Looking for SMS->web service

February 21, 2008 6:36 AM

I'm looking for an online system that allows us to set up a number that people can sms text to from their cell/mobile phones. It needs to work in the USA, and ideally also support RSS feeds of the messages as they come in - or some similar feed - so we can extract the received texts. Failing the live feed, we could make do with an Inbox system and periodically scrape or manually extract the messages out. Also being able to reply to the incoming messages is a bonus but not essential.
posted by influx to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Does Twitter not meet your needs in some way?
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 6:49 AM on February 21

2nd-ing twitter unles there are some other requirements you aren't telling us. I put the RSS feed on my blog for my twitter and it works great so far.
posted by thilmony at 7:10 AM on February 21

I did pretty much exactly what you're talking about, with my SMS WebLog. I don't have the phone up and running any more so it's a bit quiet now.

It worked by getting a cheapo Nokia phone on a Pay as you Go contract, then plugging it into a server via its data cable and using Gammu to poll the phone for new messages when they came in. A couple of shell scripts to handle the results and it was all good.

Twitter may be simper though.
posted by gaby at 7:52 AM on February 21 [1 favorite]

I just had a look at Twitter, and it doesn't seem to allow non-registered users to text messages to another user; and even if the user is already registered with Twitter, they have to use a 'direct message', with a special awkward syntax, and the resulting message goes into a special direct message area, which doesn't have an RSS feed. Am I missing something?
posted by influx at 8:03 AM on February 21

Also, I should've pointed out that while we need to support US users, we're actually in the UK, so using a physical phone isn't really an option.
posted by influx at 8:24 AM on February 21

With Twitter, you can 'follow' a particular term in addition to a user, so you could use that with a specific term for all your users. I'm not sure if you can get an RSS feed of that, and everyone would have to register.

Otherwise with Twitter, I guess you would have to make sure all users are registered and following all other users. Then I think it would work as you describe.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 8:34 AM on February 21