Topic awaiting preservation: Send SMS from a website?

Does anyone know how this is done at all. I remember a while back there were some german sites which allowed you to send free SMS messages to anyone from the website!!

I was wondering if anyone had any idea if its possible, how it works, and how the hell is it free???

Alternatviely is it somehow possible to use the ICQ SMS feature from a webpage to have the same effect?

Thanks all.

Here's a php class that does it.
http://www.k1m.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=SmsWebSenderDocs

There's a bunch of ways to do this but the main trick is that you need a relay to actually broadcast the SMS message. There's a bunch of other ways to do this but I haven't actually found the best way.

This will also probably depend on your country.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

Ahh ok, so basically they are codes that allow you to send SMS's thru an existing (free) SMS service or the like?

I guess there would be no magical way to bounce them off a satelite somewhere without permission hehe. I wonder how they manage to get a free sms service in the first place, surely they still have to pay for it

Interesting question -I started an FAQ on it:

:FAQ: How do I send SMS text messages for free?

___________________
Emps

The Emperor dot org

Cool thanks, i was expecting to get more replies regarding the ICQ thing, coz im pretty sure u can emded normal ICQ messages into your site? So i was hoping someone would have found a way to do the same for their sms service

H][RO: There are plenty of scripts to send ICQ messages but accessing the ICQ SMS service seems like wasted effort when there are more easily accessible SMS services (which those scripts tap into I believe) esp. as ICQ change the way you can connect to their services - I believe some tweak last year stopped all the scripts from working. I can start an FAQ for accessing ICQ from your web site and see if that turns something up?

___________________
Emps

The Emperor dot org

Well the thing is with the existing services you say are easier, from what i've seen they all tap into existing free services like breathe.com etc. But they only allow 5 free SMS messages per day etc.

What i want to do is kind of a mail out SMS to selected members of my forum, so i would probably need up to 20 at any one time. Unless you know of a service that doesnt have this limit?

H][RO: Ahhhhhh I see -there might be a way but I don't know what it is. They pay for that service by showing you ads when you send an SMS and I don't think they are going to make it easy for you to sue their service and not get them any money. It might be that you are getting into the territory wher you have to pay for those SMSes - they are costing soemone money somewhere along the line

___________________
Emps

The Emperor dot org

Freee - Freee it should all be freee!!!!

I just remember some old german sites which let you send as many SMS's as you liked. And i dont think ICQ has a limit? So maybe there is hope yet....

Every mobile service has an address you can use email to send SMS to like PHONENUMBER@SERVICEPROVIDER.COM. Pretty sure anyhow =)

Just provide an input for your users to enter that address then use sendmail or somesuch to mail them

Jason

A quick search in French in Google brought a lot of websites featuring unlimited SMS services, phone book, etc such as :

- http://www.envoi-sms-texto.com/
- http://www.sms-gratuits.net/
- http://www.envoi-sms-gratuit.com/

I even found a page listing them :

http://www.offres-informations.com/shop/envoi_sms_gratuits_98.html

The two first allow you to send an unlimited amount of SMS to any country, the last one only in countries surrounding France, but overall you have to send them from either France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland (French speaking countries).

I would be very surprised if such services didn't exist in the USA or in Australia... I haven't found anything in English though, I guess native English speakers will find such websites more easily than I do.



[This message has been edited by Moon Shadow (edited 10-30-2003).]

Hmm i wasnt aware of that Jason, i tried looking it up with not much success, i will have another look tho!

Thanks moon that list will be great, however dont be suprised if Australia DOESNT have any services like that, you have no idea how crap that sort of thing is down here. The telstra company has stuffed things up for everyone, and running a free service like that would cost heaps.

Down here they even charge us around $80AU/month for cable and the pricks limit us to 3gb/month. The funny thing is that about 3 years ago we payed the same ammount for UNLIMITED download. My opinion is that services are supposed to get better, not worse .... Anyhow thats also the reason why webhosting etc costs much more in Australia, they have really rooted up that end of it.

But oh well, for that reason i doubt there would be any SMS services like that in australia, and if there are they are probably bounced from overseas, a pitty really. Anyhow i will look into those links, thanks heaps!

H][RO: not sure if this would be of any interest? I belive they provide the brethe solution http://www.fonetastic.net/getfreesms.php

/FR

Thanks dude, i'll try sus it all out over the next few weeks and let you all know what i come up with, im sure some others would be interested in this also.

H][RO: Yep I know I am

It opens up numerous applications like SMS alerts for important events, etc.

___________________
Emps

The Emperor dot org