ankurb – Page 115 – Ankur Banerjee's personal blog

SMS Gyan – mobile search engine with a difference

I came to know about this startup called SMS Gyan when one of its founders (or someone from their team) emailed me about it. At the outset I would like to point out that this blog post is not a ‘sponsored’ post. I found their concept interesting, so I’m blogging about it. These guys do have some considerable reputation behind them, since they were part of the Economic Times Power of Ideas initiative.

The concept of SMS Gyan is that while some high-end phones have good web browsers, every goddamn phone has SMS capability. What SMS Gyan tries to do is that it tries to be an ‘answer engine’ instead of a ‘search engine’. I would have brought up WolframAlpha if I was a TechCrunch author, but that I am not. SMS Gyan and Wolfram are different thing and they shouldn’t be confused. SMS Gyan works like this – there are a few specified categories in which you can SMS queries to them, and then it sends you answers related to that. The categories currently available are: encyclopedia, dictionary, acronym, live cricket scores, movie/book reviews, weather, alerts, stock market, gadget price, calorie meter. You can find out exact details on how to format your SMS query on their website, so I won’t bother repeating it. If your phone has a web browser, you can route your query via the SMS Gyan WAP site – but that kinda defeats the whole point of SMS Gyan. The service then sends back pint-sized bits of information on whatever topic you ask it about.

I believe any search engine – whatever kind it may be – should be judged on the basis of the results that it gives. I decided to run some random queries in various categories to test SMS Gyan. I present the results here, with my commentary with [ ] braces.

Encyclopedia
1. quiz – A quiz is a form of game or mind sport in which d players attempt 2 answer questions correctly. Quizzes are also brief assessments used in education similar fields 2 measure growth in knowledge abilities andor skills.
2. Kevin Smith – Kevin Patrick Smith is an American screenwriter director as well as a comic book writer author actor. He is also d co founder with Scott Mosier of View Askew Productions owner of Jay Silent Bobs Secret Stash comic novelty store in Red Bank New Jersey. He also hosts a weekly podcast wi.More [I think the message is truncated and you can get more info by sending back a message]
3. Oompa Loompas – This article uses bare URLs. pls help improve this article by turning bare URLs into proper citations containing all of d information on d referenced works title date publisher publication author so that d article remains verifiable in d future. [This was a big boo-boo. Obviously, it’s capturing details from the Wikipedia page on this topic, but it caught the wrong information.]
Dictionary
1. quiz – competition in d answering of questions, hoax, interrogate. [Note that this is different from the encyclopedia result. Good!]
2. whatchamacallit – an object of unknown name. [Not a very common word. I’m impressed it got this one.]
3. bill gates – Oops no results. [Just testing what happens if I gave a non-dictionary word.]
Books
1. White Tiger – Amzn Rating: 4.0/5 , Caught in the rooster coop , From The Darkness into the light , Incredible Journey Through A Changing India , Is White Tiger at best a Paper Tiger? , Debut novel about India a fantastically dark read [Crap results basically.]
Movies
1. Taking of Pelham 123 – Reviewbag says: Sorry, I don’t have reviews for this query–Powered by reviewbag.com
2. Good Will Hunting – Avg Rating: 4.1/5 , First and foremost, Good Will Hunting is a film riding young, exuberant energies , There’s nothing original in this picture, yet it’s intensely likable just the same , You’d never guess this just-off-center movie was directed by indie hero Gus Van Sant , With its sweet soul and sharp mind, it’s one of the most heartening films of the year , This beautifully realized tale is always engaging and often quite touching , Intimate, heartfelt and wickedly funny, it’s a movie whose impact lingers , Thanks to solid performances by Damon, Williams, and Driver, the story glides by on charm , Fairly bursts with the exuberance and youthful energy that must have attended its creation , It’s the individual moments, not the payoff, that make it so effective , Stuffed–indeed, overstuffed–with heart, soul, audacity, and blarney
Acronyms
1. TAANSTAFL – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch [Impressed that it got this.]
2. CORBA – Common Object Request Broker Architecture (Object Management Group); Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association

I could go on more about results from other categories, but I hope you get the gist of what the service does. Overall, I must say I was impressed with its abstracts on most information snippets that I asked it for. SMS Gyan is not coming up with the answers itself, but merely channeling information from other places online to you. In a situation where you are stuck with no GPRS/EDGE connectivity, or you have a phone which doesn’t have a (good?) web browser, SMS Gyan holds much promise in getting you in the information that you need. They’re also working on some new offshoots such as live event promotion SMS management etc. Yes, there are some glitches in the service – but these are early days yet and I’m sure their team will work on removing these over time.

The concept is extremely simple, yet the fact that a majority of phones in India are not smartphones might mean that SMS Gyan has a product which can actually take off and be successful. Give it a try online (WAP site) or check out the SMS query format.

The Taking of Pelham 123

My rating of The Taking of Pelham 123: B (Good)
Cast: Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, James Gandolfini
Directed by: Tony Scott
Studio: Columbia TriStar

The Taking of Pelham 123 has run out of steam in Indian theatres by now, not that it took of much really. But I knew I couldn’t miss this movie since it’s directed by one of my favourite directors Tony Scott (brother of another of my favourite movie directors, Ridley Scott), and stars Denzel Washington (on of my most favourite Hollywood actors) to boot. To jog your memory a bit, this Washington-Scott duo has delivered some smashing films (and some of my personal favourites) like Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, and Deja Vu – among others such as Domino and Enemy of the State. I couldn’t watch this movie earlier when it was released since I was not in Delhi.

[yahoo 12007226]

Watch the theatrical release trailer for The Taking of Pelham 123

The Taking of Pelham 123 is a remake of an old 1974 movie by the same name, based on a novel by the same name about a hostage situation on a New York subway train. John Travolta plays the role of Ryder, leader of a group of ‘terrorists’ (for the lack of a better word) who take people on a New York subway train hostage. They demand a ransom of $10 million to release the hostages; if they don’t get the money on time they threaten to kill the hostages (and actually do kill some of them). Denzel Washington plays the role of Walter Garber, a disgraced transportation authority official who has been demoted to the position of train dispatcher for taking a few weeks previously, and on whom the responsibility of negotiating with the terrorists falls upon. Yes, there’s an official police negotiator in Lieutenant Camonetti (played by John Turturro), but Ryder refuses to speak to anybody other than Garber. There’s a catch in that fact that the ransom demand is just a small part of a bigger plan on Ryder’s part to make money by investing in put options before the hostage situation happens. The train involved in the situation is subway train named Pelham 123, thus the name.

The movie revolves around how the hostage crisis unfolds over the period of slightly longer than an hour. Heavy bass soundtrack is littered all across the movie. After proving that he’s a son of a bitch in the movie Bolt, John Travolta fulfills the role of a dick superbly, albeit by needing to use the word ‘motherfucker’ way too often and wearing a biker tattoo to prove his Convicted Criminal ™ credentials. Denzel pulls off his usual police officer / hostage negotiator / army guy routine with elan. John Turturro does everyone a big favour by not showing the crack of his ass and standing beneath the testicles of an evil space robot. So where could the movie possibly go wrong?

Pelham 123‘s problem is that the whole plot feels a bit to conveniently arranged for a Hollywood movie. Where else other than a Hollywood movie can certified thugs walking into a subway train with ‘motherfucking machine guns to blow the fucking heads off’ – without any noticing? Where else can a cop car have a car collision, flip over, and have ‘three motherfucking somersaults’ before hitting concrete? The movie is good, but not great. The lead actors all do a satisfactory job, but somehow, they don’t seem to be into the movie with their heart and soul.

Meanwhile, those sleazeball Sony executives ensure that every few minutes of the movie we have to endure shots of a Sony product. Including John Travolta browsing the Web via WiFi on a Sony Vaio laptop in a goddamn subway train. I believe the reason for all goons choosing Sony Vaio laptops must be because they’ve opened a special 1-800-WE-LOOK-THE-OTHER-WAY hotline for orders from gangsters. Then there are Sony cars, Sony guns, Sony cellphones, Sony microphones, Sony helicopters, etc.

This is a great movie by usual Hollywood standards, but I’ve seen terrific stuff from Washington-Scott earlier – and this movie just doesn’t live up to those standards. Still, if you have an opportunity to watch it, don’t miss it.

(Denzel Washington is one of most favourite actors because he only does serious, intense roles and does them really well. The only non-serious role he ever played, I think, was in The Preacher’s Wife and that was pretty much a flop. So far I haven’t come across a Denzel Washington movie which I felt disappointed about after watching it.)