Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with sms

Why does my phone SMS me when I check voice mail?

jessamyn — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:41:03 -0800

Why does my cell phone send me a text message whenever I retrieve my voice mail? I'm a little new to cell phone land. I've had a RAZR v3 with Cingular/AT&T for maybe a year but I've only lived someplace where it worked for the past few weeks so I'm still learning some things.

Whenever I check my voice mail (I think, it may only be when I save or delete a voicemail) I get an SMS at the same time, but it's not from anyone or it seems to be from my phone. It looks like this [pic1, pic2] and there's no text to the message, just that.

I don't care terribly, but it's a little disconcerting to be checking voice mail and having the phone buzzing in my hand, so if this is turn-offable, I'd love to be able to do that. Can someone explain what is going on here? My apologies in advance if this is a total "duh" question that you are embarassed for me not knowing.

Remember a sucky sms-based discussion application from 2002ish?

zpousman — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:00:05 -0800

Do you remember a web application from 2002ish where you could join sms-based discussion groups? This was before it was feasible to have IM clients on cellphones (or at least before this was widely done), and the site I'm thinking of powered a big directory of discussion groups that one could join. For example, there were foodie groups (per city, IIRC?), politics discussions, movies, fashion. Does anyone else remember this? The site launched around the same time as dodgeball.com, and I'd love to find the name of the site or see what happened to them. The content of these discussion groups was terrible. A few times a week someone would chime in with some inane comment. Either it would be ignored or there would be a single "your dumb, that place/movie/band sucks." comment and then it would go dark again for weeks at a time. There were also a lot of is anybody out there?" messages. If you know of any other weird/sucky/before-their-time sms applications, I'd like to hear about them, but I'm especially interested in this sms chat directory thing that I was a member of

Make iPhone SMS wake me up!

ckolderup — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:16:47 -0800

How can I make sure that the iPhone wakes me up when I get a text message? Is there a way to change the SMS ringtone to something louder/longer, make it repeat a few more times, or even just make it play the SMS notification sound through a pair of speakers plugged in via the headphone jack? It seems like it always plays SMS, mail, and alarm sounds through the built-in speaker. I'm looking for ways that do not involve jailbreaking my phone; I've already read about "SMSNotify" and even after the 2.0 jailbreak comes out I'd like to avoid using it if at all possible. I receive SMS messages from work that I need to be aware of and respond to as quickly as possible. I proudly bought an iPhone 3G yesterday, but today I got paged at 6am and didn't discover it until I woke up at 9. Luckily it wasn't anything critical but now I'm very concerned about my purchase.

Right now the only options I can find for SMS are to choose from a small set of pre-selected tones with no ability to add my own louder/longer alert. In addition, it seems that alerts like the alarm clock and the SMS ringtone always play through the phone's internal speaker even when a pair of headphones is plugged in, which seems like something I should be able to change. Am I really stuck with this? Are there any other tricks I could pull to ensure that I wake up when the iPhone's SMS sound goes off? Am I just going to have to go ahead and jailbreak it when the 2.0 release becomes available in order to be able to use something like SMSNotify?

How to back up entire sms threads (BlackBerry / Mac)?

allterrainbrain — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:13:21 -0800

How can I preserve / back up long sms conversations with one other person -- simply as long chunks of plain text containing entire conversations? The other person has an old cell phone that doesn't do anything special (although soon he might have an iPhone), and I have a BlackBerry, which is only able to preserve *single* sms messages, one at a time (its "forward as" function will let you send one sms, as an email or in other forms). That would be crazy-laborious for backing up long threads of sms messages.

So far I've just been typing out the messages and dates/times (while looking at my BB's screen) into a plain text file on my computer. Also kind of laborious.

The only way for a BB to back up an entire sms thread appears to be using the PC-only BlackBerry Desktop software (I have a Mac). So I guess I'm looking for a third-party sms backup solution.

One solution I can imagine is that my sms texts would come both to my bb and to another account somewhere, and from the other account I could generate long plain-text files listing all the messages ever -- or it would auto-generate one text file for every 50 or 100 sms messages or whatever.

Don't forget your massage

goshling — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:58:18 -0800

I need a system to automagically remind my clients of their appointments via SMS text messaging. I use an HTC p3600i phone running Windows Mobile 5, which gets synced to my laptop running Vista.

My appointments get added to the Calendar on the PDA. I want it to automagically send an SMS reminder to the client saying something like "This is a reminder of your appointment tomorrow (insert name of day) at (insert time) - goshling". Surely there must be some organiser software that will do this?

I don't access the calendar on the laptop, it's more of a backup than anything else, so I'd prefer for the phone to be doing the work, but if there is a better solution using the laptop I'm willing to go with that.

Make my PC text to me!

TheDukeofLancaster — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:36:22 -0800

Wave to Text? How can I convert .wav files to text free or cheap? Vonage charges $.25 (each) to convert voicemails to text then SMS them to me. I'd like to do it for free. I can handle automatically downloading attachments and automating sending SMS messages (I think), I just need software to convert the messages to text. Does anyone know of any good free software to convert them?

How to setup canadian sms sending business?

imaswinger — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:41:17 -0800

How do I set up a business in Canada that charges monthly fees (or per use) to send text messages to people? Something along the lines of those annoying 'joke of the day' commercials I see on TV. I can't find any companies that provide this service in Canada (I also don't really know how to look). Or I could put a sim modem in a computer, but then how do you charge money? Any pushes in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Twitter SMS Problem: Direct Messages Always Comes in Two's

abbyladybug — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:41:54 -0800

I use Twitter and have direct messages sent to my phone. Any time someone send me one message, I get two SMS messages on my phone. I hate that. How can I make it stop?

How many SMS messages fit on a floppy?

kenneth — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:19:46 -0800

Mathfilter: How many text messages (SMS) will fit on a floppy disk, or a CD-ROM? Once that number is derived, how much will it cost to send or receive that many messages if a consumer pays per message (American carriers or Intl carriers would be great)? Probably best to assume assume that each message uses the maximum amount of characters permitted (although if you know the minimums allowed, then let's do the math on that as well.) Please show your work.

Looking for SMS->web service

influx — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:36:16 -0800

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.

Throwing away my cell phone filter.

stuboo — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:48:00 -0800

I want to ditch my cell phone for a text only device. I want my wife to be able to reach me at will, but other than that, folks will just have to wait. What is the best option? I'm about to make a career change and am looking forward to taking the opportunity to change the way I use a cell phone too. Ultimately, I want my wife to be able to contact me any time she wants - other than that, I want it to be like 1985 again.

My thought was this...I'll get a pager and a prepaid cell phone. So my wife could page me, and I'll call her back...immediately if she adds the ol' 911 to the end of the page. After doing a bit of research though, what seems like the ideal solution would be an SMS only device. Is there such a thing? How can I use the networks to my advantage? Take my back to simple, please.

The goal is to keep the cost as low as possible and to never check voicemail again.

P.S. If SMS only isn't the ideal solution in your eyes, what is?

How about never? Is never good for you?

Artifice_Eternity — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:56:15 -0800

How are other people adding events to my non-shared Google Calendar? My calendar is private -- I've chosen "Do not share with everyone" in the settings, and no one is on the sharing list but myself. But recently I've found 2 different events on my calendar that I didn't add. I know the people involved, but I don't know how or why they are adding events to my calendar. Also, I have SMS notifications enabled, so I am getting text messages to my cell phone (which I pay for) for events I didn't put on my schedule. I can't let this continue, or it will become a major spam issue. Is there no way to disallow people from adding events to my calendar? The Gcal help files do not seem to address this issue.

How can I send text messages to people on various services through e-mail or some other gateway

willnot — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:12:08 -0800

We'd like to build an application that can send text messages to people on various cell services. Think something like how twitter works where they give you their cell number, and then you can send messages to them. We've found an easy way to do it via e-mail if you know the service that the person is on, but I have to think there's a better way to handle this. The problem is I'm not sure what keywords to be searching on to find helpful information. Can you point me towards a breakdown of how to set something like this up or help me figure out what keywords I need to find it myself?

Obsession, obsession...

roygbv — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:54:56 -0800

I'm trying to get clever and have new emails sent to my phone via SMS. I'm using gmail and a verizon phone, and trying to channel the whole operation through rssfwd.com. Issues ensue. What I'm looking to do is plug my gmail RSS feed address into rssfwd.com, and have the resulting emails sent to my Verizon SMS email address. It seems simple enough. However, when I go to add my RSS feed, rssfwd won't take it. I'm using the username/password completed URL, https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom, though my username contains two periods, which may be the problem. Anyone else try this, and if so is there a trick? If not, another (better?) solution? Thanks hive mind!

How can I archive my phone's text messages for future reference, without paying a lot in money or effort?

k7lim — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:57:25 -0800

How can I make an archive of my SMS messages? In this era of network-accessible, searchable, archived, free, multi-gigabyte email storage, I'm a little miffed that my SMS storage is limited to arbitrary limit of 50 message on my phone. Lots of important things come in via SMS, and I hate how they just disappear. I get Twitters from friends, nice notes from my girlfriend, voice mail transcriptions from CallWave, business information via GOOG-411's text service... and so on. I'd like for the solution to cost as little as possible. I don't have an unlimited txt plan (I get a few hundred per month) so simply forwarding every SMS I receive and CCing every SMS I send to an email address isn't a very appealing solution as it really raises my SMS costs and takes effort. I'm just putting this out there, because I don't think I'll be able to implement this... if you wanna make a splash doing this for Android or something... have at it!

Tipsy Mac, why do you crash when I pick you up?

cocoagirl — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:40:31 -0800

My laptop crashes about 80% of the time when I pick it up or put it down, even when I'm ultra-ginger. Why? Before you cry "Disable the sudden motion sensor!" as far as I can tell, I don't think it even has one. Relevant details: It's a 12" PowerBook G4, circa 2004. 1GHz power PC G4, 1.25 GB DDR SDRAM running OS X 10.4.10. I have about 30 GB available. I used the instructions on this page from Apple Support to try to set/disable the motion sensor, but I don't even get a line item readout for SMS or AMS in Terminal. Perhaps relevant, in May I added more memory (this), but the crashing problem seemed to start about three months after that (though I'm hazy on exactly when). I changed batteries over the summer when a recall happened, and the machine gets warm but not as hot as it used to. Possibly related: about once every two or three hours of use, I hear a sound like a single piano hammer or ping pong ball "bounce" inside the computer to the left of the touchpad (where the heel of my hand rests).

The machine is very sensitive. I can pick it up gently from a couch and before I've lifted it a couple of feet, it's crashed (total lock-up of the screen requiring a restart). It also happens when I put it down, rock it side-to-side gently, or tip up one edge (for instance, it crashed about 10 minutes ago when I lifted it to slide a piece of paper out from underneath). Even something like lifting it gently to put in a USB cord or turning it to show someone the screen can crash it. It seems to do this no matter what program(s) I'm running (and that's usually only Firefox, Word and/or Mail). To be honest, my instinct tells me it's the screen - it seems sort of related to whether the screen angle shifts or "sags" under the g-force of my lifting, or jiggles when I shift the base (it's worse if the rubber feet have stuck to the table). Another odd thing is that there was a space of about three weeks where it seemed to clear up, but now it's back. I can't think of anything that changed in those three weeks. I'm very good about updating the OS, but I do not update stuff like iPhoto, iTunes, iWhatever because I don't use them. Ideas? I dislike Apple's suggestion of seeing someone with "genius" in their title for a machine that is supposed to "just work" but obviously I will if I have to.

UK Text Messaging to US E-Mail?

Dreama — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:53:52 -0800

Do UK wireless phone providers generally permit text messaging to an e-mail address, rather than another wireless phone? I'm in the US, and my brother and my friend have both relocated to the UK. Both have taken to sending me text messages; unfortunately, international messages are more than three times as costly for me (both to send and receive) as it is for them. And worse, cell reception is very spotty in my house, so when I'm home (as I most often am) a text message might not come through for an hour or two after its sent, just depending on when my phone decides to pick up a signal. E-mail is a much more reliable way to reach me quickly. For me, text-to-email is as simple as putting an e-mail address rather than phone number in the "to" field. Is this functionality common amongst UK carriers?

Barring that, is there any service like K7 that will provide a phone number that can receive text messages and deliver them to my e-mail, that I can use as a go-between service?

(Why am I asking here rather than asking my brother or my friend? Because they're both allergic to RTFM and only understand the very basics of how their very fancy "foreign" phones work. If I can go to them and say "do this" they'll do it, but I don't want to bother if it'll "break" something, as far as they're concerned.)

Korean International SMS

sleslie — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:05:10 -0800

Internanational SMS text messaging in Korea. Is it possible to send a message from my pre paid LG-telecom phone to a user in Hong Kong or China? I have typed in 001-852-xxxx-xxxx and 002-852-xxxx-xxxx and would like to know if I am doing the right thing. I'm in Gangnam right now and cannot get anyone to help me in the nearby LG shop.

How donations via SMS works?

Leech — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:31:53 -0800

I need to setup donations via SMS for a client, but I don't know how I can start. What companies offer this, what are the costs. Anyone knows?

Text message to email

Rabulah — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:09:20 -0800

What are your experiences with a UK based "SMS to email" service? I'm looking for a (preferably free) UK based service that will allow me to send an SMS from my phone and have it emailed to someone else. What are your recommendations for/experiences with such a service?

I prefer my life as a godless heathen, thankyaverymuch.

Glitter Ninja — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 12:59:15 -0800

How can I stop spammy, religious propoganda text messages? Today I have recieved four of the same message texted to me from the email address mission@mission4christ.org. It reads thus:

"(You gotta hear this) Call 641-715-3900 then ext. 21657 wow, reality check. After you listen to it, send it, you know someone who needs to hear it."

This is bugging the hell out of me because 1.) I don't like unsolicited text messages or advertising and 2.) I *especially* don't like unsolicited religious text messages. It isn't from a website I've put my phone number in because the rest of my family has been recieving them all morning too (one woke me up, by the way, which is part of the reason I'm angry.) I looked for an option to block it in my phone (a blackberry 7250), but I think it's a bigger problem than that since my parents are recieving them too.

What can I do about these unsolicited texts? I'm on Verizon, for what it's worth.

SMS-2-email?

Misciel — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 07:54:27 -0800

I'm looking for a free service (in the USA) that will forward text messages or SMS to my email account. (What can I say... I'm home working on my computer far, far more often than I am out and about with my cell, and my cell gets horrible reception here at home!) Thanks for any and all help!!

Sending SMS to multiple people

joelf — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:40:42 -0800

How do I send SMS messages to multiple people at once? I want to use SMS like an emergency broadcast system. I have a few thousand people i'd like to warn about, say a tsunami, and I need to get the message to their phone. How would I get a system like this in place?

Spanish cell phone email to SMS gateway?

thebabelfish — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 16:18:38 -0800

I have a Spanish mobile number to which I want to send text messages. Unfortunately, I have T-Mobile and the Spanish number can't receive messages from T-Mobile (only Cingular). Does Movistar / Telefonica provide an email address for each mobile phone that acts as an email to SMS gateway, effectively allowing me to send text messages to this Spanish number? T-Mobile, for example, has xxxxxxxxxx@tmomail.net.

I don't understand enough Spanish (plus, can't figure out how to search on it) to find this out myself.

Ghost Texting from Nowhere

a_green_man — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:55:09 -0800

I want to have an SMS sent to someone automatically at a later date. Recommend a reliable service to me? I want to text my sweetheart on her birthday while I am at Burning Man and I don't want to deal with the slim possibility of finding any internets on the playa. Searching brings up some services, but they seem geared towards 100's of messages, are in the UK(USA here), cost money or just seem questionable. You folk got the goods for me? I'm happy to pay; maybe up to $5 at the most for <5 messages.

I'm hoping to send one on the minute of her birth, and then a few at some intervals to (badly)seem like I'm responding to her replies. I won't really have time to fiddle and test so I want to know the site works as promised before I pony up.

Oh, and I'm not sure what network she's on atm, if it matters.