Over the weekend, Google released a cute plug-in for Firefox users called "Google Send To Phone."
Highlighting any text in your web browser, and then click the phone
icon on the toolbar to send the text to your phone as an SMS. One
caveat, it's for US based phones only.
Read on in the full article.
Heh, this has been in the Google Labs for a long time, I've been using it forever. There for a while, it was sending 2 SMS, but I think they've fixed it now. Great find, anyhow, I use it constantly, specially for install links while browsing.
There are of course many other companies doing this for UK customers. I use http://www.txtlocal.co.uk - they have a totally free API, you just pay for the messages that you send from 3p each.
All you need to do is set up some way of collecting payment (get people to pay in advance using paypal, for say 100 text alerts = �3). You could use any payment gateway to do this - like Worldpay or Paypal.
Yes, premium SMS would also work. Just get people to text in to top up their credit allowance. Again, very simple - and you could also make some profit.
It all depends on what you are trying to acheive. If you are sending out marketing messages to opt-in subscribers then yes, it is a loss leader. ... but it's not much of a loss!! If you are selling goods with a high value and you can text 1000 people who have chosen to receive your news and offers for just �30 - then it is certainly worth a shot and you have little to lose!
James.
Sender paying for SMS is the only thing that stops your phone from becoming a spam-ridden scumbag like your e-mail box.
I only hope this will stay this way forever.
Maybe e-mail should have a price tag, too.
Some new secure e-mail protocol with sender authentication would I welcome! 😊 IP world has to learn a trick or two from GSM with the CallerID and MSISDN/IMSI stuff.
I would gladly pay 0.1c per each e-mail I send for a pleasure of never getting a spam/phish msg again.
Now, when you think of spammer, paying $100K for 1M messages they sometimes manage to send is gonna be economically unfeasible to them.
So - off they'd go.
It�s not a problem if this Google feature is only open for US use, since there are also some companies in UK that allow users to send texts online. One good company to consider is TextMagic that offers this feature not only in UK but in other countries as well.