The Zspire Blog

Wow,
Press release on Thursday - it’s been interesting tracking how these things go through and find different sites.

I wanted to address some of those issues:

1. Shape: Well, you can interpret it in many ways - we have heard “coffin” (seems pretty popular), we have heard “stealth”, we have heard “diamond”, we have heard “Tron” (?????). It’s unique, it’s different, it is NOT for gaming. This comes more from the Bluetooth side than the mouse itself.
2. Weight: It’s not as heavy as it sounds - heavier than those junky plastic pieces that everyone has on their desk, but no unmanagable - try it - really!
3. Style/Ergonomics - We actually did research on this - while it appears that may be uncomfortable, our usage has shown comfort, because your fingers are put into a nice easy position. Also, the couple of points (which are not that sharp) are actually along acupuncture points that make it feel nice. The back fits very nicely into the cleft of the bottom of your hand.
4. Coldness: Well - it is what is is. Maybe a little in the morning (probably shouldn’t keep it out in the cold anyway ) - it’s style - it’s also yours. And it’s art - unique.

I know a lot of people are into the disposable, what’s the next best 1600dpi/2000dpi stuff - this is quality - other attempts have been made in the past, but always missing some part (i.e. only 2 buttons - yeah Apple for getting smart with Mighty Mouse). It is amazing, we think, to put Bluetooth, fashion, something different. We’ve spent a lot of time and money and thought into this, and we think it’s time to say, like another famous company “Think different”. We know we have tried, and we encourage you as well!

A couple of other points not so clear in the marketing….

• Customizable - take a look at the types of colors that you can choose. There are a few, and we always take custom orders.
• Art - This is for your keepsake - that’s why we engrave each one with the serial number. Can your plastic do that and look cool at the same time???
• Standards - CE, FCC, Bluetooth - nothing rogue here - we’re playing by the rules.

We are live! One way or another - away we go!

Oct 25

hello all,

i just wanted to let everyone know the status of our mouse parts…the tooling was completed over the weekend and was ready to run the first set of prototypes on monday morning. however, bangalore has been hit with the worst rain storm in history and there is several feet of water everywhere (just like snow except it gets into peoples homes and you can’t really shovel it out of the way). as a result of this several major highways were closed including the one to the industrial area and people were unable to physically get to work.
imran expects to get to the plant on wednesday morning and hopes that the machine operators will be able to make it in as well to get those parts injected and sent off to circuit board supplier.

sadly, this is the only update i have right now.
will keep everyone posted tomorrow.

Oct. 17 -

just received the most updated news on the tools. Work went on all weekend and is currently in progress (late night on Monday).
Not to beat the same issue to death but here’s the scoop: The final finishing is a VERY VERY delicate process and the speeds of the machines have to be drastically reduced to avoid any kind of scratches or even gouging. In order to make sure that all the inserts fit perfectly the machine has to be run several times (techinaclly speaking, many “passes” have to be made) in order to smooth out any height difference between the main body of the tool and the several inserts. Each pass takes several hours and to give you an idea of the precision involved, each pass only takes away around 0.01mm.

Bottom line: Plastics are ready but metal will take another two days. My understanding is that the pieces are expected to be in Taiwan no later than the following Monday, Friday if we are lucky.

Apart from the “out of our control” loss of time as explained in my prevoius email, no time has been lost on our parts..work has been running non stop. Our mouse tools have put the tooling of two other customer’s (who are based in Bangalore) on hold for the last 3 weeks……yikes! i don’t want to be in my brother’s shoes right now…me chewing him out twice a day, two of our local customer’s coming by to hound him practically everyday…..

Thanks for everyone’s patience…again, being a technical person, I would like to say that I rather see the delay now in getting it right the first time rather than having to revisit the drawing board and being put behind several weeks. i’m sure iroo has a feel for what i’m saying..one misplaced or wrong line of code and you’ll be debugging for several days if not weeks.

Oct 15 (and slightly changed to hide the names of the guilty/innocent):

just got off the phone with the plant. plastic parts (buttons and battery cover) are good to go!
metal part tooling is being worked on to complete the final “baby butt smooth” finishing. the tool maker has warned the plant that this is the most critical part to align up all the pieces (with the one million inserts that he’s had to put in) and if something goes wrong it’ll put us 3 weeks behind. he’s working saturday and sunday this weekend to make up time…the plant has promised me an update on sunday.
will keep everyone posted.

Snippets From Production from the shell supplier - Oct 12

Despite a relentless effort from all of us, we have not yet had the pleasure of seeing a fully finished model of our first generation mouse. Here are some of the main reasons why:

Our modification from our original design to the very complex and precise support stems to hold down the circuit board, an easy to access battery cover, the offset optics with a recess for lens stability), sort of caught our tool designer off guard when I told him I expect him to maintain the same time line of 4-6 weeks that he had originally indicated for the first simpler design. The tool designer at our plant as well as the company we have collaborated for the tool production put other critical tooling on the back burner and cranked up the heat on our mouse tooling to try to meet the same deadlines. As the tool design and development progressed the production team realized due to the complexity of all the pieces (especially the buttons) several tool inserts had to be created in order to get all the posts, slots, recessess, and angle’s “Just right”.
When that many inserts are created, there comes a new problem..”alignment” of the inserts with respect to the main part of the tool. Even the slightest misfit/misalignment will create undesireable lines in the final product. Hence, it is absolutely critical to have the inside surface of the fully assembled tool “baby butt smooth” if you will, and one should not be able to feel difference in height when a finger is run over the portion where the insert comes into the main block.
This perfection piece added sometime (over a week) to the upper limit estimation of 6 weeks. Now, here’s the real kicker….India is over 5000 years old, and there exist countless superstitions, religious ceremonies/holidays, labor issues due to union problems. Talk about bad timing, in the last 2 weeks, the plant lost 2 days to a nation or state (i’m not sure) wide union strike, 1 day because no one showed up to work on the day of the solar eclipse (bad luck something or the other), and 2 days to a Hindu festival that involves worshipping machinery and chasing devils away from the work place (no, i’m not kidding, these are government holiday’s).
So essentially another full week lost for no fault of ours.

Two friends sat down and discussed an idea of how they could work together. One came from a Metal Foundary, one came from Software Consulting….

Thus was born the idea behind Zspire…..

So….We started the Zspire concept (with many other names) about a year ago. Lots of stuff that happened - we’ll put in the history as we go.

But we have had the most unbelievable stories. I wanted a place to put them. So here they are. Usually I’ll post as iroo, but to get this going…..

I hope you enjoy our product, as well as this conversation….