It is quite common for someone visiting a city to have a fair idea of the distance between places, be it from the station or airport to the hotel where he or she is proposing to stay, landmark places that he plans to visit during his stay in the city and so on.

Google maps no doubt helps close in on such details, yet, there can be times when a friend or relative could call seeking such information.

Normally, when such information is sought, one gives the approximate distance or time that it would take to travel to the specific location. If only the traveller is able to get the details instantly on his mobile phone...

This is one such text-based application that Cyril Jose, a Computer Science graduate from an institution in Coimbatore developed, hitting the right note by earning while still in college.

Stating that this app @distancebetween is the most popular among other apps such as a chatting app @chap, a word helper @anagram and a puzzle @crosswd developed by him, this youngster told Business Line that txtWeb as a platform offers budding developers an excellent opportunity to make a profession in app development.

“It is a one-stop solution providing access to a variety of information in a simple SMS format. The information can be specific to weather, cricket, movie show timings and much more,” he says.

To a query about the app developed by him, he said “@distancebetween is the most popular one, providing information on the distance between two points in a city. It gets thousands of hits every day. To use the app, users can SMS @keyword to 51115.

“txtWeb is an initiative of Intuit Inc. The platform is currently being used in over 1,000 cities in India. It has over 11 million mobile users, using one or more of the 3,500 monthly active apps built by developers and businesses,” he said, talking about the platform.

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