blog@ziva

(Cough, Cough - dusting the cobwebs off this one)

Zook has its own blog now at http://blog.zook.in.

This blog has had an identity crisis, and will now play host to mostly corporate communication.

Amen!

Zook has added a huge number of wallpapers, graphics, games, animations, picture messages, operator logos, ringtones to its on-phone options. This is probably the first time you may actually search for what you’re looking from across multiple content providers.

The F1 season is upon us - try looking for “formula 1″ - there’s tons of wallpapers to choose from!
Or “tendulkar”.
Or get neat picture messages for “ugadi” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugadi) - and pass them along to your friends and family.

GPRS/WAP users get to see a thumbnail too.

Happy Zook.in! Happy Ugadi! And all the best India for the World Cup!

Over the last week, we have added more data and you can now find through Zook:
* Restaurants, movies, and some events for Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai.

* Interesting SMS Forwards - which are a rage with college-goers!

With this Zook is now useful for the mobizens of 6 cities. Very soon we’ll be adding a lot more mobile content from across providers. Time to make a splash …. ?

Zook is live.

Zook is a new mobile answer engine which helps you quickly get answers, and act on them, not just pages upon pages of links. It identifies the really clear answers upfront, or interactively narrows down to what you really meant to look for. On the move, wherever you are.

To start zook.in

* WAP : http:// zook.in
* SMS : “ZOOK ” to 3030

o [ when SMSing, remember to always start with “ZOOK … ” !!!! ]

In its first avatar, Zook gets you

• Ringtones
• Restaurants (Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai - you can add blr/del/mum to ur searches for getting to a city’s info - say “ blr casino royale” )
• Movies (Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai)
• Events (Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai)

We’re adding more cities and things you can find and do.

If you like what you see, please do include your friends in groups or as friends, and spread the word about Zook. Also, please send your comments/suggestions to feedback@zook.in .

More details about what Zook can do for you below.

Happy zook.in !

Read the rest of this entry »

I guess this is the big day- or pretty close to it! Questions, questions questions.

• Why do so many websites go up, and then lag lag lag the real world ? Getting good decent information from out there is really a tough ask for an individual.
• Someone said it takes a Google search 0.08 seconds to complete, and an individual 11 minutes on an average to find anything! Will we be the spark of the revolution ?
• Who do we live for ? The “blogospehricals” ? Or is the user base out there a very different set for India ? Likely!
• Does it matter that you have 2 million documents to choose from ? Is it more meaningful to have 20 close enough and good enough ones for a whole lotta stuff in life ? Is “precise” for a need, or for what satisfies it ?
• What can the phone not get done ? Of course the answer will be a no-brainer by 2010 with 4G or WiMax being defactos and phones with real usable RAM and a decent disk. But there’s tonnes that was possible already.
• Is the web the real world ?
• Who answers the largest chunk of your questions ? Google ? Family ? Friends ? The newspaper ? Radio ? This is about the questions you have as you ‘live your life’, not Java
• Will you really research a car or a holiday destination on your phone ?

Ziva is the next generation of mobile data access and is trying to redefine how customers percieve and interact with search.

We’re at an exciting stage where early development has been translated to early sales within a year of existence, and we’re poised for growth both in terms of the product portfolio, as well as sales. We are also considering launching our own service around our products.

If you’re keen to explore an opportunity with a startup in one of the hottest markets in the mobile space, talk to us.

http://entrypreneur.blogspot.com/2006/08/ziva-is-hiring-redux.html

Design/Engineering

* Exciting market given India’s mobile boom
* Lots of possible directions of growth
* Combination of exploratory technologies
* Complete ownership, and participative decision making
* Java/Search/Analytics/Mobile/IR/mining

Sales/Marketing

* Opportunity for defining sales strategy, processes
* Need to reach out to more customers - bandwidth is the limiting factor
* Focus on the Indian market so fresh thinking needed
* Product management driven through customer interaction
* Both product and service-around-a-product sales and marketing needed

- Incubated at IIM’s NSRCEL
- Product installation completed at one customer site and 2 others in the process of going live

Send me mail at sameer.shisodia _ at _ zivasoftware.com