As on Jul 26th, 2008
Post in hindi (हिन्दी), tamil (தமிழ்), telugu (తెలుగు) or any other language
Now you can post your SMSes in your language. Visit the post page and paste your SMS in the text box over there. You can use Google's Transliteration tool to type your SMS.
Like always, these SMSes will be neatly arranged according to their tags (like http://www.vakow.com/tag/हिन्दी/sms/) where you can browse and easily share them with your friends.
Currently the SMSes can only be shared on email, Orkut or Facebook. We're working hard on user-friendly delivery of language SMSes over mobile phones and that feature will be launched soon.
Till then, it's time to build your SMS collection in your language.
PS: Stay up-to-date with what's up with us - visit our blog.
As on Jun 6th, 2008
Vakow! is even better now
It's been around 7 months since we launched Vakow!. We have got fantastic response, great feedback and more importantly, users who just love us. Keeping in mind all the learnings of past months, it's time to make some changes and launch some new things:
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 the typical use case of a user trying to share something (a random thought, a movie review, a stock update or an sms forward) with his or her subscribers followers when he or she wants to.
Send something to your followers >>
Free Personal SMS
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.
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.
Also, non-registered members can receive upto 5 SMSes per day now.
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
For other mobile commands, please have a look at the mobile cheat sheet.
PS: All previous mobile commands will continue to work as well.
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
And, we have made a bunch of design and usability improvements that we sincerely hope you'll notice and appreciate. :D
Like always, our email line is open to you, feel free to write to us at feedback@vakow.com.
PS: This release also deserved a blog entry which is here.
As on Apr 14th, 2008
RSS for everything
This feature has been long in demand. Now for almost every page on Vakow!, you'll find RSS feed available. Recently Posted SMSes, Most Popular SMSes, Most Forwarded this week SMSes, SMSes by a user, SMSes by a tag et al could be subscribed through RSS link available at the bottom left of each page.
Tag Cloud is here
Vakow! gets hundreds of SMSes every day that get tagged. And that makes a huge and constangtly growing collection of neatly categorised SMSes.
Uptil now, it was not very easy to see which tags are the most popular and the Explore Tags page (with tags organized popularity wise in a paginated structure) didn't give a quick view of all the tags available on Vakow!
Now we display tags through a method popularly known as Tag Cloud. In the Explore Tags page you'll find all the tags listed alphabetically and their font-size as per the number of SMSes they're assigned to. For Popular Tags (on Home page) and User Tags also we're using tag cloud now.
As on Mar 28th, 2008
Post to Twitter through us (It's Cheaper)
Because lot of our friends are using Twitter and their Indian shortcode is not working very well (apart from being expensive), we thought it would be nice to be able to post to twitter via our 10 digit non-premium number 99015 54321.
As on Feb 22nd, 2008
Upload and send Picture SMSes for FREE!
We launched User Generated Picture Messaging on Vakow! on Valentine's day to mark the day and to have our users say more with pictures. This new feature addition allows you to add those tiny, little black and white picture messages to your SMS collection and share them with your friends for FREE!
You can also post those picture messages to your friends' Orkut scrapbook - just click on Share it link below any picture and again click on Post as Scrap.
Those using Vakow Application on Facebook can now share these funny picture messages from within their facebook account with their facebook friends. It's super fun - just try it.
Stay up-to-date with what's up with us - visit our blog.
As on Jan 05th, 2008
Use Vakow! from your Facebook Account
We are really excited to launch the Vakow Application for Facebook. Now you can share those funny, crazy, stupid, teasing SMSes with your facebook friends, straight from your facebook account.
As you already know that you can post any SMS on Vakow! to your friends Orkut Scrapbook, with addition of facebook integration SMS Forwards have become even more social.
As on Dec 02nd, 2007
Display links to your profiles on Orkut, Facebook, hi5 etc or even your personal websites along with your SMS collection
Now you can let your Vakow! friends know of your presence on the other places on the web. You can display links to your profiles on various social networks, your flickr photos, your blog or a personal website that you maintain, along with your SMS Forwards collection.
Most Forwarded SMSes this Week
There is one more way to browse SMSes now. Our users are forwarding a lot of SMSes to phones, emails and Orkut scraps and 'Most Forwarded this Week' forms a great list of popular and quality SMSes. Something like music charts.
As on Nov 13th, 2007
Post SMS Forwards to your friend's Scrapbook on Orkut
This one is really cool. Now below every SMS, right next to 'Forward this SMS' link, you'll also see a 'Post as Scrap' link. Click on it to post that SMS as scrap to your friends on Orkut.
You can manually post the code in the scrapbook or let us do the hardwork by logging in. Once you log in, we'll fetch your friend list and you can select multiple friends to post the scrap to simultaneously.
As on Nov 4th, 2007
Address book
Click on 'Forward this SMS' and at the bottom you'll see all the mobile numbers and email addresses that you forward SMSes to.
You can also assign a name to your contact by clicking on 'edit'. If you give same name to two contacts (e.g. a phone and an email address) they'll be clubbed together.
Sharing just got even more easier!
Don't receive SMSes during your sleep time
We have given additional control to stop receiving SMSes for desired number of hours (e.g. between 12:00am to 8:00am). Visit SMS Settings page and set yours.
As on Oct 30th, 2007
Store your Private SMSes
Now you can also store your private SMSes on Vakow! and not worry about deleting them or someone else reading them.
Just sms s <your SMS> to 99015 54321 to store an SMS in your private store.
To make retrieval on the phone easy, we take the first word of the SMS as its ID (it can be changed on the web) and you can send sget <ID> to 99015 54321 to retrieve the SMS.
It's a great way to store those personal SMSes that you dont want to delete, bank account numbers that you can't (and don't like to) remember but may need anytime or just plain & simple shopping list.
Shuffle is bookmarkable now
One of our users pointed out if we could provide a direct URL for our Shuffle feature.
Here it goes:
Use it in your blogs, status messages or bookmark it.
As on Oct 24th, 2007
Better Buddy icons
Say goodbye to distorted photos. Now when you upload your photo to Vakow!, you'll be able to 'crop out' a perfect square buddy icon for your profile photo.
Get notified whem someone replies to your comment
Now you can choose to get notified (we'll send you a mail) when someone comments on a comment that you have made. If you don't want to receive the mail you can just uncheck the "Notify me when someone replies to this comment" checkbox when you comment.
As on Oct 17th, 2007
Shuffle
Click on Shuffle to see randomly picked SMSes in a full-screen view of your computer on a beautiful black background. Use your mouse or keyboard arrow keys to browse though SMS Forwards at a supersonic speed.
Sit back and enjoy your 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 support@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 on Oct 11th, 2007
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.
