Missed call to vote! An innovation in voting system by ZipDial

Vote via SMS is the most commonly used voting system these days. From reality shows to surveys & contests everywhere it’s been used. But, I personally don’t vote at all using this system since it uses 5 or 6 digit short code which my service provider will charge around 5 to 6 Re per SMS. Because of this pricing, participation in voting becomes very less.

I remember reading an SMS forward which says “Missed call system is invented by Indians”!! We use this “Missed Call” technique so much in our daily life. My mom & sis never call me from their phone, they always give me a missed call & I call back! Just because they don’t want to burn their currency talking to me. Taking forward this widely used “Missed Call” technique, ZipDial has come up with a “Missed Call to Vote” system!

For Ex:

Q: Should Meg Whitman become Governor of California?

If YES, give a missed call to +91 40 44 55 69 30
If No, give a missed call to +91 40 44 55 69 31

All you are doing here is giving a missed call, so you will not be charged anything to vote! And this system is so simple, you don’t have to remember “Send XX to YYYYY” and bleh bleh to vote! It is just different numbers to dial for different options.

I spoke to people behind ZipDial at AppJam & they said they have plans to open ZipDial for public where anyone can create a poll. They have just started, I wish everyone including TV channels start using this system. Visit ZipDial & start voting for polls & win some gifts.

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Airtel has two unlimited GPRS packs for it’s prepaid customers. One day pack offers you unlimited browsing all the day for Rs.20. Similarly you can go for weekly pack for Rs.99 & do unlimited browsing throughout the week. Getting these packs activated is quite simple via SMS shortcodes as follows:

• To activate daily pack (Rs.20), send MO to 56123
• To activate weekly pack (Rs.99)  send MO to 56122

Since I’m not an Airtel user, I don’t know more about other GPRS packs Airtel is offering. If you are aware of any, please share it with others in comments section.

We Meet is a pilot project developed by Nokia Research Centers in Bangalore & Palo Alto collaboratively. We Meet has been developed mainly keeping India in mind. We Meet is a group messaging system in which user can create groups & send messages to group. Well, we know there are many group SMS systems already available like SMSGupShup. But these SMS groups are one way, only administrator of the group can send messages to the group. But in We Meet all the members can post messages & hence it is more interactive. So, at the cost of one SMS you can reach out to an entire group of people. We Meet is purely SMS based & doesn’t require GPRS active. We Meet is location aware, location of the user will be attached to his message. We Meet compares tower information with it’s database to get the location of a user.

We Meet is available in three forms, java based client, text only client & web client. Java client is very nicely designed as you can see in the screenshots. Using java client allows you to perform all the operations including creating groups, add members to group, chat with a group..etc. Java client also has privacy settings to enable/disable location sharing and also options to turn off the service for a while. SMS counter in java client gives you a glance of how many SMSs you have sent & received. For those who can’t install java application, can still use We Meet with text only mode. In text only mode, everything happens over SMS, user has to prefix his mesaages with keyword commands (ex: ACCEPT BLOGGERS will accept the invitation to join group Bloggers). Web client is still under development & might probably go live very soon.

We Meet java client makes sure that messages sent & received using it won’t appear in your phone’s SMS inbox. That actually helps in keeping your phone’s inbox clean & organized. Messages which are sent & received using We Meet gets stored in the server & hence doesn’t eat up phone’s memory. We Meet is a free service, but you have to pay your operator for SMSs as per the plan you are on. We Meet is currently using a Karnataka based mobile phone number, so if you have got plenty of free local SMSs, you don’t have to worry about charges!! Even if you are in any place outside karnataka, it still can workout cheaper since one SMS goes to entire group of people.

Know more about We Meet & get your hands on the application at wemeet.nokiapaloalto.com

There are plenty of free SMS providers on the internet today. But the problem with these providers is they allow you to use only 140 characters & fill remaining space with ads. It looks so unusual to put ads inside personal messages we are sending! SMSFame is the first website I know which allows users to send free 160 character SMSs. SMSFame relies on online advertising rather than placing ads inside SMS. SMSFame requirs a simple registration process before you start sending SMS.

Link: SMSFame.com

Yesterday Leeladhar wrote on ControlEnter about an SMS scam. You might receive an SMS saying you have won lottery prize of Rs.xxxx, claim it by calling following number. Which refers to an international number, upon calling subscribers might be charged as high as Rs.500. Airtel is displaying a alert message about this scam on it’s main page:

?Unsolicited fraudulent SMS?s are being sent to various subscribers informing them that they have won a prize and need to call an international number to collect their prize. When calls are made to the number in the text message the subscribers are billed a high amount (upto Rs 500 per minute).Subscribers are cautioned not to respond to such SMS?s?

So, don’t reply by calling to numbers provided in SMSs. Educate your friends about this scam by sharing this information.

Note: You can use “Google Friend Connect” on Tech Bangalore to send the link to your gmail contacts by clicking on “Invite Friends” after logging into it.

FooSMS was down yesterday & since it was loading different site, I thought it went down forever. To confirm this, I sent a mail to FooSMS team asking reason for going down. It seems they are coming with new interface including user registration, here is their reply:

Hello Prashanth,

Thank You for Contacting FOOSMS !!

Actually our back-end team is still working with some reseller options.
You can find the same @ http://sms.foosms.com
We are planning to release the same within a weeks time.
With reference to this we changed our servers and while updating the ip
address, a mismatch happened.
And yesterday it takes little more time for the name servers to reflect.
i.e. the actual problem what we faced yesterday.

Thanks,
J.Bibin
http://www.foosms.com

That’s a very good news for all FooSMS users (including me). Since this is still in “Beta” it might not be fully functional. You have to wait until it gets released. By the way, you can use same old FooSMS at http://foosms.com (without WWW). I usually use FooSMS for sending any long web URL to my phone! eNjoY free SMSing!

Goto Foosms.com

Foosms is a website which allows you to send SMS to any mobile phone in India. Well, there are lot many already available, why I am writing about this? Because Foosms doesn’t require any login or registration to send SMSs. Foosms is quite simple, I was really surprised to see homepage. I was expecting many bla bla bla things about features it offers & a “Register Now” button!!! But FooSMS presented me SMS sending interface right away in home page!

FooSMS Home Page

One of the reason for success of Google is that it is simple. Especially Search, it gives a search box straight away to input in & search. If you load Yahoo, you will lot of unwanted stuff & have to search for the search box! I guess whomever made this page are inspired by Google!

So you start SMSing straight away without any login, any backwaas!

I have already reviewed many SMS services on Tech Bangalore, this is the consolidated post on all available SMS services. Free SMS services are important as many of us don’t have free SMSs on our tariff & service providers doesn’t allow free SMS festival occasions. So, I am making a list of available services with small description about each of them.

Free SMS services:

Way2SMS:

Way2SMS is a free SMS service which enable you to send free SMSs to any mobile number in India from web. Just sign up & start sending SMSs. It also has group messaging service. Out of 140 characters of SMS, users are allowed to send 92 character messages. Remaining characters will be used for advertisements. Despite of web interface to send SMS, way2SMS also has wap interface. So, If you have GPRS active on your mobile phone, you can send SMSs via mobile phone also.

Link: www.way2sms.com

You Mint:

You Mint is yet another service similar to Way2SMS which allows you to send free SMSs to any mobile in India via web. It allows 80 characters of message & remaining used for advertisements. You Mint claims “We actually pay you for getting friends signed up to this service!“. You Mint pay users for referring friends to it’s network.

Link: www.youmint.com

Conclusion:

Way2SMS stands out in lot of areas listed below:

• Way2SMS allows 92 characters unlike 80 characters of You Mint
• Number of SMSs per day or to a number are limited in You Mint, unlimited in Way2SMS
• You Mint has time limitations to send SMS, free SMSs are allowed only between 8 AM to 10 PM
• Lack of wap site

Group Messaging Services:

SMS Gup Shup:

SMS Gup Shup is the best available service to send group SMSs. You can create your own group & start sending SMSs. You can use web interface to send SMSs to group of people free of cost. You can also send SMS to your group from you mobile, send SMS to 567673434 & that gets delivered all people in your group.

Link: www.smsgupshup.com
Tech Bangalore Review

Activ Mobs:

Activ Mobs is a Bangalore based group SMS service which enable you to send group messages from your mobile. The idea of Activ mobs is to send message bunch of people for the cost of one SMS. Activ Mobs don’t have any web interface to send group SMSs. This is the SMS only service with registeration & using services are via SMSs only. Activ Mobs uses karnataka local number rather than premium number which reduces the SMS sending cost.

Link: www.inactiv.com

Tech Bangalore Review

Tagg.in:

Tagg.in is a recently entered into group SMS service. Tagg claims it’s not only group SMS system, but also a Micro Blogging platform. Tagg has pretty good interface & simple registeration process. For me, it looks like clone of SMSGupShup with no additional features.

Link: www.tagg.in

Tech bangalore Review

SMS Sharing Service:

Vakow:

We don’t have any competetors in this service, Vakow rules! Vakow is a greate web service for SMSs I have seen. Vakow is to share SMSs with your friends & world. You can use either web interface to post messages or via SMSs. Users can subscribe to other users, rate SMSs posted by others…etc. You can also store personal messages which carries memories (Ex: First proposal you got from a girl/boy ). Personal messages can be marked private which will not be visible to anyone else.

Link: www.vakow.com

Tech Bangalore Review