How many times has it happened that there exists a personal SMS in your phone that you don’t want to delete just because…you know…it’s nice!

Or, sometimes it could be more than just nice. It could be of an extreme personal nature - almost too risky to keep on the phone but too important to be deleted.

And, to add to the dilemma, the ’sender’ may ask you to reproduce it at any time!

“Remember that SMS I sent you?”.

Save yourself from embarrassments. Start storing your personal SMSes on Vakow!. It’s easy to store, easy to retrieve and privacy is assured.

Learn more about it here >>

PS: It’s also great for those pesky lengthy bank account numbers, PNR numbers etc., or even shopping list.

We sent out our very first newsletter to our users and made some gross mistakes.

• The links to our website are not working in the mail. We did not test the rich text editor properly and it somehow replaced everything “www.vakow.com” with “..”.
  Won’t help much but here are the links:
  News: http://www.vakow.com/news/
  Invite: http://www.vakow.com/invite/
• The mail came from “News” and people almost marked it “Spam”. Next time it will come from me.

What can I say. You learn.

We had a great time at the Barcamp. People loved our demo and gave some tremendous feedback. Thanks a ton, guys. Hope to see you at the next one.

And here’s what we just launched:

Shuffle (because surprises are fun)

Ladies and Gentleman, let go of your productivity, because here comes SHUFFLE. Now you can see randomly picked SMS Forwards in a full-screen view of your computer on a beautiful black background. Use the mouse or the keyboard arrow keys to browse through at a supersonic speed. Visit Vakow! and click on “Shuffle”.

It’s fantastic! It’s like Hot or Not for SMS Forwards (only much faster). I call it Speed Rating!

Invite your friends on Gmail, Yahoo & Hotmail

Now when you invite your friends to Vakow!, you can import your address book from Gmail, Yahoo Mail & Hotmail and easily select the email addresses you want to send the invite to. Thanks to the folks at Plaxo for building this nice little utility that we were able to use with no work at all.

Though, if you find this feature too slow for your use, send us a mail at feedback@vakow.com.

Post SMSes upto 200 chars long from web

We also relaxed our limit on number of characters allowed in an SMS, now you can post SMSes upto 200 characters in length from web. Let those creative juices flow, please.

As always, we love to hear from you so please keep sending your feedback at feedback@vakow.com.

We’ll be at the BarCamp, Mumbai (14th Oct, IIT Bombay) to show off some old and launch some new stuff. If you’re around, do come by and say hello.

Two days after the release and we already have an upgrade (O the awesomeness of small teams):

Relaxed Forwarding
Now even non-registered users can forward SMSes (through email) to their friends. This is great because now my friends in the US (who can not yet register on Vakow!) can actually send me (and their other friends) some really corny jokes through Vakow!. Its gonna be crazy!

Know where it came from
Now you’ll see a tiny ‘via web‘ or ‘via mobile‘ along with your SMS identifying whether you posted it from web or your mobile phone. Actually we messed this one a little bit and now we can’t identify the origin of the SMSes that were posted before today - Oct 11, 1:00pm IST :(. We’re calling all of them ‘via web’. (If you don’t like that and can help us fix it for your SMSes, please mail us at support@vakow.com)

Biggest Movers
There’s one more way to browse SMSes now - Top Rated Today. These are the SMSes that have gained maximum score in the last 24 hours - much like the biggest movers in a countdown. (Question to self: Is Vakow! like Indian Idol for SMS Forwards?)

Chuck Norris Vs Jack Bauer
It’s got to get dirty with Chuddu (obviously unaware of the consequences) posting:

Jack Bauer named his cat ‘Chuck Norris.’ Why? Because He’s a pussy.

Oops. Chuck Norris is upset. very upset.

Simply, it has the mass-appeal which is seen only in things like Cricket, Bollywood or Amitabh Bachchan in India. All age groups, all income groups in all cities and towns in India are forwarding these Jokes, quotes, greetings etc. to their friends and relatives. SMS Forwarding is a way to connect with their friends and also a source of entertainment.

We feel that Youtubes and Flickrs of the world can not be communities (not yet) where majority of Indians will flock online. India doesn’t have high broadband penetration, people don’t have fancy digicams, GPRS users are few and far between (though rising) and even today a lot of Internet surfing is done from cybercafes.

We realized that we needed a community that all Indians can relate to, a community that can provide content with the connectivity and reliability of SMSes, along with a rich and fun experience that Internet on a big screen can provide.

And that is just a bit of the immense thought process and deep market research that has gone behind Vakow! I’m serious.

PS 1: Now that the day zero hysteria is over and people have had their iced teas and teachers and have woken up in the morning to realize that users have continued to grow steadily, it’s time to get to work.

PS 2: Hearty thanks to Ashish S (who called us a Cool SMS Forward engine) and Ashish S (who thinks that we have mass appeal and reflect good thinking) for their awesome blog entries.

This one is going to be a quickie and is mostly for posterity:

Vakow! - the community of ppl who luv SMS Forwards is officially launching today.

See you there!

We are slowly starting to open up Vakow! to users.

Now all registered members can send any number of pre-approved invites to their friends using the ‘Invite your Friends’ feature and let their friends also be part of the awesomeness.

If you want an invite, find a friend who is already doing it or leave your name and email address at www.vakow.com.