Email to text message?

[Palit, Nilanjan]

I used have a pager with a data plan where I could send emails to my pager. This was awesome, because I added email-on fail-or-success capability to my jobs that run for a long time. It was really nice, since if my job that I submitted before I left work crapped out after a few hours due to some reason, I'd get a page telling me that; I could then log in at night, fix the issue & restart the job with the results waiting for me next morning. In other words, it improved my throughput.

I no longer have that pager (it was company issued & I no longer have a "business need"). I do have a personal cell phone without a data plan (yes, there are still folks out there without Blackberries & iPhones), but can & do receive text messages on my cell phone.

I Googled and found some email-to-text email addresses that purportedly will send your text message as email. I tried the one for my carrier (Tracfone) and sent an email to the address (<phonenumber>@<some_sms_host.carrier>) -- the message did not bounce back, nor did I ever get a text message on my cell. I kept the message deliberately short ("test") to make sure it was within reasonable text message size limits.

So the question is: has anyone used this capability ever? If so, what cellphone carrier did you have? I'm trying to figure out whether there is a basic technical issue or a carrier-specific issue to not being able to do this.

Thanks,

-Nilanjan


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[Randy Cole]

According to
http://abwaters.com/2007/03/04/tracfone-and-sms-email-gateway/ , since
Tracphone is reselling other services, you need to determine what system
you are on, then use the method for that system. Years ago, Tracphone
used to use AT&T wireless. You could try your phone number on all four
carriers. It is also possible that the carrier turns off that feature
for tracphone. You could also check your phone number at telcodata.us to
find out what carrier owns it.

Years ago (nine), I found that the carrier's web page sms interface was
much faster/reliable than their email gateway.

-Randy


Palit, Nilanjan wrote:

> I used have a pager with a data plan where I could send emails to my pager. This was awesome, because I added email-on fail-or-success capability to my jobs that run for a long time. It was really nice, since if my job that I submitted before I left work crapped out after a few hours due to some reason, I'd get a page telling me that; I could then log in at night, fix the issue & restart the job with the results waiting for me next morning. In other words, it improved my throughput.
>
> I no longer have that pager (it was company issued & I no longer have a "business need"). I do have a personal cell phone without a data plan (yes, there are still folks out there without Blackberries & iPhones), but can & do receive text messages on my cell phone.
>
> I Googled and found some email-to-text email addresses that purportedly will send your text message as email. I tried the one for my carrier (Tracfone) and sent an email to the address (<phonenumber>@<some_sms_host.carrier>) -- the message did not bounce back, nor did I ever get a text message on my cell. I kept the message deliberately short ("test") to make sure it was within reasonable text message size limits.
>
> So the question is: has anyone used this capability ever? If so, what cellphone carrier did you have? I'm trying to figure out whether there is a basic technical issue or a carrier-specific issue to not being able to do this.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Nilanjan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@...
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>  

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[jay-118]

I have used the email to text on most of the major providers, sprint, verizon, tmoble, and probably others.  There are two main issues I ran into:

1. Finding out what provider to email, and their proper address..  Usually not that difficult, but problematic for resellers, as you are likely experiencing.

2. The phones capabilities to handle it.  This should really only be a problem on older phones, but not all phones will handle a converted email gracefully.  I'm not sure on the specifics but its not exactly a strait conversion like you would expect.  There can be issues with contact and reply information, that confuses the phone itself.  My old verizon phone would not pick up the "header" information properly.  It would just dump it into the message section, which obviously made for some issues...

Its possible your problem is the phone itself, though not as likely as an adress issue.

------Original Message------
From: Palit, Nilanjan
Sender: discuss-bounces@...
To: BLU
Subject: Email to text message?
Sent: Oct 15, 2009 1:35 PM

I used have a pager with a data plan where I could send emails to my pager. This was awesome, because I added email-on fail-or-success capability to my jobs that run for a long time. It was really nice, since if my job that I submitted before I left work crapped out after a few hours due to some reason, I'd get a page telling me that; I could then log in at night, fix the issue & restart the job with the results waiting for me next morning. In other words, it improved my throughput.

I no longer have that pager (it was company issued & I no longer have a "business need"). I do have a personal cell phone without a data plan (yes, there are still folks out there without Blackberries & iPhones), but can & do receive text messages on my cell phone.

I Googled and found some email-to-text email addresses that purportedly will send your text message as email. I tried the one for my carrier (Tracfone) and sent an email to the address (<phonenumber>@<some_sms_host.carrier>) -- the message did not bounce back, nor did I ever get a text message on my cell. I kept the message deliberately short ("test") to make sure it was within reasonable text message size limits.

So the question is: has anyone used this capability ever? If so, what cellphone carrier did you have? I'm trying to figure out whether there is a basic technical issue or a carrier-specific issue to not being able to do this.

Thanks,

-Nilanjan


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Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

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[Mark Hertel-4]

Tracphone is phone#@... <phone#@...>




On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Randy Cole <randyokc@...> wrote:

> According to
> http://abwaters.com/2007/03/04/tracfone-and-sms-email-gateway/ , since
> Tracphone is reselling other services, you need to determine what system
> you are on, then use the method for that system. Years ago, Tracphone
> used to use AT&T wireless. You could try your phone number on all four
> carriers. It is also possible that the carrier turns off that feature
> for tracphone. You could also check your phone number at telcodata.us to
> find out what carrier owns it.
>
> Years ago (nine), I found that the carrier's web page sms interface was
> much faster/reliable than their email gateway.
>
> -Randy
>
>
> Palit, Nilanjan wrote:
> > I used have a pager with a data plan where I could send emails to my
> pager. This was awesome, because I added email-on fail-or-success capability
> to my jobs that run for a long time. It was really nice, since if my job
> that I submitted before I left work crapped out after a few hours due to
> some reason, I'd get a page telling me that; I could then log in at night,
> fix the issue & restart the job with the results waiting for me next
> morning. In other words, it improved my throughput.
> >
> > I no longer have that pager (it was company issued & I no longer have a
> "business need"). I do have a personal cell phone without a data plan (yes,
> there are still folks out there without Blackberries & iPhones), but can &
> do receive text messages on my cell phone.
> >
> > I Googled and found some email-to-text email addresses that purportedly
> will send your text message as email. I tried the one for my carrier
> (Tracfone) and sent an email to the address
> (<phonenumber>@<some_sms_host.carrier>) -- the message did not bounce back,
> nor did I ever get a text message on my cell. I kept the message
> deliberately short ("test") to make sure it was within reasonable text
> message size limits.
> >
> > So the question is: has anyone used this capability ever? If so, what
> cellphone carrier did you have? I'm trying to figure out whether there is a
> basic technical issue or a carrier-specific issue to not being able to do
> this.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > -Nilanjan
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss@...
> > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@...
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>

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Discuss@...
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[Palit, Nilanjan]

Thanks everyone for the tips ... a combination of the tricks/tips helped me to identify my sms email target:

1. Use http://abwaters.com/2007/03/04/tracfone-and-sms-email-gateway/ technique to send email to multiple carriers and get reply back.
2. Use http://www.telcodata.us/ to identify the carrier for my area-code+exchange. Turns out mine is cingular.
3. Use the Carrier SMTP list at http://wosc.edu.googlepages.com/cellphonesmtplist, and sent email to all the Cingular addresses listed (8).

The final outcome for mine: <10DigitNumber>@@mycingular.com
The response seemed pretty quick (a few seconds).

-Nilanjan


-----Original Message-----
From: Randy Cole
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 2:39 PM
Subject: Re: Email to text message?

According to
http://abwaters.com/2007/03/04/tracfone-and-sms-email-gateway/ , since
Tracphone is reselling other services, you need to determine what system
you are on, then use the method for that system. Years ago, Tracphone
used to use AT&T wireless. You could try your phone number on all four
carriers. It is also possible that the carrier turns off that feature
for tracphone. You could also check your phone number at telcodata.us to
find out what carrier owns it.

Years ago (nine), I found that the carrier's web page sms interface was
much faster/reliable than their email gateway.

-Randy


Palit, Nilanjan wrote:

> I used have a pager with a data plan where I could send emails to my pager. This was awesome, because I added email-on fail-or-success capability to my jobs that run for a long time. It was really nice, since if my job that I submitted before I left work crapped out after a few hours due to some reason, I'd get a page telling me that; I could then log in at night, fix the issue & restart the job with the results waiting for me next morning. In other words, it improved my throughput.
>
> I no longer have that pager (it was company issued & I no longer have a "business need"). I do have a personal cell phone without a data plan (yes, there are still folks out there without Blackberries & iPhones), but can & do receive text messages on my cell phone.
>
> I Googled and found some email-to-text email addresses that purportedly will send your text message as email. I tried the one for my carrier (Tracfone) and sent an email to the address (<phonenumber>@<some_sms_host.carrier>) -- the message did not bounce back, nor did I ever get a text message on my cell. I kept the message deliberately short ("test") to make sure it was within reasonable text message size limits.
>
> So the question is: has anyone used this capability ever? If so, what cellphone carrier did you have? I'm trying to figure out whether there is a basic technical issue or a carrier-specific issue to not being able to do this.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Nilanjan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@...
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>  

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