Transcript: Demo of 4Info for your phone

This transcript is from a PodTech.net podcast at:
http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1392/demo-of-4info-for-your-phone

Guest: Zaw Thet - 4info

Zaw Thet - 4info
I am Zaw Thet, CEO, 4info. Today we are about to demo for you is the 4info open platform. This is the easiest way to create a nationwide mobile service using your online content in under two minutes. So, today what we are going to do is, we're going to allow you to set up -- we are going to setup Robert's actual blog on the 4info platform. And this will allow anyone to get breaking updates for his blog entries on their cell phones. Now, why is this important? Well, blogging isn't the only use case for open platform; people are using this as we talked about earlier, to find out surf reports in Santa Cruz, to find out the fun places to eat in San Francisco. There is a lot of different ways that people are creating this mobile service on top of the 4info platform.

So, 4info is a shortcut service; you send a text message to 44636, or you can use our website at mobile.4info.net. What we return back to you is real time information and answers. And what we are going to show you today is how can set up and create your own service using 4info's platform, so you can allow anyone access your online content. So, I am going to login -- so as a developer or a content owner, what you do here is you then create your account on 4info. And this is not meant for the public even though individuals are coming on here and signing up their own individual names as well.

So, when I sign in, what I first want to do is then think about, okay, I am going to create a new service on 4info. And in this instance, what we are going to do is, we are going to take the Scobleizer blog and actually create a mobile service for that. So, what I am going to do is, find the RSS feed for Scobleizer -- here is the XML feed -- and I am going to go back to 4info and say, 'Create New Service'. Now, the first step in open platform is choosing a keyword; and so, this is the keyword that you want someone to text in. So, I am just going to create something easy like Scoble; I am going to test and make sure that that keyword is available; there is lot of keywords being created on the system and we don't allow people to overlap another one.

So, this is the blog feed for the -- we haven't over and chosen the -- here's the feed, and I am just putting in a little bit more information about it. So, coming soon, the actual public is going to be able to see this kind of stuff and they are going to be able to see all the different types of services. Right now, that's somewhat limited in that you can't see everything that's there. So, now here is the core of this system, and this is what makes the 4info open platform different from really anything that's out there. So, there is couple of different ways that you can integrate with open platform; it could be as simple as static text, so I could login here and choose 'Simple Menu' - you are taking advantage of our interactivity in our sessioning (ph).

So, I could say welcome to scoble's blog, and I could choose to have different things returned back; so I could have the URL returned back, I could have cell phone number returned back -- and that's a menu, so when you got that you would actually see reply one for the URL, reply two for the phone and all that set up. What we are going to do is, we are actually going to go back because we are not going to use static text. In this instance, we are actually going to take a simple RSS Feed; and so, RSS - advanced RSS, which is really just putting in a parameter and allowing it to search something, or even using full of (ph) XML are all different ways that you can integrate with the platform.

It's really the most powerful way to do this; and the one thing I remember is, this is I think the first mobile company here that's really embracing web services, really giving people away to use the existing content they have, to use the existing services they have, to create a mobile platform. So, if I continue, what we're going to do is just insert the URL - there's the feed. Now, let's look at this live, right? When I look back at the feed here, the first item was 'friendster gets another patent'. So, what we are going to do here is, we're going to see what this would look like on a phone, we're going to choose the option in this example to show what it would look like when there's alert -- and there you see the live stuff that's (ph) getting put up. So, here's the latest headline, 'Friendster Gets a Patent' - I think that's the second part of the (Inaudible) one for alert. So as a user then, you would send in the key word 'Scoble' followed by. “Oh! You got this message, then reply '1' for alert.” What we can also do is then changes to be a Menu option.

So, now here are all the different stories that are currently there. You don't have to worry about formatting, is this 160 characters or it's not to fit a text message, we will take care of all that for you, and reply in for more -- gives the user a (Inaudible) that they can actually get more information. So, in this option list just choose the Menu; so then, if I choose the 'Menu' option, I continue, choose the terms of service -- agree to the terms of service and hit 'Create Service' and you're done - and that's literally it. So, key words are manually approved; sometime it takes a day or two to get populated through the system, but now Robert's blog is available for anyone to use over both SMS and on a web browser. So, literally in hopefully two minutes, what we have done is, create a mobile version of the service.

Now, on top of that what we are also doing is, we are also going to be syndicating our advertisers to people; and that's not really for us more, it is for you. We want to give entrepreneurs, content owners, developers, a way to make money from their mobile stream. And so, when that happens, we're going to give the lion's share of the revenue from our advertisers, who are really the first company to put advertising in SMS as part of a search result - that's the key. So, I encourage you to go and open that 4info.net, check it out today and let us know what you think.