Mobile Greetings for your friends, and more

Bunch of upgrades to Zook.

• Find the alert you want to set. Try “alerts movies INOX bangalore” or “alerts electronics deals“ - essentially syntax independent after the “alerts ….” - find and set the deals/movies/events you want to follow, not the “best whatever” somebody else puts and pushes to you.
• Greetings: Find a birthday/diwali/eid, etc, SMS forward, and set it up for the appropriate day as a mobile greeting! We’ll make sure its delivered on the right day and tell your friend you remembered them on the special day.
• Web Search: We’ve integrated web search results on Zook - just in case the data isn’t there, or good enough right away. Over time, we’ll try pulling information out of that too so you don’t have to grapple with links and more links and more links….

Keep Zook.in!

What Are You Zook.in for ?

[ X-posting from the Zook blog ]

People solve a nice variety of needs through the Zook community. Here’s a few samples:

Sports news and updates:
all winners of 2008 US open
olympics medal tally

Distances, though we’re not a maps service:
Choutapal, nalgonda is how far from hyderbad

Meanings, reference, current affairs:
Mesogynist meaning
what is 123 agreement?
where do we’ve nuclear reactors in india?
“in the red” means?
“spaghetti bowl” means?

Status:
pnr status 140494xxxx

Shortcuts:
RelianceGSM’s website Address
electricity bill of CESC online

Curiosity:
world fastest train?
Where is the place ‘Silent Hill’ actually located

Tough Ones!
rajasthani cook supplier Pune
world’s top most prizes after nobel?
malavan weather
Big purchasing dealer for mentha oil in barabanki (we got this!)

To anyone who asks “What kind of questions does Zook answer?”, or “How’re you like XYZ local search?”, the above should provide a clue. We’re amazed at how so many folks are actually SMSing in to figure out answers to whatever pops up in their heads - and the big challenge now is to get to the whole country, so there’s a new tool for the cliched “no such thing as a dumb question”.

Go ahead, ask! ANYthing that you think needs answering on the phone. Oh, there IS the usual “restaurants, movies, stuff” too. http://zook.in or sms query to 57575665

Web OScuse me?

The Ted Dziuba take on Chrome-as-the-Web-OS hypereviews in blogosphere.

I'm really beginning to like this guy. Not that I'm totally in agreement over everything he says - but he does pose some interesting questions about architectures, usability, user needs and industry craziness! Yeah, most people still the plain vanilla stuff, and whyever does everyone now need quad-cores and 4Gs of RAM ?

Pretty left-liberal take on the Web2.0. And it needed a bit of that, if you ask me :)

Blogger Rant

Why can I not set all my posts to be justified, or centered, or whatever by default? Invariably edit EVERY post after the first publish.

Edit: including this one :D

OpenID uncov'd

Ted Dziuba takes openID on in his own characteristic way.

Again, I tend to agree with him. Single sign on is a great idea within an organization/site across various tools/properties. Across, as Ted suggests, hey, recycle!

There's something about too much componentization that gets painful. Especially for the lay user. But then, a lot of the blogosphere couldn't care less about the lay user, could it ? Its so Cool 2.0 to servicify, so a service it shall be.

The Power of Community

Team-Bhp just helped trace and recover a stolen car!

Community at its best? Its heartening to see not everything is done for incentives and/or "social currency"