Perspectives

This is one long pending post. Zook is a new sms and/or wap based local search service that a good friend of mine and others released a month back or so. Sameer calls it “Mobile answer engine”. Pretty funky huh?
There are quite a few reviews about zook all over the web now, and Zook’s blog is here. But why keep reading when you can actually try it ? Point your mobile browser to http://zook.in or send in a query like “Zook ringtone” to 3030 in bangalore. (not sure if it works in other citites).

The USP of this product, ofcourse is the way it helps you narrow down on what you are looking for by way of asking a few unintrusive questions. Pretty neat, I should say. My point of contention there is that, zook kinda assumes that most queries have multi meanings. For instance, Zook excels if your query is leading, like “thai”. But, most users come from a Google background where they help the search engine find what they want rather than confuse it. If I am really looking for a restaurant, I would explicitly say “thai restaurant, koramangala, bangalore”. And for a query like that, Google or any other local search works just as well or sometimes better than Zook.

But, zook could work like a charm for the long tail of (confusing) queries. I guess that is the intent , but I dont think they have that rich data yet. For instance, I know of a very famous coffee shop recommended by “Lonely planet” in colaba, mumbai. Google does a decent job. Zook returns nothing.

I use the wap zook along with seraja for events, which is pretty good. Also, I dont think value added SMS is a viable option given the current state of things. Maybe, more on that later. On the whole, it is a very good start and Sameer is a think tank. Full of ideas all the time. I am sure they will crack it as we go along. He just gave a podcast on podtech with kamla Bhatt. He gives a few interesting data points there. Listen to it here. Or I have also embeded it in this blog post.

I am not sure when this got out, but remember Google included tiles for India a little while ago? And do you know they have a downloadable mobile app for maps? Now, they have put them both together. And it is rocking!

You still cant search for anything within India. You would still have to head over to Yahoo maps for that! But what strikes me is the clarity of the map when viewed on my Nokia N73. I was to go to a school for an admission for my brother. I just knew it was somewhere in Indiranagar. The “city local on telephone” guys like 080-22222222 and 080-2777777 were both unreachable at that point.
I remembered G had many interesting points of interests on their maps. I just gave it a shot and I was able to find the school in 2 mins!

Again, Rock on google. What are you enabling search ?

It has been a wonderful few past months. Yahoo India maps is a very special product for me. Ever since I joined Yahoo!, in bangalore, I have been wanting to do something for India. I guess it is my way of giving it back to my country. Also, I always believed indians deserved more and better. And my time finally arrived with maps. The levels of passion and interest India maps generated inside of me were unprecedented. At times, I was myself surprised. Sure, I did have my few ups and downs on the way, but who doesnt?

Maps was completely new to me. Now, I understand that it is, to India. Over the period I was with maps, I have learnt up quite a bit about GIS in general, the other open source activities around GIS in India etc. It seems pretty obvious that a large portion of the cake remains uncut. GIS and mapping activities are few and far apart in India. Mostly in research labs of companies trying to come out with GPS devices and in a few graduate institutions. There are a few enthusiast groups. But nothing of the levels of understanding and appreciation that you would see in the US and elsewhere. To say it has been a wonderful learning experience is an understatement.

And as lack of icing on top of this cake, many people, including me, begin to wonder if India really needs GIS and GPS. Havent we rolled down the windows of our cars and found many willing people to give directions? Havent we reached our places without any of these tech supplements? Is technology trying to do too much when we probably dont have tarred roads in most part of the country ? And when a sizable portion of the population dont possess a vehicle? Maybe there are a few corporate requirements for GIS. But, I am mostly a end consumer GIS person. I get convinced that was the case with most other inventions too. When the television came into existance, I am sure people were thinking “Why would I need it?, Am I not happy with the radio? “

In the days to come, according to my gut feel and from what I see around, Local and Yellowpages is going to be big in India. And if it is the case, Maps is going to be a lovely supplement. Maybe, maps will never take the podium in a long time. Here are some of the reasons:

1) we are a decade away from usable end-customer GIS data in India. My mom wouldnt give a damn if she cant find how to go to her bank from her home. For her, it will remain un-usable until we do that.

2) Indians perceive addresses very differently. We dont differentiate between a landmark and a point of interest and an address. I have found many people specifying “Opp. regal cinemas” even in postcards and envelopes.

3) Thanks to colonisation, we have every possible addressing schemes in the world here. I have been trying to write a regex to possibly parse and understand Indian addresses. I have hardly been successful.

4) As most places have local language names, which are proper vocabulary words in that language, it gets hard to understand what the user is trying to say when it gets to english. Road is called “marg” and “galli” and “pathai” and “veedhi” and “salai” and “vazhi”, to name a few. To top it, every user prefers a unique spelling to the place. Is it Ahmadabad or Ahmedabad? Thiruvallur is right, so is thiruvellore and tiruvallur!

5) There are zillions of people out there who use public commute. I dont think we are doing any kinda service to them if we are not able to tell them when the next train to his preferred destination will arrive. Or which bus to catch where.

6) Considering there are no road signs and boards telling you what road it is, does it make sense to give directions based on road names? Do all roads have names? Are all roads motorable? Do we know if it is a one way? And if it becomes one way, is there standardized way with which the city corporation disseminates that information? I dont know!

I can go on to write more of these things. But the point being, maps is and will remain a challenge. It is going to be an interesting problem to solve. And when we do solve it well, I am confident people will embrace it. For now, maps will have to be looked upon as a supplement to local and a thing to mashup with.

Back to Yahoo! India maps, we have lots of interesting ideas. And there is no time to do all of them. Very soon, you will be able to mashup with our maps. It will be our honour and pride. And there are a few surprise elements too. We are confident you d love it. I will write another post on what is cool about what we have done in a bit.

Do you have a few suggestions? Let us know. We would love to consider it and possibly implement it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Please welcome the newest member of the Yahoo! India family, Yahoo India Maps.
Even as I would like to write a book on the “making of India maps”, for now, I would just recommend you just get there and check it out for yourself.

Got any comments? Flames? Leave me a note. Leaving you with a picture that hopefully captures the mood amongst us and with you!

I just came across the RIS project undertaken by the National Highways Authority of India. Frankly, I was sweetly surprised. To give some context, Golden Quadrilateral is probably the largest and the most ambitious infrastructure projects undertaken by the Indian government. It connects the four largest cities of India and has made me proud the couple of times I have driven on it.

But this blog is about the RIS, which apparently has GIS data on these highways. I tried to check it out, but as expected, I was asked to come back with IE. So, more info on what exactly it promises as soon as I check. But, I am pretty certain it is going to be interesting.

From the site:

Road Information System (RIS) is an application having data of highways on Golden Quadrilateral (GQ), North-South (NS) and East-West (EW) corridors of NHDP with features of graphical viewing through GIS technology.
The application provides the information through different modules on various parameters such as NH location details of above corridors, Wayside amenities, Bridge location and details, Corridor Environment related information, Toll plaza location and toll data, Construction contractor details. Over the GIS interface additional thematic and raster maps are available.

I just came across Zipazap, which apparently claims to be the first online and mobile TV guide for India. I was thrilled and wanted to check it out. But, sad that they asked me to come back later.

Undeterred, I screwed around a bit to see what is the best we have otherwise. I came across indiatimes TV Guide. Now what the %^&* is that ? If you guys dont have anything better to do, please dont write websites. Anyways, Star seems to have a pretty decent but cluttered site that has all the programming info that one would look for. And then, I headed over to Sun Network. They have an even better site and their schedules are sweeter. Point is, by writing a small screen scraper for these two sites, I would have already covered 25 channels. The same is true with Zee and covers another 10 channels.

Now that we are confident we can create a compelling TV guide, both on mobile and web for about 35 indian channels in about half day this saturday, the only thing I am worried about is, can I get into trouble ? Do you guys think I should just do it anonymously anyways ? Should I call these TV folks and try to explain I am probably driving more users to their channels which is their primary business anyways ?

A more basic question, do you think it is a worthy enough service ?

Have you guys seen this ?

Here is a killer feature. The good part of the blogosphere and the entire user controlled web is that, one pays little or no money to get PR. You have to be close and dear to the user. And if you are, people do the PR better and faster than you ever will. The virality is a win-win situation for both the User and the businesses. It works very well for the big G, decently well for Yahoo! and Microsoft, but is a dream come true for those small websites and services who cant afford to spend a whole lot on gaining traction. Here is one of that story.

Now, MapmyIndia could (I am sure they are, though! ) just concentrate on getting every road and building into their map. Alternatively, they could put their existing data to the best use. And that is what they are trying to do now. Are you throwing an open invite for your birthday party? Are you blogging about recent tensions in bangalore? Or maybe your last trip to sikkim? You can do it all with the map right there.

Super! So, btw, I lie here somewhere…