New SMSGupShup Looks Better And More Powerful

SMSGupShup.com, One of the most popular Mobile SMS group service in India got updated. Now with various features like better streamlined interface, option of owing more than one groups, control panel for maintaining subscription are some newly added features that makes it better than other services. And another very important thing about this service is Reliability. With millions of users accessing its service, they served them almost in real time, not like Twitter (No Downtime) . There are more than 3 lakhs publishers using its platform and expanding the usage.

How it is helping small businesses in marketing?
Small Businesses which deals with large number of consumers are using SMSGupShup successfully. They use this service to broadcast their deals, schemes, updates etc and lowers down their cost of communication.

Taking an example of Chain-based company, before using this service they usually send schemes updates of their product to all the customer spread widely in the country by regular post which cost around 5 bucks for each customer. Now they are using SMS based group, by using which they not only saves 5 bucks per customer but also updated everyone within few minutes. So it is actually making a business grow by cutting cost.

Few Suggestions for this Service on the basic of my experience with it

1. Filter SMS with vulgar words, slang etc or introduce a way out to avoid such SMS to every group member by conforming his/her approval.
2. Devise a mechanism to send user created pic unlike your own pre-cooked gallery.
3. Connect it with major social networks like Orkut, Facebook etc and expand your connectivity with others IMs like Yahoo.

orkut Blog: Making orkut more accessible

Orkut finally added Shortcut key for navigating to Home, Scrapbook, Communities etc. Now you can quickly switch to scrapbook. Technically speaking, it is now using accesskey attribute in HTML. I also discovered a change in URL today - http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Home.aspx 

They are frequently updating the UI and Technology involved in Orkut by promoting dynamic AJAX based modules. 

Other Social Giant Facebook has also changed its UI. Now, the messy things on Home is removed. One can access facebook via new.facebook.com.

Ghost Hunting

Ghost Hunting
Originally uploaded by Njoule

Today, I and my brother Darpan had a great evening having lots of experiments with long exposure techniques on our cameras.
It was a real fun with long shutter speed of 6 to 15 seconds. It allow us to stretch our creativity in photography.
This photo was shot in Manual Mode with 6 sec Shutter Speed, ISO 100.

Where is a Book Library here? Try Burrp or Laila or JustDial!!

If you are standing on a City Square and want to know where is the nearest CCD or where is the Salon nearby.  Puzzled! There is no need to search a yellow pages directory for such daily life questions. Ask Laila or Burrp, yeah these are some of the local city specific search services. You can reach to site either by Web or my sending a query through SMS. 

Such services are very useful in finding solutions of day to day life queries such as finding a grocery shop in the locality or to search a laundry service. Even they can hint you about the pricing of a restaurant, so that you can decide before moving.  

There are few services which I think are worth to be used in India.

1. Ask Laila - Available in metro cities of India, Here you can easily find events, restaurants, lifestyle services, shopping deals etc. On mobile, just SMS your query to 58969. Eg: SMS spa, south ext to the above no. You will get the result quickly.  Or access laila using WAP m.asklaila.com 
2. Burrp - burrp! local is available in more cities than asklaila, It covers Pune, Ahemdabad too. Two things I like about burrp are first its unique  TV Guide and second, lots of reviews of local businesses. So there is a good chance that the returned search result is according to the customer feedback. 
3. JustDial.com - A very popular local search engine which can be even accessed by a landline. 
4. Zook.in - Zook is an online mobile search community. It works by community feedback mechanism. Zook on SMS:  to 57575665
5. local.google.co.in  - Good search engine for web but its not up to the mark for very local search as compared to what above sites can search. But it is good for local businesses. 
6. in.local.yahoo.com - A local search engine by Yahoo!
7. ilaka.in - local search in major cities of India and have a directory kind of listing along with locality specific search. The good thing about this site I liked is an embedded MAP with the search result which is useful for locating the address. 
8. Myquest.in - Best for Delhi-NCR region. Very detailed with lots of widgets. Nice!

So I hope you will now never get troubled anywhere. And I suggest you to submit entries on the above site if it is not available there. Be a responsible community member.

%^*&$!# SONY VAIO LCD SCREEN PROBLEM - UNRELIABLE SONY

I purchased Sony VAIO for its class and reliability but now I am realizing it was a wrong decision. My laptop is having a series of problem since I brought. The biggest of them is in the LCD. It is showing a white line at a margin of 1 cm from top [shown in picture, click to enlarge]. And sometimes it also flickers. Which is absolutely ridiculous thing from a Brand like SONY.
Past few problems with VAIO [Model : FE-VGN48G/H]:

1. Sometimes mute button, volume control button doesn't work properly.
2. Slow on Vista as compared to the same configuration of other brands.
3. Harddisk stops working sometimes and lappy hangs on.
4. Battery life is around 70 minutes max. which is too less according to the Sony VAIO specification sheet.

I use my Lappy for around 7-8 hours daily. And till date I never gave a jerk or drop, so I am pretty sure that It's a electronics problem. I recommend don't buy a VAIO ever.

Help me out!! Suggest a solution to get rid out of this.

After writing an Email to Sony VAIO Support team about this problem, They suggested few steps to do:

1. Update your BIOS Firmware to the latest version.
2. Update your Graphic Card Driver [NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600].
3. Restart your PC and Check whether problem is solved.
4. If problem persist after following above steps, try Safe Mode.
5. Still in trouble, Go to Sony Service Centre with Warranty Documents. 

So now I tried all of these steps, but that line is still there on my LCD. Huh? Very Annoying. :-(

CyberSearch Enhance Your FireFox 3 Address Bar

The CyberSearch FireFox extension transforms your address bar into a dynamic configurable search bar. It searches Google, Wikipedia and more using AJAX. You can customize it fully and even define your own keywords for searching. Like there are few inbuilt keywords, gbook for searching books using Google Books, gloc for searching Local Businesses using Google Local etc. you can even create new keywords from plugin options.
Like I create ap as a keyword for searching in my blog http://anjulsahu.blogspot.com/ [shown in image]. Using cybersearch you can directly open the desired search link through the address bar.



The extension is currently under experimental mode at firefox addon site so you need to register there to install the extension. CyberSearch is free and saves our time of browsing. It should be noted that It works only with Firefox 3.

Here is a video demostrating the plugin.
CyberSearch [CyberNet]

Now NCERT Books Goes Online

With the increasing usage of IT-based solution everywhere, Government organizations are also using it widely in educational systems. In the extension of implementations, NCERT introduced online books for all the subjects of all classes right from I to XII in PDF.
I find it very useful, because now most of the students are having computers with them and books in pdf saves cost and after all this comes for free so that's even great. Thanks to NCERT. :)