Prashant Thakkar's Blog

Todays Special on Android

Prashant Thakkar — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:44:02 +0000

After Google Bot, Wave Robot and Chrome Extension what next? was the question popping up in my mind. And here I have a answer to it Android. Continuing with the development of Todays Special series, here I present Todays Special as Android Application. Todays Special Android application is build on Android SDK 1.6 as base version.

Todays Special Android application, will provide Word of the Day, Quote of the Day, History of the Day and Joke of the Day along with ability to send and share them with your friends via SMS or EMAIL.

For downloading and trying. Click Todays Special Android application. or

Todays Special

Cricket Score Chrome Extension

Prashant Thakkar — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:20:18 +0000

After Todays Special Extension, today deployed Cricket Score Extension for Google Chrome. Install Cricket Score Extension for Google Chrome and have cricket score of all the international matches on one click.

How to use it?

Chrome Browser: Currently only Beta and Dev channel version of Chrome support Extension. So 1st step is to have the appropriate Chrome Browser. The compatible Beta channel or the Dev channel is available here.
Install Extension: After successful installation of Chrome Browser, its time to install extension. Extension is available as installer on Google Chrome Extension gallery here. Click on the install button and on successful installation you will see icon on the top right corner next to the Address bar as shown below:

Now any time you want to see Cricket Score click on this icon and window will pop-up serving you.

Today’s Special – Google Chrome Extension

Prashant Thakkar — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:54:55 +0000

After Todays Special Bot and Wave Robot, What next?. was the question that was floating in my mind. And here’s the answer, Google Chrome Extension. Started new year with extending Todays Special as Google Chrome Extension. Currently only Quote, Word and History are available.

How to use it?

Chrome Browser: Currently only Beta and Dev channel version of Chrome support Extension. So 1st step is to have the appropriate Chrome Browser. The compatible Beta channel or the Dev channel is available here.
Install Extension: After successful installation of Chrome Browser, its time to install extension. Extension is available as installer on Google Chrome Extension gallery here. Click on the install button and on successful installation you will see icon on the top right corner next to the Address bar as shown below:

Now any time you want to see Quote, Word are History of the day click on this icon and window will pop-up serving you.

Congratulations !!! Todays Special Google Chrome Extension is successfully installed on your Chrome Browser and ready to use.

Today’s Special Robot

Prashant Thakkar — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:17:17 +0000

For those who don’t know what is Today’s Special. It is an Bot hosted in Google App Engine that provide you with Daliy dose of Quotes, Words, Joke, Horoscope, History and Cricket Score.

Click here to know more about Today’s Special.

Today’s Special Bot was initially accessible via XMPP clients only. But now I have extended it to be an Google Wave Robot.

Now Today’s Special will also be accessible via Google Wave.

For those who haven’t yet tried Today’s Special Bot. It is very simple just add todays-special@appspot.com. Following are the steps:

Start New Wave.
Click on “+” sign at the top bar as shown below.
Add todays-special@appspot.com

Thats all, now you are all set to use this Robot. As soon as you finish adding you see screen as shown below:

Now type valid command from the list of commands. For example “Quotes” and press Done, this will fetch list of Quotes.

Today’s Special

Prashant Thakkar — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:34:32 +0000

Today’s Special, a special menu put by most of the Hotels, Restaurants etc for displaying the list of Special items of the day. On Similar concept I have created this Internet bot agent which serve Quotes, Words etc of the day.

Following are the items that agent currently offers:

Quotes of the day
Words of the day
Historical events of the day
Horoscope of the day
Joke of the day
Cricket Scores

How to use it?

Following are the steps to try and use this agent:

First thing you need to have is Google Account and need to use Google Talk.
Add todays-special@appspot.com as a contact. To Add click on button at the bottom of the Google Talk.
You should now see todays-special@appspot.com in your contacts on gtalk, just like any other friend of yours.

That’s it, now you are all set to use this agent. Open an chat window, just as you do for chatting with any of your friend. But unlike any other friend of yours, this agent friend will reply only to valid commands.

Commands

Following are the list of valid commands on which agent will reply.

Quotes: This will fetch list of Quotes for the day.
Words: This will fetch list of Words for the day and their meaning.
History: This will fetch the list of Historical Events for the day.
Horoscope:Sunsign: This will fetch the horoscope based on the Sun sign. e.g Horoscope:Leo
Joke: This will fetch Joke of the day.
CricketScore: Will give the latest Cricket Score for the games being played.
Help: Will list all the valid commands.

All the information that is returned against each command is obtained from various RSS feeds and is processed to be displayed accordingly.

Contribution

This agent is in its very early stage, so all those who are interested and are having some thing that they can offer are most welcomed.

Each one of you can contribute to this in various ways:

Providing feedback.
Discussing and Sharing ideas.
Providing with some useful RSS feeds that can be integrated to current solution.