Vakow! has been nominated for the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards. And needless to say, we are very excited!

The TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards are India’s first ever public choice awards for start-ups. It’s like Indian Idol for startups where you can vote for us and help us win.

Voting for us is simple, just sms HOT 254 to 56767 and voila! we are on the road to startup glory. You can also vote online by visiting this link and clicking on the Vote button.

In phase I, public votes and expert reviews will decide the 30 shortlisted companies, which will be announced on November 6. Phase II will comprise on-ground and online campaigning by the 30 shortlisted startups where the public will vote for the Top 5 Winners who will be declared on December 23, 2008.

Now while you send those SMS votes and show us some love, we will go and work on our thank-you speeches.

SMS is an extremely popular mode of communication in India but is currently limited to people who can read (or write) English. There are SMSes being written in Punjabi, Tamil, Gujarati and many other Indian languages using Roman script so that they can be delivered over SMS.

A lot people I know started using the Internet when they discovered that there is so much content available in Hindi. I believe that there’ll be many many more people who would discover SMS when it’s available in their language.

Vakow! now supports Unicode which means that you can post SMSes in your language. You can type in any of the transliteration tools available (like this one) and copy-paste the text on Vakow! SMSes can be tagged in your language (http://www.vakow.com/tag/हिन्दी/sms/) and shared on email, Orkut or Facebook.

Though, we don’t yet support delivery of non-english SMSes over mobile (it’s being worked upon), we believe that users will find currently available sharing options useful and fun.

तो फ़िर देर किस बात की है. आइये अपनी अपनी भाषा में थोड़े बहुत SMS शेयर करें और इस सर्विस का मज़ा उठाये.

Even though we’re all about sharing SMSes with friends, we don’t want you to receive SMSes through us, if you don’t want to.

You can now send DND to 99015 54321 to stop all (Read ALL) SMSes from Vakow!

And later, when you change your mind, which we hope you do, you can send DND OFF to 99015 54321 to get back to normal and enjoy a life full of excitement and entertainment.

Here’s the link: http://www.vakow.com/dnd/ (We think it’s only polite….sigh)

We have made some banners that you can use to tell your friends that you’re on Vakow!

You can change the background color, background image etc. to design it in a way that it looks great on your website or blog.

Go on, show your love.

PS: Send us link of the page where you use it (leave the link as a comment) - we would like to see how it looks on your blog.

From getsatisfaction’s website:

Get Satisfaction is open, transparent, and free. You’re free to ask, free to answer, and free to start a new conversation. Everyone is invited and encouraged to participate: companies, employees, customers — anyone with an opinion, an answer, or something to say.

…and we like that. We look forward to having our users post their queries, get their queries answered by other users (and us), suggest new features and discuss Vakow! in open.

You can still mail us at support [at] vakow [dot] com for customer support.

Vakow’s getsatisfaction page: http://getsatisfaction.com/vakow

We have made the registration process lightening fast. Just send CREATE <desired username> to 99015 54321 (e.g. create kowboy) and bang! - your account gets created. We’ll SMS you the password that you’ll need to sign in on the website.

You can start posting your SMSes to Vakow! and ask your friends to start “following” you (they can send FOLLOW <Your Username> to 99015 54321) or Invite them (by sending Invite <your friends phone numbers> to 99015 54321) from your mobile phone.

For all mobile commands, visit the mobile cheat sheet.

Another little thing for twitterers who can now choose to post everything they post on Vakow! to twitter as well. Don’t forget, Vakow! is the best way to twitter from mobile in India.

Exciting (but old) News: Rediff invests in Vakow!

Now I can go about writing essays on what it means to Rediff (what’s with stock rise and all ;))and what we bring to the table and things like that, but for now, let’s just see what it means to us (anyway it’s much more interesting):

It means: Salaries! OMFG! We had almost forgotten what that means…no kidding! But now things shall resume to normal and self-respect shall ensue.

It means: We can have an office. We always wanted to have an office - nothing fancy - just a small cosy office with a really pretty secretary and a beer-loaded fridge.

It means: We can hire people. There’s no denying the fact that there is certain charm in a two people team working their asses off and kicking some real butt , but now we’ve really gotten bored arguing with each other and could do with some fresh brains around here.

It means: We can Just Buy it. e.g. When we need to make the website faster and we’re sick and tired of optimizing and optimizing and optimizing a bit more, I can shrug my shoulders, tilt my head and tell amitu, very matter of factly, “JUST GET ME MORE MACHINES!”.

And, we’ll have more visibility in terms of users, advertisers and partners which could only be useful and whenever we need good advice we know who to call.

That’s pretty much it I guess. Otherwise, life goes on. We’ll continue to operate in our style and do things that fancy us in ways that we find interesting.

Most importantly, all this money doesn’t change us a bit. We still love very much!

This could have easily been called Version 2.0 of Vakow! but it sounded too lame. Even with a ”2.0″.

Having struggled with the nomenclature for about 30 seconds and rejecting every suggestion that came up, we decided to cut corners and give you the real gravy - quick and fast.

Here’s what you’ll see in Vakow! now:

No requirement of +2 score to send SMS to your subscribers followers

Now we’ll send out SMSes to all your subscribers followers as soon as you post them. This will enable our users to post a variety of content ranging from a random thought, a movie review, a stock update or an sms forward that will be forwarded to his or her subscribers followers.

Go on, post something to your blog >>

Free Personal SMS to any phone in India

You can send personal SMSes (upto 140 chars) to any mobile phone in India, for FREE! All the SMSes that you send or receive through Vakow! are stored in your Personal Messages Inbox, and when you use it, the phone numbers get added to your address book automatically.

Send a free personal SMS >>

Receive up to 100 SMSes per day now

Now you can receive upto 100 SMSes from Vakow! per day - upto 50 SMSes from the people and tags that you are subscribed to follow and upto 50 personal SMSes from your friends.

Of course, if you don’t want to receive or want to receive less SMSes, appropriate controls are provided in your SMS Settings section.

Non-registered users can receive upto 5 SMSes per day. This should be great for sending those “how you doing mom?” messages (you know moms don’t sign up very easily).

Comment from mobile

Now you can also comment on any SMS that you receive from your friend from your mobile phone the moment you receive it.

Here’s the format: Send c username your comment to 99015 54321

e.g. To comment on kowboy’s latest sms, I’ll send c kowboy i like ur sms to 99015 54321

Simplified Mobile Commands

To post an SMS now you can just send it to our 10 digit non-premium number: 99015 54321 (without adding ‘p’ to it).

Earlier, to post: p i love vakow to 99015 54321
Now, to post: i love vakow to 99015 54321

Also, instead of “Subscribe/Sub”, we’ll be using “Follow”, which has become a sort of worldwide acceptable term for the action.

For other mobile commands, please have a look at the mobile cheat sheet.

PS: All previous mobile commands will continue to work as well.

And, we have made a bunch of design and usability improvements that we sincerely hope you’ll notice and appreciate.

Like always, our email line is open to you, please please please do write to us at feedback at vakow dot com with your feedback, suggestions, queries and complaints.

Have fun!

Are you one of those people who cringe every time you have to send an SMS to a shortcode? I am. Especially since twitter launched it’s Indian shortcode (5566511), because 3 Rs/- a twitter…ya rite.

Anyway, since we have a longcode (99015 54321) of our own and Twitter has an excellent API, we thought it’d be nice (and cheap) if we could post to twitter via Vakow!’s 10 digit non-premium number.

And here’s how:

1. Create an account on Vakow! (if you haven’t done that already!)
2. Visit your “Settings” page and click on “Twitter Settings” link
3. Enter your Twitter login and password to connect your account.
4. Add 99015 54321 as Vakow! in your phone addressbook (this step is very important)

Then onwards, use our magic twit command to post your messages to twitter. e.g. Send twit twittering via vakow.com. how cheap is that. to 99015 54321.

And because it’s a 10 digit number it only costs as per your regular SMS plan (no premium costs involved).

We’d really like to know how much money we saved you (if at all). Please do send us your feedback (if not the cheques) to twitter@vakow.com

PS: uh..oh..we’re not associated with twitter etc.

The website should be working fine now. If you find something strange, please do send a mail at support [at] vakow [dot] com.
Thanks.