. What you lived through was years of your husband looking at pornography—ultimately that lead to affairs outside of marriage—he fathered a son. You didn't know any of this. He finally comes clean. You have to decide—“Am I going to stay with him? Am I going to try to rebuild this marriage? Can I ever trust him again?”—all of these things facing you.  When you sit down with these couples today, they are at a place that you were at, where there is a road in front of them.  4:00 You can pick one path and that's a path that can feel like it will cause the pain to stop right away—or you can pick the other path which feels like this is going to take me right into the pain. What kind of hope do you give them and how do you point them in a God-ward direction? Cindy: The first thing, I think— just the fact that maybe it's the four of us—maybe it's a couple and Chris and me. I think the fact just seeing us brings them some hope—just the fact that we've lived through it. So when I'm faced with that question a lot of women will say, “What should I do?” Honestly, I cannot make that decision for them. I tell them, “You don't you have to decide the rest of your life today.” I steal that little phrase from my friend Kevin.  5:00 But I also just encourage them, “Look, whatever path you take is going to hurt. Where is God leading you? Let the peace of God be your guide.” If you've got a spouse that is willing to do whatever it takes—you're willing to lay your life down and rebuild this. Consider this path. If you've got a spouse that's still with someone else, or is acting like all this is your fault. Then you might have to play some hardball there, and show some tough love.  Dennis: I'm just thinking of the command in Genesis 2, that says, “for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, shall cleave to one another, and the two shall become one.” If you had not made a covenant between three—a man, and a woman, and their God—there's no way this marriage would be standing today.  Chris: Right! Dennis: There wouldn't be a title of a book, Rebuilding a Marriage Better—Better!— Than New.  Chris: Right. Dennis: The covenant of Almighty God gave you the standard to make this work.  6:00 Chris: Right. One thing that we experienced several years back—I'll set the scenario, but it's super-relevant—almost four years ago, our house burned down. We are going through this process of, “Okay we've lost everything, we have to rebuild. We've got to replace everything.” Our insurance company—that was amazing, I will tell you—they said, “We're going to pay to rebuild your house, but we don't think your foundation is damaged, so we're not going to pay to replace it.”  In our office when we meet with couples—we see this every day—there's some huge catastrophe in their marriage and they want a new house but they are unwilling to replace the old foundation. So how do we communicate? There are behaviors that we've got to go past the foundation and create a new normal. Dennis: What you're saying is, it's not a matter of slapping a new coat of paint— Chris: Right. Dennis: —on a house that is rotting. Chris: Right.  Dennis: But you've got to start with the right foundation.  7:00 I just have to say here, this is why the Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway is so important for couples. I was driven to the airport by a guy whose son and a young lady are getting ready to get married. I told him and I said, “Give your son and your future daughter-in-law the very best wedding gift they will ever receive because it will help them turn their marriage license into a marriage—into a real marriage—” Chris: Right! Dennis: “—into one that is built on the right foundation.” It's very practical—talking about how two imperfect people—from the start—can build a single structure—together—off the same set of blueprints. Give them the conference, the Weekend to Remember marriage getaway as a gift—it will pay off for decades. The guy nodded his head and said, “You know, I'm going to talk to my wife about that tonight because we want their marriage to go the distance.”  8:00 Bob: There's information about the Weekend to Remember online at FamilyLifeToday.com if our listeners are interested. If you have not been—you really ought to check it out.  Dennis: And it's not just for engaged couples.  Bob: No, and that's right! It's always good to take the marriage in for a little preventive maintenance; right? Dennis: We had a couple recently attend who'd been married 60 years.  Bob: Yes. Dennis: They felt it was time for an oil change and a tune-up. There you go!! Bob: I think one of the things that you two have learned in the rebuilding process of your marriage is that as you've invested in other peoples' marriages—God has used that to strengthen the bond between the two of you; right? —Talk about that. Cindy: It is the best part of our story that when we share with others—when we help them with the same help that was given to us—2 Corinthians 1:3-4—when we do that—it's like we heal more. 9:00 Like with each couple we visit with—with each woman I talk with on the phone, or have a FaceTime conversation or meet for coffee—with each conversation, God is redeeming that marriage bit by bit.  What's funny is I love our marriage where it is. We're best friends! We're very healthy—that's the word I use to describe our marriage—very healthy. Not “perfect”, not “good”, not “great”—healthy and strong. What's fun is that it's getting better, because we're going to invest—we are going to continue to steward our story and share and help others so it's just going to get better.  Chris: I'd say for—say for any listener that's in the early stages of just trying to figure out—you're walking through a betrayal, you don't know where to go—the best thing you can do for other people, is not tell a story—but live a story. It's not time for you to focus on helping other people.  10:00 Every day that you walk through a trigger that hits you or you're going to choose to forgive the other person, you're writing a sentence in a paragraph of a story that years from now will be worth telling. You don't need to be focused on telling your story but you need to be focused on writing that story. We do that by submitting to God in every moment of this process of healing.  Bob: I agree with you—I do think though there are some couples who think, “Well, we could never try to reach out and help others because our marriage isn't perfect.”  Chris: Right. Bob: That leaves a lot of people never reaching out and helping anybody— Chris: Right. Bob: —because our marriages are never perfect. At what level of health—where do you need to get to health-wise before you can start to say, “I think maybe we can speak into somebody else's life?” Chris: Early on it wasn't us looking for people to help it was people coming to us. If we felt like we were at least one step ahead of them— Dennis: There you go! Chris: Here we go! Let's go! We can offer you—here's what we're doing, we're on the road too—we're not experts. In these latter days it's been much more where we're looking to pro-actively help people.  11:00 But for the most part of this 15 years, people would come to us, “Hey, I heard you're going through this”—if we really felt like that was a step ahead. That pretty much pertains to every person listening to this—you are a step ahead of someone.  Cindy: Someone. Bob: That's right—and somebody is a step ahead of you. Chris: Correct. Bob: If you can be in a cycle where you're learning from those who are a step ahead of you and you are helping those who are a step behind you. That's how the church is supposed to work—that's what this is supposed to look like; right? Chris: Absolutely! Pauls and Timothys! We each have somebody pouring into us and we each have people that we are pouring into—absolutely! Dennis: You had somebody who invested in you in the early months after the bombshell went off in your marriage.  Cindy: Yes, Jim and Beth Kuykendall—we cannot speak more highly of them. There are not enough words in the dictionary to talk about how amazing they are. Without their input we would just have been a hot mess.  12:00 Chris: Jim and Beth—for the first 30 days—every night—were sitting on our living room floor. There was just this invasive commitment to—“We're going to do life together”—and, “As you guys face things—just today—we're going to process them and speak of life over you—we're going to go to God's word, every single night.”  That may not be realistic for everyone, but that had such a huge impact—not just in the counsel that they gave, but just the relational presence—knowing that they had walked through a similar story. We have a physical example of hope sitting right in front of us on our couch.  Bob: Chris—I have to ask because it's been 15 years now since the story was told. Prior to that time you had been ensnared with pornography and where that led you—the temptation can't have just gone completely away. Over the last 15 years to where you go, yes, you know, I've felt that for a long time and I just never feel it anymore. Chris: I'm all good! I'm fixed!  13:00 Bob: So what's the difference between the temptation today and what it used to be? Chris: How I would answer that is that I am free—but I am not fixed. I'm a human being, I'm imperfect—I have a sin nature just like everyone else. So I am free. I am not a slave to this sin and I haven't been for 15 years—but I am tempted just like everyone else. I‘ll give you an example.  I have learned to see the temptations and respond a little bit more quickly to them. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago, that a young lady that came up to me—a precious young lady—attractive. “Pastor Chris, you've changed my life. I think you could really help me sort through some things in my life.” In that moment, I've got a little bit of warning signs going off—so I called Cindy. “Hey, this just happened to me.” Then I brought my staff—my entire team—I said, “Hey, I want you to keep your eyes on me. If there is anything that you ever see that seems off—intercept it.”  14:00 It wasn't even like an inappropriate conversation on behalf of this girl—it was completely innocent—but it was like just maybe the beginning seed of a temptation that the moment I acknowledged it—and had a conversation with Cindy and my team—it was gone. So I do my best to kind of predict, “Where is the enemy going to come after me?” I am just going to be overly honest when those temptations come.  Keeping it in the dark is like a Petri dish for sin to grow. The moment we bring it into the light I just think that is where the power of healing happens. We do have a spiritual enemy! I believe that in those moments—“I can't, I don't have it in there, I‘m going to have to find a different avenue.” Dennis: I believe it's in Genesis chapter 4 where it talks about sin—  Chris: Crouching. Bob: Crouching at your door? Dennis: Crouching at your door. Chapter 4:7. What I just want every listener—male and female—to know—it may not be pornography.  15:00 I don't know what it is—what your Achilles heel is—but I can promise you—in fact, yesterday when I stepped out of my house, I thought, “I'm stepping out of a safe place.” Not that there isn't sin able to get its way into our house—there is—but I'm stepping into the world where there is a spiritual battle occurring. We don't see what's taking place.  Interestingly a friend sent me a link—and I don't know what my friend was really thinking but I clicked on it and it didn't take long to realize, “This is not a good place to be.” I clicked off and went away. I still think I owe my friend an email back to say, “Why did you send that to me?” By the way, there's a lot of stuff flipped around on the internet and posted in all kinds of places—just be wise.  16:00 You may be throwing something to someone and it may be his or her Achilles heel—spiritually speaking.  Chris: The spirit and the flesh—the Bible says—are at war for what is going to be dominant in their lives. The Holy Spirit wants to be that which propels us and leads every part of our lives—but if the things that we're feeding our mind and our time are the things of the flesh—we're going to be dominated by the flesh. We just have to be very aware that the more we can starve our flesh and feed the things that the Spirit in us craves, those temptations will minimize. They don't go away—but they will minimize. Bob: Most of us are way too casual in our daily battle with sin. Chris: Agreed. Bob: We walk around like there is not a war going on—we walk around like we're in complete safety—and we get ambushed when we do that.  Chris: Right. Bob: As opposed to walking around with the alert system on—your alert system that goes— 17:00 “Okay—this is just a seed here—but a seed can grow into something if I don't deal with it right now.” Dennis: I want to encourage our listeners—every listener who is a follower of Jesus Christ is an ambassador—an ambassador you have a message and a mission. I want to read to you a little bit of your mission and message found in Isaiah 61. If you haven't read the first eight to ten verses of this passage of Scripture you ought to read it because I've thought of this all week as we've interviewed you two—how you guys are really like something that's described in here—I'll get to that in a moment.  Here's what it says about our message and our mission: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, — 18:00 to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; and to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor—” It goes on to talk about some other matters and then it says: “that they may be called”—and this is what I thought of you two—“oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities,”—listen to this last phrase—“the devastations of many generations.” Chris: Wow! Dennis: You two are oaks of righteousness—you are providing shade for couples who've gone through the valley and they're in need of someone saying, “You can do it!” 19:00  Chris: Wow! Dennis: The church is there. We will come along side you, we will pray for you, we will minister to you and future generations are at stake. Bob: Tell our listeners about the dinner you had not long ago with somebody who had found Chris and Cindy's story online along with other stories that they've heard on FamilyLife Today—and how God had used that in his life. Dennis: This is a person who been through dark days in his marriage. He became a super sleuth on FamilyLife Today. He went in search of every story of redemption and reconciliation that he could find and he found yours. He said, “I was hopeless but I listened and I listened and I listened.” For three and a half years he battled for his marriage. Chris: Wow! 20:00 Dennis: I asked him—I said, “If I went to your wife right now and asked her what your marriage was like on a ten point scale what would she say?” He said, “A ten!” What about you? A ten! And he's not saying it's perfect, but he's just saying where sin abounds, grace and forgiveness much more. That is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Nobody listening to us here is beyond the reach of God's arm to welcome you in to the family and forgive your sin. There's nothing you have done that you can earn God's favor—nor nothing you can do to cause Him to flee from you. You just need to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord, Master, and Savior and then get on with the process— Chris: Amen. Dennis: —of becoming God's man—God's woman, and if you're married—God's couple. Then leave a godly legacy to future generations which you guys have done. 21:00   And I just have to tell you again. I'm really proud of you for not quitting—for still standing—and for using your wounds to proclaim who Christ is. Way to go! Cindy: Thank you! Chris: God is good! Bob: I can imagine there are folks listening who have been thinking—as they've heard you share your story—about a couple they know facing a similar situation—where there's been infidelity, betrayal, where trust has been broken. I‘d encourage them not only to send their friends a link to the conversations we've had here this week, but also send them a copy of the book, Rebuilding A Marriage Better Than New—where you share with folks what you've done and how God's worked in your marriage to bring it to where it is today.  We've got copies of the book, Rebuilding A Marriage Better Than New in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center. You can go online to order your copy. Our website is FamilyLifeToday.com.  22:00 You can also order by phone. Our number is 1-800-FL-TODAY. So again. the website— FamilyLifeToday.com. The phone number is 1-800-FL-TODAY. Ask about the book, Rebuilding A Marriage Better Than New by Cindy Beall when you get in touch with us. And, if you're online be sure to watch the video clip that features Chris and Cindy sharing their story. Maybe you'd want to forward that to your friends as well. Again the website is FamilyLifeToday.com. As summer is coming to an end, the month of August is almost over and that means we're in the home stretch for the matching gift opportunity that we've been telling you about all month long. We had a friend of the ministry come to us back at the beginning of the month. He offered to match every donation we receive during the month of August on a dollar for dollar basis. He put a cap on that at $800,000.  We're in the home stretch to try to make sure that we're able to take full advantage of those matching gift funds. 23:00 If we are, it will allow us to extend the reach of all that we're doing here at FamilyLife in the months ahead. Help us reach more young married couples, more moms and dads, more people worldwide with practical, biblical help and hope for your marriage and your family.  In fact, we did some calculating not long ago and just with this radio program—if you're able to donate $8.24—we can get the program in the ears of 1000 people. Of course, when you make that donation we'll get another $8.24 from the matching gift fund—another 1000 people. So it's just a great opportunity, but it's got an expiration date—and that is tomorrow.  We're asking you today to donate online at FamilyLifeToday.com or call to donate at 1-800-FL-TODAY. Or you can mail your donation and—as long as it's postmarked today or tomorrow—it will still qualify for matching funds.  24:00 Our mailing address is: FamilyLife Today, P.O. Box 7111 Little Rock, Arkansas. Our zip code is 72223. And again, please pray that we will receive enough donations to be able to take full advantage of this matching gift. I hope you can join us back tomorrow. We're going to talk about the power of decisions that we make—and how some decisions can be life altering. We'll talk more about that tomorrow. Hope you can tune in for that. I want to thank our engineer today; his name is Keith Lynch, also our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today.  FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. A Cru® ministry.Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.  We are so happy to provide these transcripts to you. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?  Copyright © 2017 FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com    

Ubisoft exec Chris Early has branded Steam's business model "unrealistic," and suggested the popular online marketplace needs to devise a more modern approach. Speaking to The New York Times, Early explained Valve's refusal to modify its revenue-sharing model is why Ubisoft chose to launch The Division 2 on Uplay and The Epic Games Store over Steam earlier this year. “It's unrealistic, the current business model that they have," he said, commenting on the way Steam currently operates. "It doesn't reflect where the world is today in terms of game distribution." Right now, Steam offers most developers a standard 70/30 revenue split, although those devs whose games earn over $10 million and $50 million will see their share increase to 75 percent and 80 percent, respectively. As some have pointed out, however, those hefty milestones clearly favor larger triple-A titles, and are still someway behind the new standard set by the Epic Games Store, which offers all developers an 88 percent revenue share. Ubisoft isn't the only big-name to have chosen The Epic Games Store over Steam, with others like Remedy (Control), Deep Silver (Metro Exodus), and Ys Net (Shenmue 3) all signing various exclusivity agreements with Epic. #gaminglife #like #apexlegends #gamingmemes #anime #nintendoswitch #fortnitememes #pcgamer #retrogaming #gameplay #battleroyale #pro #destiny #art #bhfyp #blackops #fortniteclips #callofduty #twitchstreamer #geek #youtuber #lol #rdr #gamingcommunity #minecraft #overwatch #sony #fun #instagram #online --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pixel-sultan/support

Chris Chuter: @Chris_Chuter Show Notes: 00:47 - Peeple: What is it? Why? 02:59 - Iterations and User Testing 13:32 - Complexity of Installation 17:26 - Device Integration 22:15 - Setup and Installation 25:35 - Laws and Building Codes 26:39 - Getting Started in this Space 31:29 - Ensuring Quality, Integration Testing, and Deployment Pipelines 33:18 - The Manufacturing Process Resources: If This Then That (IFTTT) Transcript: CHARLES: Hello, everybody and welcome to The Frontside Podcast, Episode 82. My name is Charles Lowell, a developer here at the Frontside and your podcast host-in-training. With me is Elrick Ryan. Hello Elrick. ELRICK: Hey, hello. CHARLES: And today, we are going to be continuing our series on the Internet of Things and we have someone on the podcast today who's going to talk to us about the Internet of Things. His name is Chris Chuter and he is the CEO, inventor and founder of Peeple. Hey, Chris. CHRIS: Hey. How is it going? CHARLES: It's gone well. Thanks for coming on the program. Peeple, what is it? Why don't you give us a quick overview of the product? Obviously it pertains to IoT, what is it and how did you become involved with it? Let's delve into that. CHRIS: Yes, sure. Let me give you the elevator short version first then we can dive deeper. Peeple is caller ID for your front door. The idea is when you get a phone call and you don't answer the phone, what happens? It goes to your voicemail. You know someone called you. But today, if someone comes to your house, you have no idea that they came unless you're there. This is the central problem that we solved with Peeple. It's a little device, a hardware device, an Internet of Things device that fits over the peephole in your door in the inside of your house. When someone knocks or doors open, you get a push notification on your phone. You can open up the phone and you can see a live view of your peephole. In a nutshell, Peeple is a smart peephole. CHARLES: Is it more for the case when you're not home at all or do you find the people use it for what you would traditionally use a peephole. CHRIS: It depends on the person. Now, my personal use case is for keeping track of wandering kids and that's actually inspiration for this invention. I have two boys and when one of my boys was three years old, he managed to open the door, walk out, go on to the street and walk down to the end of the street. Now, I live in Austin and I live right off the edge of a very busy street. Now, my kid didn't die or anything like that. It's not a really sad story but a neighbor brought my kid home and it was one of those moments as a parent where you're like, "Oh my God. I'm a terrible parent." But being an inventor and an engineer, I was like, "I'm going to hook something up that just tells me when my door is opened or closed," and it morphed into this invention. We showed it to people at South by Southwest almost three or four years ago. That's when we realized we were on to something that didn't exist. It was just a little camera on the door. CHARLES: Tell me about those first versions. I'm so curious. It sounds like there's a lot of layers of functionality that you've been through, a lot of iterations so I'm curious about that. What's was that zero iteration look like? CHRIS: Version 0 was made in 24 hours. It was a hackathon for... I can't remember the name of it. There was a hackathon group that recently imploded and we won this hackathon. The hackathon thing was to make something... I'm not sure if this is for Internet of Things but we were all making that kind of stuff. I made this little Raspberry Pi demo with a little mini door and I had talked to my wife and this is how I was able to make this invention, to keep track the kid as I was busy doing other stuff but I talked her into giving me 24 hours to make this one thing. Then me and another guy, David we won this hackathon. We were like, "We've got to turn this into a real thing," because one of the awards of the hackathon was you go to Silicon Valley, you show this off and you do all this cool stuff with it. We were like, "We've got to actually turn this into something that's presentable." That was Version 0. It was just a little Raspberry Pi. CHARLES: Now, what were you doing to detect the state of the door? CHRIS: That's the crazy thing. The first version of the device had more sensors on it than the final version. The first version had everything. It had a doorbell, it had a knock sensor, it had a motion, it had a speaker that played Paul McCartney's 'Someone's Knockin' At The Door,' but it had an accelerometer. I threw everything in there the first thing and half of it worked for the hackathon demo but it was good enough to win. This is something that, I guess I could call wisdom now but the real thing I learned is you start with everything and then you narrow and get it more tuned and highly focused and more precise as a device, like the difference between the iPhone and the Samsung phones. One of them is to throw everything into it and then the iPhone is just really specialize into a few things really well. The next three years, we're pulling stuff out. CHARLES: What are some examples of that calling that you're describing where you're saying, "I'm to take this out? I'm going to take this out. I'm going to take that out." CHRIS: We got rid of things like the doorbell and some of the other sensors, mainly because it was just a wiring issue and as well as we wanted to keep track when the door was opened and closed. It didn't make sense to have the speaker on there at the time so we really focused more on the accelerometer and the knock sensor for the first version of Peeple. CHARLES: That is not the final version. Is it mostly just the accelerometer? What if someone doesn't knock? I assume there's some sort of detection that goes on with the camera. CHRIS: That's the next version. That's something that we've been working on right now, what we're going to be delivering. We have delivered our first, I would say Version 1.0 of Peeple devices to our customers. There's a thousand of these or so in the wild, all around the world and the next version we have added -- and I guess this my first real announcement of this -- a motion detection module. It's not a camera-based. It's more or less magic and it just works through the door. That's the most I'm going to say on it right now because we're probably the first hardware device that it's actually using this technology. ELRICK: That's an excellent pitch. Everyone loves magic. CHRIS: Yes, it's basically magic. It works through the door. ELRICK: As you were going to these iterations, were you doing like user testing to see what users wanted? Or did you internally say, "This doesn't make sense. Let's just take this out." CHRIS: Absolutely. That's the second part of this story. After this hackathon happened, we prepared to go on the road show to go and show it off to Silicon Valley but in the meantime, this hackathon group, I think it was called AngelHack, it imploded. One of their founders made all these disparaging comments about homeless people and what essentially happened is we lost the award. They said, "We're sorry. We can't give you the award," but we had spent about three months fine-tuning, making something pretty and putting a pitch together. I went in and I pitched at a TechCrunch Meetup in Austin and we came in second at that but during that meetup, I met one of the reporters and said, "You really need to talk to these guys in San Francisco called Highway1," so I did. We eventually ended up moving to San Francisco. Now, the reason I mentioned that to answer your question is they understand this idea of user testing, I think better than a lot of people. Even though they were focused on working on hardware and getting an IoT device that works out there, they were drilling it into our heads is, "You have to get this in people's homes now. I don't care how bad it is. I don't care if you have to hire people, to sit at a peephole and just look through it and pretend like there are hardware device. You got to do this and you have to find out what the problems are, what works. I want you to look at your biggest fears of this thing and you quash them and you do that before you put any Silicon down," so we did that as best we could. CHARLES: So you did that with the Version 0 and Version 1 devices? CHRIS: Exactly, just a Version 0, I have all these pictures. We put them in about 12 to 20 homes and we have these long extension cords powering this thing because we didn't have the batteries to figure out. We had these huge lag problems. It would take like 30 seconds to a minute before something would happen. We had all these issues but in the end, people were still like, "It had these issues. You couldn't do this," but the fact that I had a door log, a door diary as what we're calling it now, that's something I never had before. That's where your secret sauce is so we ran with that. CHARLES: Yeah. That's the kind of thing it never even occurs to you. CHRIS: Exactly. In the app, or at least the early versions of the app, is you have these versions like a calendar that are like, "Okay, I got 10 visits yesterday. I got 20 visits today. No one came to visit me today. I'm so sad," but I have a calendar of, I think it was May of last year when I got visited by three or four magazine salesman in one week so you could correlate that with, "Did we have any break ins?" or something like that. CHARLES: Yeah, it would be interesting to be able to share that data with your neighborhood or somehow coordinate that. one of things I'm curious about too is you did this user testing you were talking about, doing the wiring and the installation, it's a conversation that always comes up when you're talking about custom hardware because there's always the drive to be small, there's always the drive to be have a small form factor and then you have challenges of power like how do you power this device. How cumbersome is the installation onto someone's door? CHRIS: Yeah, we had it all. That's a big difference, I think between San Francisco or Silicon Valley and other towns is there's this acceptance and there's this readiness to participate in the tech scene. We did a call out for volunteers and we had no problems finding them. They didn't mind us coming to their house and hooking up these big, bulky things and just being real intrusive. The fact that we found these people and they were the key to this early stage of, "Do you become a product or do you not?" We were only there for four months but by the end of this time that we were there, there was this legitimate tangible feeling of we're not a prototype anymore. We're a product and we didn't have a product. It was just prettier but we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don't think that would have happened had we not gone through this very painful experience with all these poor people that we inflicted our device on. CHARLES: This actually is fascinating because obviously, you're back in Austin now and I never heard of programs like that, like sign up to have someone come up and test it at some alpha stage prototype in your home. That sounds crazy and yet, it sounds like they were just going out of the woodwork. CHRIS: In San Francisco, it's not a problem. If I put the call out now, I probably have to really like, "Here's an Amazon gift card." I have to start doing a little bit of bribery. ELRICK: I think I would sign up just to see the cool tech. CHRIS: Yeah and those people exist. I think we don't have the means to really find them. That infrastructure already exists. In Silicon Valley, you just go down to Starbucks. CHARLES: There ought to be some sort of meetup for people who want to experiment with very early stage IoT devices here in Austin. Maybe, we'll have to look at it. If that doesn't exist, I would love being a guinea pig. I actually think there is an untapped willingness here but there's just not -- CHRIS: I think you need a critical mass of hardware people and hardware devices that are ready to be put in doors or put in the houses. There's definitely some in there. I have a lot of friends and there are hardware meetups that we go to but this stuff takes so long and it's so hard as hardware is hard. There's that small window of, "We got this little idea of a water sprinkler. Do you think anyone want to try it out?" or something like that and then the moments gone. Then six months later, there's another one. CHARLES: Yeah. I wonder if there's a way to really decrease that iteration cycle so that you can get feedback more quickly. I guess the problem is when you need a physical device, you just needed a physical device. CHRIS: We're talking about the Maker Movement and the MakerClub. If you're part of those, these people are hard to find. People that go to Maker Faires, that's the people you're looking for. CHARLES: Right. Now, transitioning because ultimately your target customer base is not makers, not people who are willing to put up with wires and cabling and people doing protracted installation. What does the kind of 1.0 product look like? Because what I'm curious is what immediately jumps to mind is this thing sounds like it's going to probably consume a lot of power. How do you get the power to that and what are the challenges and what are the tradeoffs that you have to make to try and get that power consumption down or get the installation complexity down? How complex is it today to install? CHRIS: I guess, I'll toot my own horn a little bit but I think we have one of the easiest IoT devices on the planet to install. You can possibly not even need tools. You can use your fingers but the biggest challenge for any IoT device is getting that home network connection. If there's been a few technologies through the years in which they've tried to fix this problem, basically just like self-pairing or things like that, like how Bluetooth can sometimes be really cumbersome. Now imagine that with Wi-Fi, it's the same thing but now you've got a password you've got to throw in there. That's really the only real hiccup with the installation on our device and we tried a few things. We went through about three different Wi-Fi chips before we settled on what we were using now. The first Wi-Fi chip was a TI one, which offered this nice pairing capability but it just didn't work half the time. Then we switched to a Broadcom chip, which was really solid and stable but turned out to be the most expensive component in the whole device so we had to get rid of that. The Wi-Fi issue was something we had to solve early because it goes also toward your power consumption. We have a camera and a Wi-Fi chip and both of those take up to 140 to 200 milliamps of juice when they're on. We had to be really smart of when this thing was going to be on and that's essentially when we went in parallel with the knock accelerometer. This device stays asleep most of the time and that's how we get the many months of battery life out of it. We put a rechargeable battery inside, it only turns on when it needs to and it's just hanging around waiting for an event for the rest of the time. Those were the things we were solving to get the Version 1. CHARLES: Now, it's waiting for some event but in order to receive the event, doesn't the accelerometer need to be on? Or is there some motion detector that --? CHRIS: That's a solved problem. good news was that accelerometers are extremely low power in the nano or picoamps but that's also another reason why the motion detection was going to be a hard problem because that is not, unless you're using what's called a PIR that is not a low power solution. CHARLES: Acronym alert. What is a PIR? CHRIS: It's an infrared proximity detection. That's how almost all motion detection cameras work. They have one hole for the camera and another hole for the PIR. The problem with these are is they don't work well in sunlight, outdoor-light and things like that in one of our use cases so we were kind of stuck. That's why we've recently come up with this new motion solution that doesn't rely on that technology -- the magic solution. CHARLES: All right. When we're going to find out about the magic solution? CHRIS: As soon as I ship this next version because it is being used in a few products but it's not really stateside yet and I want to save my thunder but it's something that I think is really cool. It really is magic. It's just amazing to me that it works. CHARLES: Well, I'm eager to see it. You were talking about Wi-Fi being one of the biggest challenges. That's a perfect segue. The connection to the network for something that we're always curious is discovering a new and interesting device is always a pleasure and then the next thought that almost funnels immediately after is how can I integrate this with other strange and wonderful devices to make something even more wonderful? A question we ask everybody is have you thought about how this might be a participant in an ecosystem so if there were other devices around the home, how would they even talk to the people? How might it offer information to someone looking to, maybe do some custom integration in their home? CHRIS: That's a lot of questions in one. Essentially, there's two ways of looking at it. You can look at it from your customer's perspective, what kind of customer do I think is going to have this or is going to use this the most. Back when we came up with this, there were a lot of do-it-yourself types and If This Then That protocol was out there but we really wanted to focus on something that was incredibly easy to use and didn't require you to program anything. I was really frustrated with the whole idea of Internet of Things because it almost implied that you had to be a programmer to use it. I didn't like that at that time. I've since come around to it because there's all these great tool kits out there. We initially looked at integrating with HomeKit. We thought they'd be perfect but what a lot of consumers don't realize is early HomeKit -- I don't believe it does that anymore -- made you modify your hardware to put in this special Apple hardware. When you're making a device, it is so hard just to get the hardware down. It's so expensive. To add anything or to put anything else in there, it's a huge friction point. It's really something that small startups just can't afford to do. A big Nest or a company like that have no problem but when you're making a one device, this is a big deal so we weren't able to really leverage something like HomeKit for an API. But we do have our own cloud-based API. We're RESTful API but it's just not documented and put out in a way where we want to have people programming it. But the good news is we did leverage several APIs when we were making things like the app and doing things like the push notifications and things like that. Now, it turns out that a lot of the case we used are now integrating with things like Alexa and other device protocols so we essentially get those for free. This whole ecosystem is forming around us. Just most important is to get your device out there because you have a vision for what the device will be used for. But then your customers tell you what the device is really useful for and that's when the real work starts. CHARLES: Right. I guess, it's true you have your first line of customers and I guess the use case what I was thinking of is me being a developer. I'm thinking what products could be built then using this as a component, so to speak. Have you'd given any thought to that or have anyone had approached you to say, "This is amazing. I'd like to build this meta product that integrates that," or is it kind of early days? CHRIS: Early on, that was the approach of the Internet of Things and it merged away from that in my experience. Early on, it was all about building blocks. You got to understand, these are old Zigbee Z-Wave programmers and that was the whole concept. Then it got turned on its head by, "I really have this problem that I need to solve and I don't want to have to make a bunch of building blocks to do this." For attacking it from the other side, like you're saying, building up into pieces, I really recommend you talk to the Twine guys -- super mechanical -- they're here in Austin as well. A year or so before, we came out with Peeple. They put out this device which was exactly what you're talking about. An Internet of Things type hub where you just add in all the pieces and then you integrate with everything. They can better give you a story of how that lifeline goes. CHARLES: Yeah, because it's always something you think about because you've got all these wonderful things. CHRIS: Yeah, some would say, an Internet of Things. CHARLES: Yup, or at least a floor plan. ELRICK: When someone gets a Peeple device, what is the full installation story and set up? What is the walkthrough for that? CHRIS: We have a little video of that. What you essentially do for Peeple when you're installing it on the peephole in your door, you unscrew the peephole. Now, the way Peeple's work is they need to handle doors that are variable width, depending on where you live. There's no real standard. All of the Peeple's work by having a shaft that you screw onto another side so it's basically two pieces. Now, one of those shafts holds this bracket that we include in the package. You screw that onto your door with the peephole holding it to the door, then you turn on the Peeple device and you connect it to your home Wi-Fi and then you're ready to go. That's it. CHARLES: That's the hardware side of the onboarding and then what about the software? How do I go and look at my door diary? CHRIS: You do this during the installation. You go to My.Peeple.io and there's a little button to add your Peeple device. UI-wise, it's one user interface among all the platforms whether your Android, iPhone or on a browser. You just go to that webpage and associate your account to your Peeple devices. You will have to log in. You can log in with Gmail, Facebook or just a regular email. Then you add your device and any time you go back to that page, it will show you only the videos from your device so you have a list of all the events from your Peeple device on that page or in that app. CHARLES: That is interesting. I'm looking at the videos right now online. Although my problem actually is I've got a glass door. CHRIS: Yes, we got you covered as well. CHARLES: You do? CHRIS: Yes. The reason you have a glass door or a peephole and many people don't realize this is it because it's required by law. If you ever plan to have run out your house as a multi-family unit, you have to have a peephole or a window surface to where people can look out. Once we figured that, that's when we realized we were onto something. The first versions of Peeple came with these little adhesive pads that we called gecko skin and this is where we learned a valuable lesson. No matter how sticky you make your stickers, they're not sticky enough. We included three of these little tabs in every device to put on a glass door, if you had glass so the Peeple device would work the same way for glass door, except that you would use a sticker, instead of unscrewing the peephole. The only problem with the stickers were is they were not sticky enough. If there was condensation or a weather event or something like that, these things would fall off so we made a modification. We found better stickers and I mailed those out to all the people. But this is why hardware is hard. You're going to make these mistakes. In all our testing, we didn't find this but of course, once you have a thousand testers, you find a little more. ELRICK: That's interesting that you brought up the laws about the peephole. Were there any particular building codes or anything of that nature that you guys had to be concerned about when having Peeple installed things on their doors that you had to figure out before shipping them out? CHRIS: Not really. The Texas property code is more geared among making landlords do the right thing. In case you're wondering, I think it's Texas Property Code 94-152 that covers this. There must be an external viewable portion for all multi-family units to the front entryway. Now, this is just the Texas law. We had to look this up in a few other states and it turns out there's one in San Francisco, there's one in Virginia but they're all different. But so far, we haven't had any issues with any property codes or building code issues. CHARLES: This has been an almost four-year odyssey for you that you've been on, right? CHRIS: Right. CHARLES: You've been involved in this scene and working with hardware probably for a long time even before that, it sounds like. For people who are just getting into it, because I feel like there's this wave cresting now, where these types of startups and these types of side projects and hobby projects are just starting to enter the mainstream. Do you have any advice for anybody who would want to get into this space? CHRIS: Well, that's a great question. Of course. Now, contrary to what you just stated, I didn't have much of a hardware background. I'm a software guy. I can personally attest to the pains of becoming a hardware guy. Now, the irony of this is I do have a master's degree in electronics engineering but electronic engineering is so huge. It's such a big field that you can spend your entire career not doing much hardware. But I always had the ability to go back and build some circuits but I would say the number one thing, if you're not a hardware guy is go to some of these meetups or get involved in a community and find yourself one, someone who has experience doing hardware because coming from the software room, you're used to this flexibility of changing a few lines of code and being everything changing. Now, when you get a hardware guy onboard and our hardware guy's name is Craig, when he comes to work -- CHARLES: Or gal. CHRIS: Yeah, or gal, of course. When they look at the same problems you're looking at, they're like, "Hold on a second. Let's step back. Let's test this." There's this quantitative slowing which you need to have as hardware because once you build a PCB, a circuit board, you are now stuck with that board for the next month or so because it takes a while to make another one so get that right before you jump around and do all these changes. My first advice would be is get help. There's no shame in going out there and you might be surprised. There are so many people out there that want to join in. If you have a good idea, there's plenty of people who want to contribute. CHARLES: Would you say that there are communities out there like the software communities where you have meetups? Some of the software meetups are just fantastic, where people are so welcoming and they're just so excited to share the information that they themselves are so excited about. CHRIS: Yes and there's the same thing as on the hardware side. You would definitely go to a few hardware meetups, there are several in Austin. There's at least one every week and it's a great chance for people to tell these kinds of stories. This is a maker type community so they welcome these ideas because that's what fuels their enthusiasm. Every time someone is doing something new, they want to hear it. That's the change now. This decade has happened to where you can go out and buy a few modules and make your little device. Then there's the next big step of turning it into going from prototype to hardware but you can get all those kinks out without having to make your own printed circuit boards, without having to have a huge firmware background. Just knowing a little bit of tech and a Raspberry Pi, you can test out your inventions at this early stage without having to invest all this money and these other things. There's never been a better time to do it. I would leave your listeners with is if you got something swirling around your head, get a Pi, get a little Arduino and do it. There's nothing stopping you. CHARLES: Yeah, it's shocking how affordable they are. CHRIS: I don't even touch on China, by the way but that's the next step. CHARLES: That's the great thought that I want to leave everybody with but I actually have more questions so we won't leave everybody with that. We'll keep on going because I want to talk about China and I want to talk about something that was in there. You've touched on it a couple of times when telling your story how you go from this just do it, get it out there, get it into people's homes, just get the Version 0 out, just buy an Arduino, slap together something terrible, that is at least one millionth of the dream that you have and you've taken your first step on that odyssey. That's a very common story in software. The way that we develop software too is have these agile methodologies and these techniques to reinforce them, testing, continuous integration, continuous deployment. How does that play out? A fascinating subject to me personally is how do you do that in the context of hardware. A question that I love to ask is how do you do things like ensure quality? How do you do integration testing? How do you have a deployment pipeline if you've got these Peeple devices out there on tens of thousands of doors globally? How do you push out a bug fix or a feature update? What's the automation around that look like? CHRIS: The over-the-air updates are your friend. If you're going to make a hardware device, I recommend making a Wi-Fi enabled device because then your firmware is not locked, then you can do over-the-air updates. That has been a lifesaver. We've done maybe a dozen software updates to our device to date, sometimes little changes, sometimes big changes. But what happens is any time the Peeple device wakes up, it says, "Hello, server," and the server says, "I got an update. First, let me give you all these images." Give me the code. The devices are constantly upgradable, just like you'd expect with software. Now, with some of these Bluetooth devices, you can't do that. You've got to go out the door being ready to go with no issues. It's a friction point to tell someone, "Your headphones can't work now. You need to plug it into a computer. You need to download this firmware upgrade. You need to update the firmware doing it by hand." That just isn't going to fly in today's consumer market so I would recommend if you can, make your device a hardware Wi-Fi device, get a Wi-Fi module in there and that opens up the world to you on doing a lot of these updates, to answer the last part of your question. CHARLES: You mentioned China, since you're touching on the manufacturing process or just the market over there or --? CHRIS: Yeah, be ready to fully commit. I've been to China, maybe four times now. I have a 10-year visa. It took a while to find the right partner and you've got to be boots on the ground in the factory for a couple of weeks just getting the whole line up. It's a whole another product when you're at the manufacturing stage. You're making all these little test things, they've got to hook up the boards to certain devices, they've got to put the firmware on it, they've got to do these things. It's a whole another job. That's why when you do these Kickstarter. They say, "We're going to be out in three months," and then six months later, "We're still working on it." I have a lot of empathy for this because I've lived it. You think, "I've got everything done. My hardware works. All I have to do is team up with someone to just make it and with them, we'll ship it." There's a whole another level to just a manufacturing piece and you can't really learned. There's no real textbooks to learn this because every factories are different. Our factory is right north of Shenzhen and we talked to some US manufacturers but they just weren't competitive to be in the discussion so you pretty much have to go overseas and then you have to sit down with them and just a little bit of communication difficulties can bring down a whole manufacturing line so it's very important that you're very hands on and you see your product all the way to package. ELRICK: That's interesting. I know of it but I never really thought about it because I was really not in that position. What are some of the higher level of things that you should look out for when evaluating a manufacturing partner? CHRIS: We talked to about a half a dozen before we decided on our manufacturing partner. The big one for me was cultural fit. I talked to some of the big ones like the one that makes the Apple phones, we talked to them for a while and I just found that I would say, "We would like to do this or we need this," and then the next week, they'd be asking a question, "What about this?" and I'm like, "Oh, you didn't understand what I was really asking," so you would lose weeks just by tiny misunderstandings. I found a manufacturing partner that has a subsidiary here in the US and my main contact grew up in the United States but he also goes to China every other week. Having that kind intermediary made everything so much easier. The communication was never an issue. I was able to get things done almost twice as quick with the other manufacturers I was talking to. In the end, they also came up with a great price so it turned out to be a win-win. I would recommend talking to the bigger manufacturers but spend a lot of time on the smaller ones and really figuring out is the communication up to snuff to really make your product. It's huge. CHARLES: What a story. I'm really glad that we got to have you on the podcast, Chris because you have the story that starts from literally slapping a Raspberry Pi and an accelerometer and speaker and apparently a bunch of other things on your front door and with an extension cord and walking a continuous path to where you're flying back and forth between China and Austin to inspect and ensure your assembly line and making a real product. It demonstrates that it can be done by the fact that you have done it so I think it serves as an inspirational case for a lot of people out there who might think that this is something that they might want to do. Or think that they're capable of. Thank you so much for coming and talking about Peeple. Everybody, you can go ahead and check it out. It's Peeple.io, right? CHRIS: That's correct. CHARLES: All right. Also, is there anything else that you'd like to announce other than the magic, which you're going to keep a lid on? CHRIS: Yes, I know I'd appropriately teased everyone about that but you can go to our website. If you go to Shop.Peeple.io, we're taking preorders for this next magical version, the Peeple Version 1.1, I guess I'll call it. I would like to add just before we go is if you're going to endeavor to do something like this, make sure you have a very understanding family because they couldn't have done it without a wife and kids that understood my craziness and allowed me to have just a complete mess of our house for, I guess, for three years now. CHARLES: Thanks again and thanks everybody for listening to this episode. You can get in touch with us on Twitter. We're at @TheFrontside and you can always find us on the web at Frontside.io and there's a contact form and we'd love to hear from you, for any reason whatsoever. Thanks, everybody and we'll talk to you next week.