(2004-08-05) Beattie Email Phone

Russell Beattie is experimenting with sending and receiving EMail by Cell Phone. For Living Independently I've dealt with sending alerts to people's phones via email, since most US providers give people some number of free incoming email messages, while SMS is an extra. Unfortunately, I've found:

• some providers don't offer any free incoming messages

• it's often hard to find the right host/domain to use for addressing messages

• some providers default to blocking incoming messages as part of the War On Spam, so you have to get the customer to call their provider and explain it properly.

• if you do mis-address a message you never get a bounce or anything, so you need a test cycle with the customer ("I just sent you a message, if you don't get it within the hour call me back.")

I've also explored SMS a bit (because we're starting to deal with non-US), and have only found little libraries that work with free gateways, so who knows how reliable that it...