Show HN: Whit - Access any kind of data through SMS

How about supporting multiple queries from a single SMS, given that most users are probably capped on number of outgoing messages, but not incoming.

This reminds me of Google Talk Guru, the Google bot that lets you ask simple questions. It was an experimental service a few years ago. I'm not sure if it's still accepting invitations, but it still works for me in Google Talk or Gmail Chat: You can try to "friend" the bot by adding guru@googlelabs.com to your contact list. I sometimes still use it for a quick reference.

Very cool! You might also want to add weather, amazon/yelp ratings for products/places, directions from place a to b and location based search (coffee near staples center, la). Would be super useful for people on the move without access to a data plan.

Cool service. However, it's generally bad practice to reveal your API keys.

Very cool, right now this is only in US?<p>Do you have any plans to scale it here or are you only showing it as a proof-of-concept and will be shortly moving it to developing countries (where data service is less common)?<p>Also, what's the point of the link at the end, if you're using SMS for this type of info it seems kinda unlikely that you have a phone that can handle data...

aalns [dead] comment:<p>---<p>Whit is an open source SMS service, which allows you to query CrunchBase, Wikipedia, and several other data APIs. Simply text 917-791-3098. Special commands include: P:'personName', C:'companyName', S:'stockTicker', W:'wikiSearch' ex. queries: 'p:bill gates', 'c:apple', 's:fb', 'w:philosophy'

I use something similar that I created all the time. Mine connects to the DuckDuckGo API to pull the Zero-click info which is sourced from Wikipedia, Crunchbase, and a bunch of others. I never thought to open source it, but maybe I'll take a few minutes to do that soon.

is this thought for developing countries?

If you're in India, Intuit has an app ecosystem built around this idea: <a href="http://txtweb.com/" rel="nofollow">http://txtweb.com/</a>

There is a conceptually similar stuff for Twitter: <a href="http://t411.linkstore.ru" rel="nofollow">http://t411.linkstore.ru</a>

Great work, it looks really neat!<p>side note - I think your server's down, I'm not getting any response from it.

This is similar to the service offered by <a href="http://55444.in" rel="nofollow">http://55444.in</a> in India.

Is this named after Whit Sunday (today this year, 19 May) or is that just a coincidence?

Just tried to use your service from Australia and got no response :(

This looks really promising. Will you ever add support for email?

this would likely be extremely slow, but what about doing some form of TCP/IP via SMS, thereby using SMS as a "real" data connection

What are you using for SMS? Twillio?

Nice Idea.<p>I'm sure you can spare the prefix letter with a little effort.<p>You should try and make it as a plugin for existing IM app (e.g. Whatsapp)