On Zook

This is just a post about the tonnes of updates on Zook!

• Find the alert you want to set. Try “alerts movies INOX bangalore” or “alerts electronics deals“  - essentially syntax independent after the “alerts ….” - find and set the deals/movies/events you want to follow, not the “best whatever” somebody else puts and pushes to you.
• Greetings: Find a birthday/diwali/eid, etc, SMS forward, and set it up for the appropriate day as a mobile greeting! We’ll make sure its delivered on the right day and tell your friend you remembered them on the special day.
• Web Search: We’ve integrated web search results on Zook - just in case the data isn’t there, or good enough right away. Over time, we’ll try pulling information out of that too so you don’t have to grapple with links and more links and more links….

Keep Zook.in!

Someone asked:

“Capital of Tanzania?”

I thought I knew that one - but …

The things one thinks one knows! And the impermanence of “facts” - its astounding

People solve a nice variety of needs through the Zook community. Here’s a few samples:

Sports news and updates:
all winners of 2008 US open
olympics medal tally

Distances, though we’re not a maps service:
Choutapal, nalgonda is how far from hyderbad

Meanings, reference, current affairs:
Mesogynist meaning
what is 123 agreement?
where do we’ve nuclear reactors in india?
“in the red” means?
“spaghetti bowl” means?

Status:
pnr status 140494xxxx

Shortcuts:
RelianceGSM’s website Address
electricity bill of CESC online

Curiosity:
world fastest train?
Where is the place ‘Silent Hill’ actually located

Tough Ones!
rajasthani cook supplier Pune
world’s top most prizes after nobel?
malavan weather
Big purchasing dealer for mentha oil in barabanki (we got this!)

To anyone who asks “What kind of questions does Zook answer?”, or “How’re you like XYZ local search?”, the above should provide a clue. We’re amazed at how so many folks are actually SMSing in to figure out answers to whatever pops up in their heads - and the big challenge now is to get to the whole country, so there’s a new tool for the cliched “no such thing as a dumb question”.

Go ahead, ask! ANYthing that you think needs answering on the phone. Oh, there IS the usual “restaurants, movies, stuff” too.

We announced this formally in the press.

MoneyControl

The Hindu

Pluggd.in, who broke it first!

AlooTechie

Sify

Business Standard

As a next step in our efforts with O2S, we’re adding m-downloadable-coupons that you can get on your phone for your categories/locality combination (and so cut out the noise!) soon. Keep Zook.in!

Once in while we keep getting queries from people wanting to know what happened “today in history” - its a nice natural curiosity driven question that leads one into interesting journeys Aug 25th turns out to be an especially cool one -

today in history:

1609:Galileo shows his first telescope
1825:Uruguay declares independence from Brazil
1981:Voyager 2 at its closest to Saturn,in 1989 to Neptune
1991:Belarus declares independence from Soviet Union
More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_25

Ok, we just had to satisfy this major need that our users have been explicitly asking for, and that anyhow defines a dimension of India in such a huge way.

“Score kya hai?”

Click here, and sign up for free Cricket Score updates when matches happen. For now we’re doing this for India interest matches alone. But then thats a sixth of the world listening, isn’t it ?

We got this a couple of days ago :

Thank u for all ur response give by sms. on 10:50, Aug 19 from city:Mumbai

Its indeed heartwarming that someone not only found Zook useful, but thinks of us as a friend! Hoping to be as useful to many, many more ….

Some interestinq queries we’ve got connected to the Olympics:
is olympic gold completely made of pure gold? what about other medals?
The IOC has strict stipulations on the material, identification, weight, size and etchings on the medals. Each must be at least 70 mm across and six mm thick. The gold and silver medals must contain at least 92.5 percent silver, and at least 6 grams of 24-carat gold must coat each gold medal. Bronze medals are mostly made of copper.

china used special & rare metal in olympic medal.what’s it?

China has used jade in the medals for the Beijing Olympics in order to
symbolize the nation’s culture engraved on metal in the center of each
medal.

http://www.bjreview.com.cn/olympic/txt/2008-03/24/content_129203.htm

how much do olympic medals weigh?

The medals for the champions and the runner-ups are made of pure silver and each of the champion’s medals is plated with at least six grams of pure gold as requested by the game organizer. Each medal weighs about 150 grams.

Wrestler Sushil Kumar wins the bronze for the 66kg freestyle.

Congrats Sushil! And Congratulations India!

We added a bunch of alerts - customized - precise alerts - on Zook.

• Olympics: This is medals, news updates, twice a day. Click this to set it straightaway!
  We’re updating this once an hour.
• Deals: Once you’ve picked a specific deal to see more details - you can set alerts for similar deals.
  We try and figure from your query + the current deal what category, place to set the deal alert for - since obviously a flood of deals for anything and everything would be either too huge to send over 2-3 smses, or completely random and not too useful for you.
  [ A lot many deals courtesy Open2Save.in ]
• Movies: Get to know whats playing in your favourite theatre, for a specific language, in your city! We don’t just send you the “top movies” across the whole city - cause traffic is a pain, innit ?
  Again, once you’re in the details for a given movie, we’ll set the appropriate alert for that language/theatre/city ourselves. No need to type in details.
  [ Movies data in part from BookMyShow.com ]
• Events: Quite like Movies - nail down an interesting event - and let us know if you’d like to be alerted about similar events as and when they happen.
  [ Event data from BuzzInTown.com ]

We have already been running Traffic and Weather alerts for a while. Keep tabs on your [un]favourite intersection in 4 cities in India, and prepare for the rain, if any.