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Kripya Hindi mein SMS karen
Gurpreet and Kunal have developed a Website, www.funtooz.com, through which anyone can SMS in Hindi. It is first of its kind and that way they have even challenged Digit, a computer magazine, that credited Canadian firm, Zi Corporation, of being the first to have created Hindi SMS. "We have been in cyberspace since November 2002 and now get 28,000 to 30,000 hits a day," claims Gurpreet, who has amassed ringtones ranging from TV serials, advertisement jingles to film songs. "The first version of FunTooz.com was just of two pages and was based on e-mail to SMS service. Due to high amount of traffic on the Website, we decide to get a SMS gateway on lease. So we had talks with an intermediate firm to have the service from Airtel. On our Website, we placed a user submission section from where we collected the logos and tones submitted by users. Out of those, we are using just 10 per cent on our Website. We have created the rest through MIDI synthesiser. Logos are made by using Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks," explains Kunal. To send SMS in Hindi, the user has to download fonts available on the Website. The current version of the site is Prehyper Text Processor (PHP) based. The PHP provides a variety of dynamic content to the users by a database driven environment of My SQL. The Website uses CGI scripts to connect to servers at Airtel. These guys have shown long-term vision by using Unicode-compatible fonts which means that their fonts will be compatible with the new cross-industry standard that has been supported by all IT majors. "We started Hindi SMS after much research on Unicode. As on this day (that is filing of this report) we are the only ones offering Hindi SMS. And our claim takes into account the Websites of the Indian GSM operators too," both assert in unison. The latest they offer is M-cards, the mobile phone version of e-cards. However, because of technical limitations their services are currently limited to Nokia and Samsung handsets only. With Ringtones of popular songs, haven’t issues of copyright violation come up. " In fact, this is a grey area and as soon as a set law is made, we’ll go in for the right procedure," they say. These teenagers had started dabbling with cyber-stuff when they were still school students. Recently, they also developed a site for Sharjah-based clients and are handling a project for a social organisation, helpinghandsindia.com. This they are doing free of cost. What next? "We are in the process of launching ‘The Virtual Sector 17,’ a bid and buy portal on our Website. This would be an e-com enabled project. For this, we have an arrangement with ccavenue.com, an e-com portal, to start a payment gateway," they say sounding excited. So the next time, a cellphone emanates a Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi jingle, blame Gurpreet and Kunal — PA
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Gurpreet
Singh (18) from SAS Nagar and Kunal Arora (19) from Jalandhar look just
like their classmates pursuing their B.Tech from a regional centre of
Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. No geeky get-ups and no false airs.
But then deeds, and not appearance, discerns ordinary from the
extraordinary. And they both are more than ordinary in the sense that
while the rest of their ilk are ‘users’ they are ‘creators.’