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Asklaila Street Smart for your Nokia and J2ME phones
Yawn…. Hasn’t this been around for some time on your site. I saw it the day it came up.
OK… Let me accept it. I am a bit lazy who pretends to be busy. I just forgot to write about it on our blog. We bring Asklaila StreetSmart technology to Nokia/Symbian as well as Java/J2ME phones. We have been up and running on Windows Mobile for a long time and now the same technology is also available on more phones. You can find all the local info in the city, see it on maps and also share it with friends and family.
To get started just go to – http://www.asklaila.com/LailaMobileDemo/ and SMS the link to yourself.
We have tested all this on lot of phone models but if it has some issues on your phone, just ping us back.
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Laila has a voice now
You have used Asklaila in various ways. We have answered you on web, mobile, SMS, WAP, USSD, twitter, chat and many more mediums. Now we are also available on voice. We got a brand spanking new number.
33-555-555 ( double three triple five triple five )
We are currently live in Bangalore only and many more cities coming soon.You can look for businesses and you can also look for movies running in town.
Check it out….
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Asklaila supports Facebook connect and bing maps
You asked for it and we got it…. Lot of users have been asking us to support Facebook connect and maps. We launched both of them today.
You can logon to Asklaila using your Facebook account and publish comments about places you love. The best part is that your comments will be visible to all your friends and they can plan their parties based on your recommendations.
We have also enabled maps using Bing Maps. You can see them while seeing details of a business ( eg. http://www.asklaila.com/listing/Bangalore/HAL+Airport+Road/Zen/VSImNM4O/?showmap=1#listingMapView ).
Check it out and as always let us know your feedback.
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LBS meets Local Search…. and they lived happily ever after….
Location is an important piece to solve the local search problem. Local search is all about location and asking the user again and again is certainly not the best thing from user perspective. After rolling out our location aware solution for mobile phones ( StreetSmart ), we bring the same service to web using some help from Firefox. Read more about Location Aware Browsing from Firefox at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/.
To use this you just need to have Firefox 3.5 and get started at http://www.asklaila.com/. We will use the firefox service to figure out your location and will provide you results around that area. The accuracy of our results depends on accuracy of location provided by Firefox.
Happy Location Aware Browsing!
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Free technical consultancy for Bangalore startups
You must be kidding…… No we are not.
So first of all let me acknowledge the inspiration. It was an article by Ashish of Pluggdin fame on what Indian startup eco system lacks ( http://www.pluggd.in/indian-startup-ecosystem-is-broken-297/ ). As all tweeple do, I also responded with my armchair opinion till it hit me that I can make an effort to solve at least some part of it.
Let us face it. Some of us are more blessed then others for reasons which are sometimes in our control and sometimes not. Some of us might have studied in better colleges, some of us worked in companies where we got an opportunity to solve problems of larger magnitude and complexity but then now it is time for us to share it with a larger set of people. So here is a small FAQ for people who are interested in talking to us.
Q. Are you guys really knowledgeable ?
A. We think we are and we do accept when we are not. Some of us have experience in building large complicated systems and some of us have worked on complicated systems in companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and obviously Asklaila. Anyway we are not too talented on praising ourselves.
Q. Any particular domains where you know more?
A. Internet related domains are something closer to our heart. We are also shameless users of lot of opensource so that is an area where we can help. Few Tech areas where we have better knowledge
- SEO
- SEM
- Performance Optimizations
- Mysql
- Memcached
- Python
- Django
Q. Will this be like a classroom ?A. The last time I was in classroom ages back, I cursed everyone. Don’t remind me of bad days in life. So this will be more or less focused session on one individual company and one or more specific problem.
Q. What type of companies do you do this for?
A. The companies which bring us Samosas, Dhoklas and Managalore Bhajji besides being a Bangalore based unfunded startup. We have nothing against companies outside Bangalore but nobody wants to eat cold food out here. Nothing against funded startups as well but I am guessing you already are burning cash for such stuff. Anyway write to us even if you are funded or outside Bangalore.
Q. What do you expect in return?
A. I answered that in the last answer. You bring in the snacks to our office and the coffee is on us. We also do not mind twitter/FB/Website mentions if you really gained from our experience.
Q. Will I really benefit from this?
A. I am as clueless about this as you are but I can assure you that we will try to pass on what we know. We can anyway assure you that we will not steal your wallet when you are in our office.
Q. I have read all this and I am still interested in talking to you guys. How do I contact you?A. You are a brave man or women for sure. Just email us on techfundas at asklaila dot com with a short write upon technical challenges you face.
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Asklaila via twitter
So we are bringing asklaila to all possible mediums and here is one more you can use. You can post all your Bangalore local info questions to us. Our twitter address is http://twitter.com/namma_bangalore and one of our friendly City Jockeys will find you the best answer. Besides that you also get free updates on hot and happening in town. So keep tweeting and keep asking laila. Currently this is on for Bangalore and other cities are coming soon.
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Time to chat with Laila
We have been trying to bring Laila to life on various mediums. We have already covered Web (Website, Widgets, Search Bar), Mobile (SMS, WAP, USSD) and TV in lot of it’s forms. Now Laila is coming over to you on favourite messengers/Chat Clients.
Yahoo Messenger
Add asklaila@yahoo.com to your friend list on your messenger and just get started. More details from Yahoo on how to add a friend are available at http://help.yahoo.com/l/ca/yahoo/pager/use/use-03.html.Gtalk/Gmail
Add asklaila@bot.im as your friend list and get started. More details on how to add friends can be found at http://www.google.com/talk/start.html.Few things you need to remember when you chat with Laila
- Start with a “hi” or “hello” just to break the ice.
- You can always type “help” for getting help from Laila.
- Laila needs to know your city. Just type “select ”. Eg. “select Mumbai”
- The format of the query is simple – query, location. Just to explain with few examples – “pizza, bandra”
- If you thought Laila knows only about business, you were wrong. You can also ask Laila about movies and events. Eg. “painting exhibition, jayanagar” or “Dev D, Noida”
- Getting more results is as simple as typing “m”
- You can always click on the URL to see more details about on our site
- All (almost) girls love gentle language, just be kind. -
Forgiving Technology
Times have changed or evolved to put it in a different perspective. Mankind has an age old endeavour, how to make life simpler and better ( after making it complicated and worse). In the stone age the primary mode of survival was by hunting and human beings primarily developed tools aimed towards making that process simpler. Life moved on and our species figured out how to do agriculture. That was one major step in making life complicated. Agriculture needed people to settle down as it would take time for plants to grow. This obviously led to lot of lifestyle changes and human beings started creating next set of complications in their life. You would not have thought of checking email or writing a blog if you were busy with chasing wild animals or wild animals chasing you.The next wave came few thousand years later. When we moved from a system of almost everyone doing everything ( unless you were a king ) to an era of specializations. You could survive just by putting a OK seal on a Nike shoe without ever knowing how leather is made (who the hell wants to know that anyway). This created another interesting opportunity for mankind to make things complicated.you were a computer engineer then you could create buzz words like CORBA, OOPS, XML and scare the hell out of everyone around. If you were a doctor you can have some complicated names of diseases and lack of ability to pronounce these diseases correctly can itself be called another disease. So anyway things moved on. I am sure you are almost wondering by now if there is any co relation between the title of my article and content, so let us get back to the real issue.Technology is primarily about building these complications and their solutions and building forgiving technology is all about building e technology in such a way that all the complications are hidden from the end user. So let us look at some stone age tools. These tools were simple and they did the work they were meant for. They never published a user manual on how to use them and never gave you a shock if you did not use them in the prescribed way. But now you might argue that this was primarily because these tools accomplished very simple tasks. This is precisely where I beg to differ my fellow earthians ( not sure if that is even a word ). I think that lot of people building the technology are just not able to put themselves in their customer shoes which come in a wide variety of sizes and colors. They always assume a user manual or basic framework of assumptions and fall flat on face when the technology gets used in an out of the box manner. So long live the example of washing machines being used as Lassi maker in Punjab . I am sure the washing machine makers never thought of this usecase while building it.So next time you are building any piece of technology, just imagine that there is no user manual. Just get NUM ( No User Manual ) principle embedded in your psyche. If you are software developer writing code to add two numbers do not forget the case where both the inputs might be perfectly right but the sum might still have an integer overflow. If you are a restaurant owner it is a better idea to label what is salt and what is pepper after all how many people can guess it based on the number of holes. So the idea is very simple that understand your user very well, the smartest one and the dumbest one also ( both might correspond to the same human being in some cases ). And always ensure that you forgive them for all their mistakes after all you as a technology builder is existence because you have users. Your life is not worth a meaning without that user set.Happy Forgiving Technology Building…… -
Now plan out what you can do in the time you save
Search is a intriguing subject. You try to make computers do a job which humans do best. Ability to marry a user intention to appropriate search result is a one line problem but millions of lines of code and uncountable number of pizzas, cokes(pepsis too), nightouts and hard work by lots of engineers across the globe has gone in to solve this.
The various steps involved in an entire search experience are
1. A stimulant which caused the desire to search. The stimulant might be not knowing where Baluchistan is in a conversation with a friend or you just got a call from your wife to book an appointment with a dentist.
2. Next step is to search for an appropriate tool to perform the search. This tool might be internet based technology, friends or books. Lot of us have already a clear algorithm in our mind on what source to use base don the context and in some cases we might end up using multiple tools also.
3. People who start using internet based technology have another important problem in hand. They need to figure out the keywords which they can use on search engines and effectively you have to do a search before search!
4. Once they are done with the keyword selection it is time to fire it to an engine and iterate till you get the desired result.
5. And now comes the fullfillment which might be reading up a webpage or calling up the doctor to fix an appointment.So all this story was just to explain you the brand new features on our site which enable you to compress Step 3 and 4.
We have enabled a feature called auto suggest which keeps thinking as you type your query and keeps suggesting you options based on your selected city to ease your job and save some time on typing also.
Besides that we also have search suggestions to help you iterare better.So happy searching and feedback most welcome.
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AskLaila.com
Take just a moment, and think about why you’re here.
(Bear with me, I do actually have a point.)You’re visiting this blog, because you’d like to know more about asklaila.
In other words, you have a few questions that you’d like answered.And that, in a nutshell, is precisely what Laila does.
Laila answers your questions.Laila is a local search engine, custom tailored to meet Indian needs.
This is where you can find the answers to all the questions you have about your city.
(Although we’re operating only in Bangalore for now, we’ll soon be in India’s top 6 cities.)From pasta joints to plumbers, concerts to chaat-waalas, this is where you’ll get all the essential info. you need -including contact numbers, landmarks, hours of operation.
Yes. Yes. I know. You want more.
Well, you can also browse articles and reviews, trade gossip, find reviews and lots more.
All, in easy to share mode, through SMS or e-mail.
So why? Why do this, in the first place?Because it needs to be done. Because like you, I’m tired of the fact that there are no accurate and comprehensive services online for local information. Because we shouldn’t have to rely on obsolete phone books, or frivolous “city portals”, for the information we need. And because there are a whole lot of people, who feel just the way we do.
Now I could give you a lot of heavy spiel about the algorithms and data crunching.
And everything else that makes all this possible.
But I’d much rather introduce you to the rest of Laila’s gang.The prime culprits are Kiran Konduri and Shriram Adukoorie the co-founders, and Bal Krishna Birla the chief technical officer.
They got the ball rolling, and sold the rest of us on the idea.
They did such a good job, that for the last 6 months, we’ve done nothing but eat, sleep and breathe Laila. (And believe me when I say, there’s wasn’t a whole lot of sleep.)
BTW, and I’m speaking for everyone here, what do you think of the fruit of our labour?
You see, we’re very keen on feedback. We think it’s the greatest thing since cookie dough ice cream. Plus, it’s the best way we know of, to constantly improve.
But enough of me ranting and raving. Let me sign off, with a snapshot or two…
The search box – search for anything in “search for…” and location in “Which part of Bangalore?”
Channels, where you can read about shopping ( from books to bazzars), about essential services, or just living it up, and, of course, the best places to eat drink and date. Plus, Laila puts up related articles, on your search topic.
And it’s not all a one way street. To start talking back to Laila, just register, and log on.
You can post comments, rate entries and even suggest a few of your own.And it’s not all a one way street. To start talking back to Laila, just register, and log on.You can post comments, rate entries and even suggest a few of your own.All in all, just think of Laila, as the girl next door.
No. Not that one.
The other one.
The nice one.
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