Thought Garage

“This is a great moment in history, when we can say to you, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, turn on your cellphones.’”, Paul Freeman, the group’s music director, told the audience beforehand. And that triggered the birth of a new style Musician called ‘CellPhonists‘. Audience went on to play ringtones on their cellphones at defined moments, signaled by the Conductor at the world premiere of the Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra by David N. Baker in Chicago.

Watch a NYT narrated Slide show of the concert here.

Scores of cellular phones trilled and twittered, beeped and burbled all at once inside a concert auditorium in this community outside Chicago. The orchestra onstage was unfazed. The composer was delighted.

On Sunday, in a perverse commentary on the scourge of modern concert halls, the Chicago Sinfonietta played the world premiere of the Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra by David N. Baker, a professor of music at Indiana University and a prolific composer.

A device similar to a traffic light signaled the audience members to activate their rings — red for the balcony, green for the orchestra seats — at various points in the piece. An assistant conductor, Terrance Gray, followed the score and activated the lights.

Four amplified mobile phones were also onstage.

Source: Chicago Sinfonietta’s New Work Incorporates Cellphones – New York Times

[tags]mobile-handset, mobile-life-style, mobile-applications, symphony, ringtones[/tags]

Whole Mobile world is buzzing about highly personalized Advertisements delivered on mobiles. If noise levels at the recent conferences is any indication, many are very serious about it.  Chetan Sharma wrote an interesting article “Sell Phones: What will make mobile advertising tick?” that delves into the details of Mobile advertising and what makes it tick. Here are some excerpts from the article that gives a headsup:

According to Dentsu, mobile advertising revenues for 2006 will be approximately $373M or close to $3.8 per subscriber (for the year). By 2009, this number is likely to scale to over $6/sub/year.

It is apparent that due to the availability of context, immediacy, and personalization, mobile has significant advantages over the other channels as an advertising medium.

By 2011, global advertising industry will be close to $600B. Can mobile start to increase its revenue share from its current levels of less than 0.2% to 2-5% by then?

Source: Always On Real-Time Access » Sell Phones: What will make mobile advertising tick?

[tags]chetan-sharma, mobile-applications, mobile-ads, mobile-life-styles, Japan, USA[/tags]

 My first impression is Thumbs Up!! Wonderful !!

Guruji.com a new search engine from India, is challenging Google in bringing better results for local search. Guruji.com is attempting to bring much better and relevant search results than popular search engines like Google and Yahoo for local search in India, much like what baidu is doing for China. Google does not offer Local Search in India, YET. So Guruji.com is attempting to fill that gap along with providing better search results for Indian content.

Learn about the new search engine and its recent win of $7 million from Sequoia Capital from CEO & Founder of Guruji.com, Anurag Dod in this podcast interview, Is Guruji the new Google for India? by Kiruba Shankar at podtech.net.

Sounds quite interesting. Isn’t it? I just gave it a try to see whether Guruji can beat Google and pull out better search results. After trying a few searches particularly in Bangalore, I am quite impressed. 

About the name:

Brute force translation means ‘Dear/Respected Teacher’. In vernacular however, it  means a person of knowledge and/or wisdom. I don’t know how they came up with this name. But it is quite catchy and easy to remember. However, it does not directly mean anything related to search as such. But who knows, if it clicks, we might make Guruji synonymous with search, like Google. On the fun part, Knowing the meaning I can not use it as a verb like say I guruji it, just like ’google it‘.

About the Search:

I tried looking for pizzahut in bangalore. Have a look at the snapshot. There are two key differences.

1. The top portion of the results page, ‘City Results from Guruji’ is actually pulling out results like an Yellow book offering address and phone numbers of pizza hut.
2. The later portion of the results is generic web search for the keywords. Again in the web search, it seems Guruji.com is pulling out results from domains which are primarily Indian rather than general search on the whole world wide web. That means, better and intuitive local results than popular search engines, say Google.  

The localized search is quite evident if we search for a generic keyword. So I tried Pizzahut at Guruji.com. And here is the result. The page impressed me by pulling out the Pizza hut’s India website at the top, folllowed by results from webpages by Indians.

If you just want Yellow pages results, you can try City search. Click on City above the search box. And then enter keywords. I tried ‘Pizza hut in Bangalore’. The pages showed all Pizzahut locations in bangalore. Thatz exactly I wanted.

Another impressive feat is when I search for a general keyword like ‘blog’, it pulls out the information about Indian blogs, even though they are hosted on sites like google’s blogger(blogspot). This is quite useful and intuitive. Try searching for blog in Guruji.com. You can see for yourself.

 So, my first impression is Thumbs Up!! Wonderful !!

One thing I wanted to see included in the search results is a link to a map showing the location of the business. Since number in street address alone does not make much sense in India for navigation, it would be wonderful to show the results in a map with reference to a well known landmark in the map. This is how we find an address in India right? First find a well know landmark, and go from there. That would be a killer.

Satellites deliver UV index via SMS

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 60,000 deaths are caused annually by excessive exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. In ‘Satellites help ensure safe sunning,’ the European Space Agency (ESA) reports that a new service using its satellites can deliver the UV index to your cellphone via SMS. The Happy Sun Mobile (HSM) service also will advise about how to protect you and send you details about sea surface temperature and sea water transparency if you plan to dive. So far, the service is limited to Sardinia and Tuscany, Italy, but several operators will start to use it next summer.

Below is a screenshot of what you could see on your cellphone if you have access to the Happy Sun Mobile service. (Credit: Flyby, HappySun service provider)

[ Source : ZDNet ]

Yobbos? Just hit E for Eject

SPECTATORS at this summer’s Ashes Test at the SCG may be able to use mobile phones to have troublemakers kicked out. Cricket Australia yesterday confirmed it was considering a proposal to have fans text message a security hotline to have unruly fans removed.

The dob-in-a-yob system would allow fans who felt threatened by misbehaving patrons to anonymously dob them in without fear of reprisal.  The dob-in-a-yob hotline has been used successfully in the UK to have football hooligans punted from soccer matches.

Patrons can send an SMS to a security number, which is displayed on the venue’s big screen and on the back of tickets. Offended parties must include the nature of the offence as well as a location. Once the message is received, stadium security use CCTV cameras to zoom in on the area and see if the complaint is legitimate.

The text hotline is expected to be introduced at the Gabba for the first Test.

[ Source : News.com, Smartmobs ]

[tags]SMS, mobile-applications, mobile-life-style, italy, australia[/tags]

In his keynote speech at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London, the company’s chief executive, Nigel Clifford, told delegates that the dawning era of the smart phone represents a shift “as profound as the Internet and PC were in the 1990s.”

Clifford suggested that the popularity of smart phones in the developed world and the “leapfrog economies” phenomenon in developing countries–in which expensive wired infrastructures are bypassed in favor of wireless–would create a situation where there was a “smart phone in every pocket.”

“It will be a great relief to be liberated from the laptop,” he added, citing poor laptop battery performance as a key reason.

[ Source: CNET News]

Looking at the current sales of Smartphones and market predictions, Smartphones are actually outrunning the desktop/laptop sales. And in the world of Mobiles, Smartphone will be ultimate choice of handsets. Read more on why Smartphones Will Rule The Markets  at The Cellular Life Style.