Imagine being able to get all the information you ever needed by just sending an SMS? Well, SmsGYAN does just that! We take a closer look at a product that delivers information from the Internet on to your handset without asking you to go online.

The days when everyone depended entirely on a dictionary to find the meaning of a word, or on an encyclopedia to find answers to questions, are rapidly vanishing into the past. We now have the Internet through which you can access loads of information on just about anything in the world.

That said, Internet penetration is still low in India, and the number of mobile phones has overtaken that of laptops and PCs. It was this fact that motivated a group of college students to launch SmsGYAN– “Your instant cup of knowledge,” as they call it.

SmsGYAN and DailyGYAN

Everybody—irrespective of age, location and vocation—has questions to ask. These could be simple or complex. And not everyone with a doubt has access to the Internet to get the answers. This is where SmsGYAN comes in, helping users clear doubts by sending a simple SMS. Deepak Ravindran, co-founder & CEO, Innoz Technologies, the Thiruvananthpuram-based company behind the product, explains: “SmsGYAN is an innovative text messaging interface for trivia and for simple definitions—at your fingertip. Any one with a query can send an SMS (by typing SMSGYAN<SPACE><your search term or keyword> to 09895974926) to receive an answer, which is short and mobile-friendly. The company also offers a daily subscription service, known as ‘DailyGYAN,’ which sends information about the importance of a particular day, every day, to subscribers through SMS.

How it all works

{quotes}Innoz maintains a database connected to all the free online resources available on the Internet, such as Wikipedia, Google, etc.{/quotes} When a sender makes a search request, the request is sent to the server. The GYAN platform searches for users’ inputs in the database and sends them the required information. “Unlike some other services, we don’t believe in sending users links. Instead, SmsGYAN provides instant information as we care for users’ time and money,” says Ravindran.

From GSM (global system for mobile communications) modems to dedicated servers, the GYAN platform follows a 100 per cent uptime policy. Multiple pairs of GSM modems on dedicated servers handle user requests. Once the input is received inside the GYAN platform, the keywords are identified and sent into the required request response centre. The response centre searches the database with the input keyword and identifies the correct trivia/definition.

About retrieving information, Ravindran says, “The data is retrieved from online resources upon key requests from the user. This collected data is first reduced to 160 characters (the maximum length of a single SMS) using the GYAN platform and then stored in the server. The information thus collected is then sent directly to the user using our Bulk SMS platform.” The Linux-based servers are constantly updated to store the procedures done on each step.

If users are not satisfied with the length of an answer of 160 characters, they can request for more information. For this, they can send another SMS in the form of a reply to the earlier response by typing ‘more’ and ‘more2’. “Our dedicated servers efficiently handle any number of requests and these can be simultaneously operated at the same speed,” adds Ravindran.