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Sending Text Messages Without a Cellphone

Jun 17, 2009  By Shawn Powers
 in
FAIL (the browser should render some flash content, not this).

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No Gateway Needed

SMS Script's picture
Submitted by SMS Script (not verified) on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 11:29.

Take a look at this script, there's no gateway needed and you can run it off your own site.

SMS Text Messaging Script

Welcome to SMS Gateways 101

Daevid Vincent's picture
Submitted by Daevid Vincent (not verified) on Thu, 06/25/2009 - 19:35.

Are there really people out there in the presumably-smarter-than-the-average-user linux community that didn't know that every mobile carrier has an SMS/EMail gateway and that Wikipedia would of course have a list?

How come you chose that particular @txt.att.net? You just casually gloss over the fact that there were at least three other AT&T related ones below in the video there. How did you KNOW to use that one or do ALL of them work?

...and why'd you give us a fakey phone number? Aren't we tight like that? Give us your real number guy. It worked for rapper Mike Jones... ;-)

But what we really want is....

Lester M's picture
Submitted by Lester M (not verified) on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 10:50.

But what we really want is not a list of providers and how to SMS to each of them because we don't keep track of who uses which provider, but instead we want a service where we provide the other person's cell phone number and the service figures out which provider to use and sends the SMS for us. ...and if the other party replies, somehow the reply makes back into our inbox or back to an SMS on our phone instead of getting lost.

web based sms

Michael P's picture
Submitted by Michael P (not verified) on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 21:42.

Perhaps this is what you are looking for? http://3jam.com/
Send SMS text messages to anyone in the world, straight from your desktop!

cool

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 09:18.

so what happens if that person replies to the sms you sent? would i get an email back from them?

Text failed to send

Dr. Scott Jones's picture
Submitted by Dr. Scott Jones (not verified) on Fri, 06/19/2009 - 12:55.

I attempted using this to send my wife a text message. I have copied the error here, with the cell number altered to read mynumber94.

What might I have done wrong?

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: Blah Blah Blahhhhhh
Sent: 6/19/2009 12:05 PM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

1mynumber94@txt.att.net on 6/19/2009 12:05 PM
The e-mail system was unable to deliver the message, but did not report a specific reason. Check the address and try again. If it still fails, contact your system administrator.
< Cinmlip06.e2k.ad.ge.com #5.0.0 smtp; 5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'Invalid recipient: <1mynumber94@txt.att.net>' (delivery attempts: 0)>

Awesome

onlocash's picture
Submitted by onlocash (not verified) on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 21:34.

I remember Google used to have a link but they changed it
Good stuff to know

Google Labs - Text Message From Chat

DavidMC's picture
Submitted by DavidMC (not verified) on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 09:42.

In google labs, you can add this functionality to your gmail chat. After you enable this option in the Labs section...You open up the chat window for someone, and click Video and More to select Send to SMS, and it will send your message to the phone number you have saved for that person.

Command Line Version...

Dr. Smith's picture
Submitted by Dr. Smith (not verified) on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 21:58.

Thanks for the tip man. I know I'll be using this. Would if be possible to write a script/program to send a message to a cell phone from the line? That would be really neat! Thanks again.

script

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 09:12.

I know it's possible; I used to have a system that would sms me when a network device would go down... you just have to make sure that the message is stays within the character limit and uses plain text. Haven't used it in a while since I have a blackberry now and must of my stuff is monitored by a cacti server.

Here's a better list

peter.green's picture
Submitted by peter.green on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 15:52.

Shawn,

The tinyurl you gave leads to a table Wikipedia has "marked for deletion" (you can even read that line in your video!) and their alternative link isn't much better - it doesn't list most of the SMS gateways here in the UK, for example.

This site appears to be much more comprehensive and better-organised: http://www.mutube.com/projects/open-email-to-sms/gateway-list/ - it also lists activation information where relevant, and has an automated form for generating the correctly-formatted e-mail address...

Ha!

Shawn Powers's picture
Submitted by Shawn Powers on Thu, 06/18/2009 - 11:30.

Isn't that just my luck. :)

Here I chose Wikipedia because I figured it wouldn't be going anywhere. Thanks for the new link.

Shawn Powers is an Associate Editor for Linux Journal. You might find him chatting on the IRC channel, or Twitter