SMStweet lets you Tweet via local SMS

I had been to Nokia developer conference few weeks back. Met lot of interesting people there, shared ideas, it was fun. I also met Mayank there & got to know about SMStweet which he built. SMStweet enables user to post Tweets via SMS. To use this service just go to SMStweet.in & sign in using Twitter. This service uses Twitter oAuth & hence doesn’t store your twitter login information. After authenticating with twitter, give your mobile number to SMStweet & start using the service right away.

Send TWT YourTweet to 09220092200 or 09243000111 to post a tweet. If your tweet gets posted successfully, you will receive a response message containing latest @reply made to you.

Tweeting is fun when you share your experiences right away. Once I tweeted from middle of a river! SMSTweet just enables you to do it! No need of a GPRS connection, no need of a fancy device, all you need is a mobile phone & every mobile phone supports SMS (Do I have to say that?). I also find SMStweet useful to post interesting forwarded SMSs to Twitter!

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We perform lot of searches on the web everyday using search engines. Most of the time we use Google, sometimes it’s just not enough & we try others like Bing. So, myself & the100rabh came up with an idea to provide access to multiple search engines right from IM. We built an IM Search Bot, which we call “sbot” which is always available for you in your IM to perform searches.

Sbot supports Google, Bing, Yahoo! & Twitter search right now. Just add Sbot as your buddy on Gtalk/Y! Messenger/Live Messenger & start using it!!

Google Talk – sbot@bot.im
Yahoo Messenger – searchbot@ymail.com
MSN Live Messenger - searchbot@live.com

Once Sbot is added to your IM Buddy list, just start conversing with it. To start with send “help” & bot responds with usage instructions.

• To perform Google search send g<space>search term
• To perform Bing search send b<space>search term
• To perform Yahoo search send y<space>search term
• To perform Twitter search send t<space>search term

I use Sbot more when I’m at work since I don’t like to open too many tabs in the browser at work. One more really good usage of Sbot is Twitter Search! Whenever I’m busy, I use sbot to check my replies by just sending a message “t @hnprashanth”, simple!!

We are open for suggestions to add more search engines & features to sbot, please drop them in comments section.

Search Bot is built using Imified

Twitter has been helpful in critical conditions like Bomb Blasts, Earth Quakes,Volcanoes…etc Now you can take help of  Twitter for seeking blood! My friends Thej & Vinay Raikar have developed & designed Tweet4blood, which makes it easy to announce blood request on Twitter.

Using tweet 4 blood you can tweet your blood requests to followers of @tweet4blood who are donors. Tweets are also hashtagged city wise for easy finding. You dont have to login to tweet it from here. But make sure not to spam the community. - Tweet4blood

These announcements are made through @tweet4blood on Twitter which is being followed by blood donars. Great factor about tweet4blood is you need not to be registered with Twitter for making the announcement. Just fill the request form on Tweet4Blood website & submit.

Originally written at Control Enter

Bomb blasts rock Bangalore – is the old news now. When I heard it first time, instead of going to any news site I went to twitter. My colleagues were searching for this on news channels, but they were unable to get latest updates. Sooner they all surrounded me to see latest updates on twitter. Even I started updating to twitter on whatever I know.

Within few minutes of blast news, Laxman (@Scorpion032) created a twitter bot which automatically gets tweets with Bangalore & re-tweets it. But the idea didn’t continued to work because of too many updates containing Bangalore. Arun Ram (@arunram) started a twitter ID for those who wants to update they are safe & unable to use their mobile phones. In another few minutes bangalore has become top keyword on summize (now search.twitter.com).

Tons os tweets about Bangalore started pouring in & http://search.twitter.com/search?q=bangalore responded well to show real time updates about Bangalore Blast. @Mukund started updating details about Bangalore Blasts which were really interesting. Twitter has become great medium of communication in these critical conditions.

Try http://search.twitter.com for latest updates on anything you want. If you still not on Twitter, sign up at www.twitter.com. If you like you can follow my updates on twitter at http://twitter.com/hnprashanth

It made a very positive impact on my mind at the first look itself. What an interface, looks really great & simple. Coming to service, it apparently looks to me as combination of smsgupshup & twitter! Tagg.in claims itself as SMS group messaging system as well as micro blogging platform. But they are not simply telling like that.

Firstly registration is very easy, you have to fill only three feilds, email, password & verification code (are you human?). You can activate your mobile phone later, but updates via SMS is what looks great. Registration process can also be completed via SMSs. So you need not to have internet to use this service, just remember SMS short codes & their number. Tagg.in uses local number 99801 99801 so you will be less charged by service provider to update via SMS.

After simple registration process, you can create your own group termed as TAGGtivity. Updates to group can be sent using web interface or SMSs. Your followers can follow your updates in either medium. You can subscribe to other popular groups like CricScores, BrkgNews, SportsNews, JokesGuru…etc to get free updates.

Cons:

• You cannot add your friends mobile numbers to your group, they have to sign up or have to send a message from their mobile to follow your updates. SMSGupShup has a feature where you can add mobile numbers of your friends to your group & start sending messages straight away.
• Updates can be made via only two mediums, SMS & web. I still love twitter because it provides lot of ways to update. May be they are going to add these features in final release, this is still in alpha.
• Lack of badges to display your updates on your blogs or web pages.

I feel it still lacks in features when compared with it’s competitor. Let’s wait and see what features they are going to bring in final release.

As my Twitter network is growing, I’m discovering interesting new people. Aalaap Ghag is one of them, who is also the founder of a new online service called LinkBunch.

You might have heard or used TinyURL which shortens lengthy URLs into smaller ones, which can be used in places where space is a constraint. LinkBunch is a step ahead – it lets you create a single, small URL out of multiple links. The LinkBunch link is easy to remember and share, due to its short length.

Some Web 2.0 services have limited amount of characters that you can input. In Twitter the limit is 140 characters per tweet. If you wanted to share multiple links services like Twitter, you will run out of space. LinkBunch can be very useful in this case.

LinkBunch is still in Beta and the full set of features is not yet implemented. As I discussed with Aalaap, user accounts will be integrated into this service. With an account, a user can manage bunches created by him. Managing includes adding links, removing links, editing links in a current bunch, deleting old bunches if not required. User need not to go through sign up process, as this service will be OpenID enabled.

I have created a bunch with URLs of my blogs and social networking profiles, this is an example LinkBunch: http://linkbun.ch/4ma

To create your own Link Bunch go to linkbun.ch

Twitter is a service which ask you ?what are you doing??. But it?s deviated a lot from this theme & evolved as a big microblogging platform. You can just update whatever you want through web, IM or Phone. Others can follow your updates & can receive updates via all three mentioned mediums.

Twitter has millions of users & finding people from your location to interact is difficult as there is no such option provided right now. Abhinav Sarkar, a forth year student in IIT Kharagpur, created a script just for fun. But the script is really useful, it is written in python & uses Twitter API. Primarily script crawls Abhinav’s Indian friends on twitter by looking at location entry as “India”, “Bangalore”, “Mumbai”…etc into his database. Later script crawls his friend’s Indian friends & so on, the list keeps building. Finally, the result is a directory of all Indian Twitterers!

This list can be accessed at
http://abhinav.sarkar.googlepages.com/indiantwitterers.html

Great work Abhinav

Update:

Abhinav has created a twitter bot which follows, collects tweets from all Indian Twitterers & re-tweets them. So, you can follow this bot to follow all Indian twitterers tweets. Follow this bot at http://twitter.com/IndiaTwit