MSN-to-email-to-SMS?

May 24, 2006 3:31 PM

Anyone know any free solution for forwarding MSN messages to an email address?

I have a PC at work that's always on, a friend in a different timezone and an email-to-SMS gateway. Anyone know if there's a program or plug-in that will glue all this together?

posted by krisjohn to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

MSN already has send-to-mobile... can't you just tell the friend to use that?

Otherwise, I'd use a perl MSN library to make a little daemon to run while you're not at the computer. Net-Msmgr was the first I found on Google. If possible, I'd probably try to find something using POE instead. It should be trivial to hook the receive-message event up to a sub that would send an email.
posted by devilsbrigade at 3:39 PM on May 24, 2006

centericq has event hooks for tying scripts to events (ie: incoming message).
posted by aeighty at 3:44 PM on May 24, 2006

Response by poster: Sorry, I should have said; I'm in Australia and all the SMS sending features of all IM services are not available.
posted by krisjohn at 6:16 PM on May 24, 2006

trillian pro isn't free but it definitely has a plug-in that will accomplish exactly what you want.
posted by randomstriker at 6:18 PM on May 24, 2006

Response by poster: centericq looks damn interesting, particularly since I love CLI stuff, but the screen doesn't update properly on the PC in question (a Win2k3 box). :(
posted by krisjohn at 6:36 PM on May 24, 2006

Response by poster: No, wait, fixed the screen. Now it just won't connect to MSN.
posted by krisjohn at 6:47 PM on May 24, 2006

Are you trying to forward MSN Messenger messages to email/SMS? Your post is unclear.
posted by Dunwitty at 6:57 PM on May 24, 2006

Response by poster: Yes. My friend typically pops onto MSN after 9pm my local time. By that time I tend not to have a PC on at home. (Also, she's the only friend that uses MSN, all my other MSN contacts are work-related and I don't want to be bothered by work at home.) What I want to be able to do is leave myself logged in at work and when she sends me a message, get a message emailed to my email-to-SMS gateway so that something pops up on my phone. At which point I can send an SMS saying hello.

Don't ask me why she won't just send an SMS, I don't know.

BTW: centericq appears to have severe MSN problems, and it looks like the Win32 compile does not have an available fix. :(
posted by krisjohn at 7:15 PM on May 24, 2006

Not answering your question, but the new beta version of Skype allows sending SMS messages all over the world.
posted by Sharcho at 8:41 AM on May 25, 2006 [1 favorite]

Have you tried this: http://alerts.msn.com?

I think that if she would just send you an email (an option in MSN Messenger) this service will send you an SMS independent of IM.

Hopefully she will be a little flexible.
posted by Jhaus at 8:04 PM on May 25, 2006

Response by poster: I like the promise of Skype, certainly more than paying 25 cents per SMS I receive via an email gateway, but I'm just testing it now (with the authorisation code) and it's been at least 20 minutes since I requested the SMS. There was some US-based phonecam pic to Flickr that seemed to have the same problem. I'm guessing the message might arrive some time this weekend. :(

And yes, I'd like her to email too, but she seems to only want to use an IM service that doesn't have the option of sending when the recipient isn't online.
posted by krisjohn at 4:47 PM on May 26, 2006

Response by poster: Ah.

"To start sending SMS from Skype, you need Skype Credit."
posted by krisjohn at 5:14 PM on May 26, 2006

Here are the Skype SMS rates, which are pretty cheap, but it's not free, and you do have to prepay the credit.
posted by Sharcho at 9:49 PM on May 26, 2006