How do I create a peep?

[michael]

Making a peep

A peep starts out just like any other blank stikkit. As you type, Stikkit watches for proper names (two or three adjacent capitalized words, such as "John Smith" or "Jane Q. Public"), either at the beginning of a line or preceded with one of Stikkit's handy magic words ("with", "for", or "to"). To assure it's not just picking up "Eiffel Tower" or the like, it'll also be on the look-out for something resembling contact information: phone number, email address, mailing address, etc. Any of these will do:

Code:

Meet with Buffy Miller 503.555.1212

Mike Uhuru mike@example.com

East Bay Pharmacy 555-1212

Grand Central Bakery, 15th and Weidler

For more granularity, such as knowing Mike's cell number from his home number, you can use the little vCard-like format we whipped up -- we call it StikkitCard:

Code:

name: Michael Buffington
home phone: 555-555-1212
mobile: 555-555-1213
email: mike@valuesofn.com
private email: mike@example.com
icq: 1234567890

(And if it's even more granularity you're after, notice that you can prefix any standard detail like phone or email with whatever makes sense to you: "football phone: 555-1214", "holiday home: 1 Foot From Beach St.", and so forth. All without need of visiting preference settings or conforming to somebody else's notion of what is or isn't an appropriate phone type.)

For example

As we mentioned, Stikkit actively gleans new info on your peeps while you're jotting things down in other stikkits. Consider the following example:

Code:

take cinnamon rolls to new neighbor this saturday at 11am

Cleo Newcomb 415-555-1234

call first to make sure she's home

Since Cleo and I have just met, I don't yet have a peep stikkit for her. Stikkit will take care of that for you the moment you save this stikkit. You'll end up with two new stikkits: a calendar event ("take cinnamon rolls to new neighbor..." scheduled for Saturday morning), and a peep ("Cleo Newcomb") replete with phone number.

A week or so later Cleo suggests you get together for lunch near her workplace. Just in case anything comes up, you get her Blackberry email address. And of course you jot it all down in a brand new stikkit:

Code:

lunch with Cleo Newcomb
blackberry email: cleo123@blackberry.example.com

Stikkit will recognize Cleo as a peep, notice you already have a peep stikkit for her, and append her Blackberry email address to it. Her peep record will now look something like:

Code:

name: Cleo Newcomb
phone: 415-555-1234
blackberry email: cleo123@blackberry.example.com

And on it goes: her new address in Berkeley, temporary email address during a trip to Europe, birthday, ...

And since a peep stikkit is just a stikkit, you can edit it at any time. Add a new number, delete an old address, mix in notes, or add a list of birthday present ideas.

And all these stikkits are tied together through Cleo's peep stikkit. Not to mention that Cleo and some of your other peeps are tied together through stikkits that mention them together.

StikkitCard

StikkitCard current recognizes:

Code:

name:          Name of the person
peep:          Alias for +name+
aka:           A nickname for the person
organization:  Organizational affiliation
organisation:  Alias for +organization+
org:           Alias for +organization+
department:    Deparemental affiliation
dept:          Alias for +department+
title:         Person's title
phone:         Telephone number
mobile:        Mobile phone number (used as label)
cell:          Cell phone number (used as label)
voice:         Voice mail number (used as label)
fax:           Fax number
email:         Email address
url:           URL for home page
birthday:      Birthdate
skype:         Skype username
aol:           AOL username (for AIM)
aim:           Alias for +aol+
google:        Google username (for Gmail, GTalk, etc.)
gmail:         Alias for +google+.
jabber:        Jabber address
msn:           MSN Messenger address
yahoo:         Yahoo! username (for Yahoo! IM, etc.)
yim:           alias for +yahoo+
icq:           ICQ UIN

Feel free to prefix any of these with a single word of your choosing:

Code:

football phone: 212-555-6789
weblog url: http://blog.example.com

[Zach]

This is all well and nice, but what happens if we want to use a single name for such people as our significant others. (I.e- in the example; Carrie. I added mine and it didn't show up as a peep. I used the 'for ' syntax

[asha]

We are doing some big work on Peeps right now so it will work the way you'd expect. Feedback like this really helps us, because we want to be sure what we're developing is in line with the way most people would naturally use Stikkit. We'll have much more to say on this topic soon. In the meantime, please share any other suggestions you have/annoyances you come across. Thanks.

[hst]

FYI: The peep-thing does not function properly when foreign characters (i.e. å, ä, ö) are present in the name.

[Luhmann]

Nice concept, but doesn't work. I did the following steps:

1. Created a peep and added a phone number.

So far so good.

2. Created a new stikkit which says "lunch with ..." and my Peep's name
3. Below that I wrote her e-mail address.

When I do so the stikkit says:
"Stikkit will create or update stikkits for these peeps:" and also lists the Peep
as a "related stikkits"

However, when I finish editing the stikkit the "related stikkit" link disappears and the peep is not updated. Open the edit window and I see this again, save, and it is gone...


(NOTE: No foreign characters are present, but I use Chinese frequently and it would be nice if it would work with Chinese characters names!)

[michael]

Luhmann - this sounds like a bug. We'll check it out.

[Theory]

Nice concept, but doesn't work. I did the following steps:

Thanks for your note. Unforunately, I have not been able to replicate this. Can you reply with exactly the stikkit text you used to get this behavior, along with your already very detailed instructions for where to use that text?

Thanks,

David
Values of n

[stoweboyd]

Is there no support for lists of peeps?

"meet with John Johnson, Carla Bell, and Mike Jenkins on 12 Feb 07"

Should be.

[markshiflett]

I really like the new peeps interface -- esp. the ability to add more than one contact in a single stikkie....

However, I've got yet another suggestion for contact recognition.  Stikkit ought to also recognize the format "surname comma firstname [middle name or initial]" as a peep and store it correctly; viz:

Truman, Harry S. 714-555-1020
Bukowski, Hank 213-555-2337
Mercer, Roy D. 310-555-0043

these lines, on a single stikkie, oughtta create three peeps aliased Harry, Hank, and Roy.

[markshiflett]

Also, it's great that "birthday" is included in contact information, but the format of entering it for recognition seems a little non-stikkit-ish.  Rather than having to type:

birthday: 08/07

I really ought to be able to write "birthday is ..." or merely "birthday" (without the colon) for it to work.

Also, as I posted in another thread, it'd be swell to have the birthday feature pegged to other stikkits; such that I could enter "4/19 Sammy's birthday party" and have that birthday data store on Sammy's peep file.

[liampage]

An interesting feature.

A few notes:

• Email addresses that contain a period like firstname.lastname@domain.com don't appear to work. For example, I typed "Remember X for Firstname Lastname Firstname.Lastname@domain.com" and stikkit created a peep named Firstname Lastname Firstname with an email address of Lastname@domain.com
• Phone numbers default to the US +1 prefix (and the system adds hyphens to break the number into a US format), which isn't convenient for users in other countries. Adding +## (the correct country code) eliminates the +1, but the hyphens are still added
• Non-US addresses don't appear to be recognised without the "address:" prefix and placing the address on one line
• Birthdays aren't shown in the calendar, as far as I can tell. This is would be a very useful feature (having a birthday hidden in a record is of no real use if I don't remember to check)
• You might also think about adding the option to link numbers to Skype and/or other VOIP clients
  

[thecesspit]

I am a little confused on how updating occurs.

I have a peep created with some details.  I then create a stikkit and say:

Update Website X

By 11th February

work for Peep

!(some more notes)

bookmark http://websiteToUpdate/

@tag tag2

This doesn't then link it to the Peep.  It only seems to link if I add new data for the Peep (like a phone number or email, but I already have these details).

Also if I do add some details, it adds them to the Peep, even if they already exist.  So I get multiple copies of the same peep data.

Any clues?

[thecesspit]

As a quick extra,

I changed 'work for' to 'work with (figuring with was a magic word(*)) and the preview screen gave the link I was expecting.  But on saving it, the peep link disappears.

This looks to me like a fault.

(note that work is a tag of mine).

(*) Is there a list of magic words and their effects anywhere? 

[kwerb]

It would be really nice if there was a form field on the peeps tab to directly add someone as a peep.  Or some guaranteed way to designate someone as a peep in a Stikkit.  I know I can go into my address book app, export a vcf, and then import it, but that's tedious each time. 

I'm having a hard time getting names recognized as peeps, even when using the formats specified in this posting.  Sometimes it works, but it usually takes several tries, and sometimes not at all.

[smartjosh]

i am having the same problem as a few other people. 

i create a note that has "with robert duran" within it. 

while creating the note, it recognizes the peep.

upon saving, the link to the peep disappears.

wiskers shoot with robert duron on 3/24 from 10am-5
tag as gig, receivable
7 hours at 15/hr = 105