GizmoSMS

Michael Robertson, the man behind mp3.com and Linspire has added a new twist to his Gizmo free phone project. Gizmo has launched its new Gizmosms service.

While the SMS market is huge, 45 billion dollars worldwide approximately. This service is certainly not the first of its kind.
So whats exciting about this service, besides the man behind it all, when we have already seen so many sites providing an sms service.

a) With Gizmo, you do not need to know the carrier of the number you are smsing(or texting as it is known in some parts).
b) There doesnt seem to be any restriction on which carrier is supported. Or a large number of carriers are supported and this ofcourse is hidden from the user.
c) That makes the user interface clean. Requiring you to just know the number and the country where the sms needs to be sent to.
d) the site doesnt require you to register.


Michael does make tall claims of it being the best of its kind and the fastest. But I havent received my sms in the last 15 minutes. But all u text freaks, do check it out.

Gmail is down!!!

Gmail seems to be down for a while now. Wonder what google's up to?

Its been almost 15 mins since i noticed...

Google Maps : Zoom away

Well i havent checked this out yet... im going to do it as soon as i get home.. :)

But if this is possible.. wow!! but google may have some answering to do...

Time to go see if your car is still where u left it...
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-03-07-n12.html

:Derailed on Ruby tracks

Well if you have been trying to figure your way around ruby on rails and have been wondering what the so called :action's and :controllers and :id's are.

and Why do you need them in the code for?
and What do they do? etc etc. You have come to the right place.

Firstly these are called Symbols. And many have tried to explain the concept of symbols and have failed quite miserably.

Alas!! Its not me thats going to solve the mystery here for you. But yes I am going to show you the path : http://glu.ttono.us/articles/2005/08/19/understanding-ruby-symbols


A neat little blog by Kevin Clark that finally clears the air a little.

Cheers

Spotplex

Spotplex has added a twist to the Digg story. Here users do not submit stories. Instead sites that want to participate include some java code in their sites. This code then monitors the traffic to blog posts on the site and decides which ones need to appear on the Spotplex page.

This makes Spotplex clean as it cannot be manipulated externally. However i think these guys will still need to build trust around their algorithm and it is this that will prove to be their ‘tipping point’.

Like Michael A correctly mentions in his article on Techcrunch, the algorithm must prove itself to be unbiased to the already popular blogs.

We’ll have to see if this NKOTB will turn out to be the Digg killer.

Like.com

Riya 2.0 has been launched as like.com. And it aims to do pretty much what the site says. Find images like the one you upload.

Well it has been said for a while that its not enough to search text and that we need to peek into those images and understand what the image contains and be able to then search these images.

They are currently offering searches under the following categories : handbags, shoes, watches, jewelry and celebrities and are expecting to add many more every day.

Like.com will offer exciting options. We just cannot put everything we want to look for in words. If you like the pattern on a piece of clothing, its not something thats easy to describe or search for in words.

Revenue ought to come from ads and ofcourse lots of online shopping is expected to come this way. A lot will depend on how relevant the search results are ofcourse.

So we will have to wait and watch google is up to, having acquired Neven Vision, another image search company.

Meanwhile, Riya.com will continue to remain a face recognition tool and will be developed and improved in parallel.

Lot more exciting things to come im sure. lets wait and watch!!