Free Group SMS and Google SMS Search

I am going to talk about 2 interesting but India specific Google offerings here. Although Indians don't SMS/text as much as they used to in good old days, there are reasons to chear courtesy Google. These 2 SMS services are called:

1. Google SMS Channels - Here you can create a Channel or SMS Group and all the subscribers will be getting the channel content by SMS for free. Now this Channel can pull content from Google News and Google groups so once you point your channel to any group or news, you will be getting new content automatically by SMS. Cool isn't it? But it does not end there - You can even pull content from your or any blogger powered blog or any RSS source, but the best part is that you can use the channel to send same SMS message to all your friends and contacts. You can just create a personal channel and invite all your contacts to it and when you post message to channel via web or by SMS it will reach everybody. So practically you can now send multiple SMSes at the cost of one sms or even for free if you use web option. Try now

2. Google SMS Search - Google SMS search is plain, simple and straight-forward like all things Google. You just need to send you search query as sms to Google India No.  9-77-33-00000 and they send you search results by sms immediately. I have tried it and it really works and here is one more Google advantage for you - since this is a normal 10 digit no and not a special no, probably you will be charged for sending only a normal sms, which is as low as 10 paise with some SMS plans. So probably Google is not looking to rip you off by having a special 4 or 5 digit no. 

BTW you can use Google search for many useful things beside search like - cricket scores, Indian Railways train schedules & ticket status, PNR, horoscopes, movie showtimes, restaurant information and more. For more info you can go here.

Oh I forgot to tell you, you can subscribe to my blog by SMS from here :-)

Nagpur among Best cities for IT-BPO growth

Rediff today carries a story about India's 15 best cities for IT-BPO growth. It mentions major cities like Mumbai, Pune, Chennai beside emerging cities like Nagpur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Bhuvneshwar etc.

Rediff has this to say about Nagpur:

"Strategically located, Nagpur is the largest city in central India with excellent educational institutions that churn out a fine talent pool. The city's impressive infrastructure, new supporting governmental policies, an enabling and peaceful business environment, availability of a huge knowledge pool, etc have seen a number of IT firms setting up base here.

A proposed special economic zone that will house a major international cargo hub and also information technology companies will further boost the city's allure for IT firms.

At Rs 298,000, Nagpur is the 10th most prosperous city in terms of average annual household income in India."

I love my Nagpur.

Book iPhone in India

Update on 8th August: Airtel starts selling iPhone from 22nd August 08.

iPhone's official launch is getting near and to fuel the excitement both Vodafone and Airtel have started booking for iPhone.

To book iPhone on Vodafone click here or sms IPHONE to 56789.

To book iPhone on Airtel click here.

For those who still don't know much about iPhone, click here to have a 360 view of it.

Vodafone bringing iPhone to India

28th June - Book iPhone

Update on 12th May: Airtel going to launch the iPhone as well.

Its official now. Vodafone India announced that its going to launch the much awaited iPhone in India later this year. Media speculates that it will be launched sometime in September this year. I am already on Vodafone so that's good I will not need to unlock iPhone to use on other carriers if I buy one.

This news is everywhere but I am taking CIOL's word on it being an official announcement by Vodafone. Unfortunately Vodafone has no press release on its website. Infact their latest press releases are dated February 2008. Considering that I have never received a response after leaving feedback on their website and that their website was hacked last year, it seems Vodafone does not take its website seriously.

Anyway coming back to iPhone, media is of the view that its going to be priced around Rs. 27,000 to Rs. 30,000 range so its not going to be easy on your pockets however die-hard fans will buy it anyway for any price I guess. 8GB version will be launched initially followed by 16 GB version in a few months.

Related post: iPhone is here...

Centro - Affordable Palm Smartphone for India

Palm India recently launched Centro its newest, cheapest and probably also the best smartphone offering in India. I am calling it cheapest because its retail price as listed on the website is Rs. 13,990. When Treo 680 was first launched in India, its listed price was more than Rs. 25000, however I just checked and its now being sold for Rs. 14,400. However I would quickly like to point out that in US Centro is available for just $99 with service contract and rebates which makes it almost free.

I also call it best palm smartphone because its undoubtedly the smallest and sleekest smartphone from Palm and does everything a Treo 680 does. It also has a camera better than Treo 680.

However I have 2 complaints from Palm.

1. They don't advertise much and their distribution/dealership network does not exist on non-metro Indian cities. I am so tired of people looking at my Treo 680 and asking me what kind of phone it is? Is it a Chinese phone? Is it good and such things. People recognize an O2, Imate or even HTC quite well here and everybody recognises Nokia.

2. Second problem I have is that there are simply no color choices available for Centro in India, but I guess that's because they only have a single color available for GSM Centro. They have option of 3 very attractive colors for CDMA versions in US though.

Virgin rings in India, pays you to recieve call

Virgin Mobile was launched a few days back in India in traditional Virgin (read Path-breaking) style. Timing couldn't have been better for me as I just finished reading his autobiograpy.

Richard Branson came flying down a Hotel to launch the Virgin Mobile logo. Virgin Mobile is a youth targetted mobile service and is available on CDMA networks of Tata Teleservices which operates its Mobile services called Tata Indiacom.
Mr. Branson talked about briging 10 firsts to Indian telecom market, the most interesting in my opinion is their offer to give 10 paise per minute to their users for every incoming call.

The launch was followed by daringly different TV commercials. I am personally very excited by Virgin's entry in Indian telecom space even if they don't own a network here. I hope they will bring in lot of excitement and set benchmarks in customer services as they have done everywhere they have gone. However I am not sure if they can achieve this with Tata Indicom running support operations for Virgin. Tata Indicom's customer service has generally been very poor like most other telecom operators in India.

Tata and Virgin are not in complete sync was also evident from statements from both the sides during the launch. Richard Branson said "At Virgin Mobile we believe that the existing operators are all pursuing the same strategy: to get as many subscribers as quickly as possible. We want to deliver a more tailored, more relevant offering for a single, distinct segment,"

and in the save event Anil Sardana, managing director, Tata Teleservices, said, "This association would support our efforts to be the fastest growing mobile network in India."

I guess that means while Branson wants to not pursue strategy of just getting a lot of subscribers quickly, Tata's are just concentrating on a lot of subscribers as their primary mission.

Well good luck to Virgin and I hope some of Virgin culture and craziness will rub off to Tata Indicom as well in due course. I am too sad that I won't be able to have a first hand experience of Virgin service myself as I don't want to change my number and I am on GSM as of now. May be Richard Branson should put his wait behind in ushering in the Number Portability regime in India so that users from other networks can choose Virgin if they want to.

A personal note to Richard if he ever reads it: I always admired you and after reading your Autobiography I am in awe of you and will probably even risk a balloon flight to meet you :-)

Certified Scrum Master

I just became Certified Scrum Master (CSM) after attending the required 16 hours training by Pete Deemer. I attended the training at Mumbai on 23,24 February.

Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices. Wrapping existing engineering practices, including Extreme Programming and RUP, Scrum generates the benefits of agile development with the advantages of a simple implementation. Scrum significantly increases productivity and reduces time to benefits while facilitating adaptive, empirical systems development. Learn more...

Those looking to get Scrum Training in India can visit - http://www.goodagile.com/