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Email Notification via SMS in the US?
Joel McShiston asks: "Back in Europe I had set up a system through which urgent emails matching certain criteria were automatically forwarded upon arrival to a (free) email account which my cell phone carrier (Vodafone) provided for free with each account - {cell number}@vodafone.es. At the carrier's site I could then turn 'SMS notification of new email' on and would receive a text message telling me to check my email each time a matching email came through. I'll be soon moving to the US and would like to know whether any of you has a similar (or better) system working over there. Which kind of SMS-email 'interfacing' are you able to do on that side of the pond?"
I know for a fact that AT&T give you an address @attwireless.net and T-Mobile give you a username@tmomail.net.
Of course, you'd be lucky to get any reception anywhere unpopulated like, say, MANHATTAN! with either of those services.
-- Just a bitter cell phone loser
I havn't been this productive in a long time. I'm sure today will be a very productive day for most geeks.
this is the most important sig ever! In your face 446154!
yeah.. who moderates?
I use Yahoo! mobile alerts to do exactly what the submitter is requesting. sigh.
@vtext.com will be sent to you as an SMS message.
Tmobile does this and has for quite a while.
It's usually pretty reliable. I've only had problems when my mail server had problems.
See my instructions. While specifically for Verizon, the technique should work for any carrier that supplies you with an e-mail address.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
I've been using my phone as a biff for years. If an e-mail is important I know about it right away, if it isn't important I can deal with it later or ignore it completely.
... Verizon, which by far provides the best service in the US, has this feature:
vtext.com
It works just as you described with Sprint. Also, Yahoo has SMS notification ability. It can let you know if you have an email; plus, with the Yahoo WAP and a data-capable phone, you can get into your Yahoo account and read email, IM etc.
just became a member of Slashdot and trying to figure out how i can post a question. Any help would be appreciated.
Among other services mentioned, nextel also has this feature.
When I was still on dial-up I had it set up so that when my gateway machine was kicked offline it would redial and and notify me on my phone, along with sending me my new ip.
They'll think I've lost control again and leave it all to evolution. -- Supreme Being, Time Bandits
echo '\'$USER', "|'$HOME/.do_sms_spawn'"' > ~/.forward
/%/g' | tr -d '\n') /dev/null 2>&1
cat >~/.do_sms_spawn.in <<EOF
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
chdir("HOME");
execlp("BASH", "bash", "HOME/.do_sms", NULL);
exit(1);
}
EOF
sed 's/HOME/'$HOME'/g;s/BASH/'`which bash`'/g' <~/.do_sms_spawn.in >~/.do_sms_spawn.c
cc ~/.do_sms_spawn.c -o ~/.do_sms_spawn
cat >~/.do_sms <<EOF
#!/bin/bash
do=0 #0=email,1=SMS
part=0 #0=headers,1=body,2=tagline
msg=
debug=n
exec >/dev/null 2>&1
debuglog=$HOME/sms-debug.log
while : ; do
read line || break
if [ "$debug" = "y" ] ; then echo $part$do $line >$debuglog ; fi
if [ $part -eq 0 -a "$line" = "" ] ; then
part=1
elif [ $part -eq 0 -a "$(echo $line|cut -c1-4)" = "To: " ] ; then
echo "$line" | fgrep "+sms@" >/dev/null 2>&1 && do=1
elif [ $part -eq 0 -a "$(echo $line|cut -c1-6)" = "From: " ] ; then
msg=$(echo $line|cut -c7-|cut -d\< -f2|cut -d\> -f1)
elif [ $part -eq 1 -a "$(echo $line|cut -c1-2)" = "--" ] ; then
part=2
elif [ $part -eq 1 -a $do -eq 1 ] ; then
msg="$msg $line"
fi
done
if [ $do -eq 1 ] ; then
msg=$(echo $msg|cut -c 1-160)
msg=$(echo -n "$msg" | od -t xC | cut -c8- | sed 's/
if [ "$debug" = "y" ] ; then echo msg: $msg >$debuglog ; fi
s='http://208.62.68.135/msgresult.shtml?min='`cat ~/.cellno`'&msg='
wget -q "$s$msg" -O
fi
EOF
chmod 700 ~/.do_sms
um=`umask`
umask 077
echo XXXXXXXXXX > ~/.cellno
umask $um
mail Hi there. | $USER'+sms@'$HOST
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
We use Verizon at work for sending SMS messages to phones for system/on-call notifications. We have had a few occasions where messages have been delayed by anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours. We've also had complete outages (average one day/year).
Depending on how urgently you need to know you've got mail, this may not be acceptable to you.
Considering that the OT comes from Europe, there is a very important thing to add - you will pay for incoming SMS (or have them deducted from your bucket of allowed SMSs - depending on your provider and/or plan). As opposed to Europe (at least the countries I lived in) where all incoming communication is free, you will pay for that in the US - both, for voice as well as SMS. So, depending on your email volume, you might re-think whether this is really worth it... (I use it - T-Mobile customer - and their website allows you to set up rather precise filters for which messages/accounts/senders/... you receive a notification)
If you're a Sprint PCS user, you get a username@sprintpcs.com address. You can set it to notify you on your phone when you receive an e-mail to that address, and you can read the e-mail on your phone.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
I'd like to do the same thing in Australia. Using Vodafone.
Any ideas ?
I don't think we have a free email address here which goes to a mobile phone.
Interestingly, Virgin does not charge for receiving a SMS as opposed to other cell phone companies.
So I simply went to that page, examined the form to see how it worked, and then wrote a simple little Perl script to do the same thing.
I can then invoke that Perl script from procmail to send me notices when I receive email I'm particularly interested in.
They let you do notifications a whole bunch of different ways, including SMS. You can get a free account or pay for one that will give you your own toll free number. http://www.ureach.com/
http://www.notepager.net/tap-phone-numbers-c.htm
and have some cash to burn do what my employer does and set yourself up with Verizon and Color BlackBerry 7750's. It's nice having my email everywhere I go and the browser is handy for important sites (THough, you need the $5000 BlackBerry Enterprise Server for web iirc). Plus it has a calendar, games, messaging clients, etc. The only thing I don't like doing with it is talking to people - it just doesn't fit my hand right!
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
I'm not in the US but in France and I have SMS notification for each e-mail received on the e-mail account provided by the operator. I receive in the SMS the e-mail of the sender and the subject of the message.
However I do not consider this to be a good idea, as spammers found this e-mail address five months ago. I now receive about 4 SMS each day related to e-mail notification for a spam received. My SMS box is quickly full (10 entries on my phone including sent SMS).
The operator provides absolutely no means of control to filter the messages.
Alltel, for instance, has incomming SMS free. They have email addresses attached of number@message.alltel.com.
--- It's not my fault this post looks redundant. I just type too slow.