Monday, February 19, 2001		Article

Award for Planetasia

PLANETASIA, a global Internet technology services company, has been nominated for the "best e-commerce solutions provider" for the Internet World Asia (Singapore) Industry Awards 2001. This category — targeted at developers, builders and service providers of the Internet e-commerce solutions in Asia — has seen Planetasia as the only Indian company to be nominated from the Asian region.

The Internet world Asia industry awards are the highest honour for the Internet companies and professionals throughout the region. Commenting on the nomination, Anand Sudarshan, co-CEO, says, "We are delighted that Planetasia has been nominated for this prestigious award. What makes this even more noteworthy is that Planetasia has been selected from around 900 entrants and is the only Indian company to be nominated in the category. This nomination further reinstates Planetasia’s leadership and competence in the e-commerce solutions space."

The second annual Internet World Asia Industry Awards 2001 will be held in Singapore on March 8 this year.

Need a haircut in Singapore? Use a mobile phone

SINGAPORE mobile phone users looking for a meal or a haircut in an unfamiliar part of town can now search for a list of services through text messaging.

The location-based search service offered by FusionAds was launched on January 1 by local start-up Inspire-Tech.

Users send a Short Message Service (SMS) request from their mobile phone to FusionAds — a query for French restaurants in a particular district would appear as "Changi.Restaurant.French".

A search on Changi Airport.Cafe came up with three hits in under 20 seconds.

"It’s more information on demand," Inspire-Tech chief creative officer Charles Goh told Reuters. "Fusionads is a two-way interactive SMS service."

While one-way SMS news alerts were available, FusionAds’ service was the first of its kind in Singapore, he said.

The service handled about 20,000 SMS requests last month and aims to have one million requests per month by December.

At the heart of FusionAds is the search engine IntelliSearch which is capable of understanding plain-language requests — not only via SMS but from WAP-enabled mobile phones which can access the Internet and from its website www.fusionads.com. SMS remains the most popular avenue among the three search channels, Goh said.

FusionAds has more than 20,000 places in its database — ranging from pet stores to bridal boutiques — with advertisers’ listings and promotions given top priority in search results.

—Reuters