Vinu's Online Cloud » sms

I thought I will twitter quotes from Tryst with Destiny (TwD ) – but then thought it might just be too much for non-Indians twiter followers. Anyway my patriotric feeling were up on techcruch – thanks to thejo – for pointing it to me! here are the TwD tweets (some slightly modified):

TwD1: To the nations & peoples of d world we send greetings & pledge ourselves 2 cooperate with’em in furthering peace, freedom & democracy.

TwD: we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India & her people & to the still larger cause of humanity.

TwD: Are we brave enough & wise enough to grasp this opportunity & accept the challenge of the future?

TwD: Freedom & power bring responsibility. Nevertheless, the past is over & it is the future that beckons to us now.

TwD: service of India means service of the millions who suffer, means d ending of poverty & ignorance & disease & inequality of opportunity

TwD: as long as there are tears & suffering, so long our work will not be over.

TwD: Peace, freedom, prosperity & disaster in this ONE World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

TwD: freedom brings responsibilities & burdens & we have to face them in the spirit of a free & disciplined people.

TwD: thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers & soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.

TwD: We think also of bro & sis who’ve been cut off from us by political boundaries & who unhappily can’t share in the freedom that has come

TwD: To bring freedom & opportunity to the common man, to the peasants & workers of India; to fight & end poverty & ignorance & disease;

TwD: build up a prosperous, democratic & progressive nation, create social, economic & political instn. 2 ensure justice & fullness 2 every1

TwD: Jai Hind

Going clean on the go!

vinu — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:45:16 +0000

I wanted to write this close to a month back but here it goes out finally: My Friend Dhana along with her colleague launched MizPee and the response has been zimply phenomenal. She was just super duper excited last when I had a skype chat with her before leaving for my himalayan trip. Its the first product at YojoMobile (you can expect more cool ones from them soon!)

Well the main idea about the mobile solution is it does just one thing really really well – finding the closest, cleanest toilet!! {local ads are matched} Read more about it on the MizPee website and reviews here and there. A quick google search give 145k hits! I am like wow … talk about using the mobile for really personal stuff ;P

airtel MO CNCL UNB OT

vinu — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:59:17 +0000

I am like this has to be blogged – for future retreival I got a bummer of a news in the morning that Tata Indicom the only provider that said will provide Internet to my place is sorry and is looking forward to revitalize our relationship on a later date ;P {I have a bigger post on that soon}!!

So, decided I will call airtel and activate GPRS (Mobile Office) and using internet on the go. Pained that its going to 43 kbps speed but atleast – its going to be always available. But I was really surprised with the activation messages I have to send. The cost is Rs 140/week (they highlight this plan only after you really dig and ask!)

Activate Mobile Office : sms MO to 6123
Deactivate Mobile Office : sms MO CNCL to 222
Check Unbilled Amount : sms UNB to 121
Outstanding amount : sms OT to 121

Can airtel get more intuitive. Talk about customer experience and Usability. I wonder if this is the state everywhere else in the world. Something is really messed up in the corporate structure I think – otherwise who in the hell will say send sms to 6123 to activate and send to 222 to deactive!

I am blogging for my personal reference and hope other people benefit from it!

sms gupshup

vinu — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:41:53 +0000

Well Webaroo folks have launched sms groups {sms gupshup}. My first reaction is they seem to be lacking some real tech talent or innovation! Having pioneered offline mobile storage thought – they well ahead on the curve (and in the right direction) in terms or vision and technology. But their recent sms forays in terms of following twittr and textmarks and MyToday stuff – I am wondering if they have started gettting their priorities mixed up!

What I can see new here is just some lovely eye-candy regular web2.0 CSS stuff. Nothing new. Given the fact that SMS is here to stay and that they have got venture funded – can we see some more india relevant technology thats new and useful??!

May be its possible as I realized – they will be able to implement it properly and take it to market sooner/properly than MyToday folks. Reminsd me back in September when we started the SMS Groups at MyToday we were genuinely interested and really enthused. Though the service has taken sometime to build up (all virally! I estimate there will be close to half a million customers as of now), I wonder whether they have started making money with Ads. Rajesh needs to be more aggressive. Its was initially a Blue Ocean Space and its becoming bloody really really fast! There is definitely money to be made – but I guess its going to be a wait and watch game!!

PS: Don’t get me wrong if I was critical, I am just genuinely concerned of the mobile / tech scenario in India. Yes, its true I have personally worked at Netcore (MyToday) and have interacted with Webaroo when I was in MyToday and also checked them out when they called me for interview. We need innovation, hard core indian ones. Common the american mobile market is less mature and competitive than the Indian market and all we can do is ape the Americans in this matter too! wtf!!

This reminds me of my twttr comment a week back when I read about google gears – I had said:

Google gears + MOBILE! Webaroo better start thinking fast. Imagine possiblities of offline ajax apps on mobile – thats like being on ecstacy
7 days ago from web

and then this the next day

yesterday it was me, now ajit talks about google gears on mobile – http://tinyurl.com/28lrjl note: google checkout mobile is out!
6 days ago from web

Mobile SMS Communities …

vinu — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:42:56 +0000

Four months back having quit Netcore, I volunteered to a Spastic School for children. Was talking to them how they could use MyToday’s SMS group service for ‘volunteer teacher’ allocation. Something that is a need of the hour to them, sadly never got to convince them to use it. However, one of them referred me to Pagalguy.com – one of the largest communities in India. She said her daughter Sonam works there and I should check them out.

Next day I had a chat with them on phone and met them in 3 to 4 days. I met Apurva – their editor and the founder Angel Alwin after a month or so. The entire team – Rohit, Bijay, Eka (ex-employee) and Rajat (new entree) are a real cool bunch! Check their blog.

Just a nice office, lovely bunch of people. Continued to interact / help / learn with them when I was working at ICICI. As an offshoot of the time I spent – I think I helped them convince SMS and GPRS would be key enablers for their growth and as a result they experimented a SMS stuff with MyToday. A news article at Time of India outlines it:

Pagalguy.com, the country’s largest community of MBA’s and MBA-aspirants plans to launch their GPRS-based mobile community in a month. But as of right now, they have launched a simple SMS-based service.

Here you can send an SMS to a single number and all the people that have subscribed to their service gets the same SMS. Apurv Pandit, editor of Pagalguy says that members are using this service to arrange real-world meetings and discuss various topics relevant to MBA graduates. This service is fairly simple and doesn’t require the use of web site and can be operated with any phone that can send an SMS

Will blog a bit more about my experience with them soon. Its amazing how much you can learn from a buzzing teens community in India. There is lot of insight to learn. Though I have moved to Bangalore, I hope I will continue to be associated with them on and off.

Update: A pic of the article – life size pic to read.

blogosphere round up

vinu — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 07:39:28 +0000

I checked up on some my feeds related to mobility – thought will point all of you to intereting ones

Politics – manipulate on the move => Pat Mobile : SMS based as of now {I recently read a ebook on using mobile for political campaigns – will talk about it soon!} We are soon see things like these for India too!
Watch Lakme fashion Week – live web streaming
Hinkmond – J2ME evangelist – talks about a new mobile LG phone with alpha numeric keys FAST TAP. And guess what – I think its cool! but $450
Smart Mobs – mentions Henry jenkins thoughts on Participartory culture and Media literacy. Highlights – core set of social skills & cultural competencies, youth should have to be full, active, creative and ethical participants in the new culture are:

Play – able to experiment / problem solve
Performance – adapt alternatives to improvise, discover
Simulate – intepret & construct dynamic models of real world
Appropriation – meanifully sample and remix media
Mutlitasking – scan environment & shift focus as needed to salient details
Distributed Cognition – interact meaningfully with tools to expand mental capacities
Collective Intelligence – pool knowledge and compare notes towards a common goal
Jugement – evaluate reliability and credibility of different resources
Trasmedia Navigation – follow stories & info across multiple modalities
Networking – ability to search for, synthesize & disseminate info
Negotiation – travel across diverse communities, discrening n respecting multiple perspectives & grasping n follow alternative norms

Seems to be the 7th part of a series of blog posts! I think it could be called a media education in the connected world in its truest sense.

free sms cricket updates

vinu — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:11:06 +0000

We are launching a FREE SMS cricket updates for Champions Trophy and guess what I am in charge of the project. Thought will tell you to subscribe and spread the word. Do give me feedback on quality of messages.

To subscribe SMS:
START CRI to 676787
To stop alerts say:
STOP CRI to 676787

to get the latest score:
either goto http://www.mytoday.com (mobile internet portal) or
SMS: CRI to 676787 anytime if you don’t have internet (GPRS) access on the phone (operator charges apply to messages sent to 676787)

Do spread the message to your friends and family. Thanks folks
BTW – this is only in INDIA