Happy Holidays!

I would like to wish all my blog-readers, customers, friends and family a very Happy Holiday Season and all the best for the upcoming New Year.

I took the above picture in Bloomingdale's Courtyard at the Fashion Island shopping mall in Newport Beach, California. The tree is a massive 115-foot-tall white fir Christmas tree. It weighs approximately 30,00 pounds. The tree is decorated with over 23,000 lights, bows and ornaments. After the Holidays, the tree will be recycled as it is every year.

The 500th module shipped today!

It's been a long time since the last post, so it's time for an update.

I have mainly been busy handling orders and shipping packages out as well as answering customer's emails. As mentioned before, in Holland we say "De klant is koning" or "The customer is king" :-)

I am happy to announce that today we shipped the 500th module!

Of course I hope that word about the module will keep on spreading now that there are 500 of them floating around all over the world.

It seems Italy and Israel are very popular countries for the module and I even shipped one to Lithuania and Luxembourg. Also, I had one customer from mainland China, despite the fact this blog is blocked in China because of the human rights content in the right column.

Also, with the upcoming Holiday Season, I will be taking a break from shipping orders. All orders placed on or before December 22nd will still be shipped out before Christmas. The online store will stay open during the Christmas break but I won't be shipping till the first week of the New Year. I will still be checking my email but my response might not be as fast as usual. If you really need an immediate response, you can put "EXTREMELY URGENT" in the subject line :-)

So if you are still thinking about what to buy that friend for Christmas, if he has an iPhone or an iPod Touch, the iGPS360 module would make a great gift!

Lastly, I want to thank everyone who has sent me their positive feedback regarding the module, customer service or who just dropped me an encouragement. Thanks. If you have the time, consider writing a few lines in the review section of the online store (submitted reviews can be read here). I am sure it will be useful for new customers.

Happy Holidays!

The backlog has cleared!

We are happy to announce that we have cleared the backlog for paid orders. What you see in the photo are the shipping records of the first four weeks of shipping. We have shipped 352 orders now (close to 400 modules).

Today, I have taken a day off from shipping packages... a nice break. Not really a day off though, as I had to meet with the PCB board manufacturer to streamline the future production process a little better so as to free up some of my time. All remaining PCB boards of the first production run have been assembled and are ready to be tested and put into their housings.

For all of the units that have been shipped so far, I have personally put the PCB board inside of the module's housing. For the remaining units, I am transferring this task to the PCB manufacturer who is going to do this so-called full "box-build". They will first be assembling a test-run of 20 modules and if approved after inspection, they will have the green light to do the full "box-build" for all remaining GPS modules of the first production run. In that way I will have some more time available to do other things.

Testing and quality control of all "box-build" modules will still be performed by myself for the remainder of the first productions run. These tasks will eventually also be transferred to the manufacturer for subsequent production runs. So tell your iPhone/iPod friends that you know a good Christmas gift :-)

Talking about the Holiday Season, the end of coming week will be Thanksgiving here in the US (aka Turkey Day) and I have decided to take two days of rest on Thursday and Friday (so if I don't immediately respond to your emails or questions, you know why :-)

And lastly, I am still trying to get in touch with a few customers who have not responded to my emails. If your order or customer number is below, please contact us as soon as possible at orders@orangegadgets.com to resolve issues with the shipping address and to avoid further delay:

1. Order id: 413, Customer id: 305
   
2. Order id: 865, Customer id: 609
   

For all technical support for the module, please email support@orangegadgets.com.