A trillion is not a number you hear very
often. But last
year there was nearly a trillion SMS messages sent. 946
billion to be precise and there are sure to be over a trillion
messages this year. Globally, phone
companies made $47.5 billion in revenue from SMS messages which works
out to 5 cents per message. In spite of these numbers, many in the U.S.
are
still unfamiliar with SMS or "Short Messaging Service".
These are the tiny text messages that are squirted between phones
using your phone number as the address. Every mobile phone typically
has an icon for "message" or "text" which
lets you send these similar to how you send an email. U.S. phone
companies typically
charge to send AND receive, while in Europe,
they
typically charge
only to send a SMS (receiving is free). Phone plans
usually charge 10-15 cents for a SMS message which is very expensive
considering it is usually less than 100 letters. Some ambitious mobile
carriers such as MetroPCS
and Cricket
include unlimited text messaging in their plans or charge a small
monthly fee like $3. I think there should be a free, easy to use,
global service that lets you send SMS right from your computer to a
mobile phone to avoid at least some of these charges.
Today SIPphone is
launching GizmoSMS.com
a web site
that lets you send SMS messages to any mobile phone directly from
your PC. It's fast and easy and best of all it's free. (The receiver
may have to pay a fee depending on their plan.) It's the quickest
way to send a brief message to someone. Many kids use SMS as a
primary messaging tool in place of email. I find it very useful if I
know someone is traveling because they may or may not have access to
email or instant messaging. Personally I prefer getting a
SMS message over a call or voice mail for brief messages. Here's a
screenshot of GizmoSMS:
Gizmo
SMS is not the first web based SMS service, but it is the best. Many
similar services such as Google's service require you to know the
carrier of the number you are calling. I rarely know the carrier of
the number I am calling so it makes this highly impractical. Other
services only have a limited number of carriers and countries. With
Gizmo SMS we cover over 200 carriers spanning more than 60 countries.
Still other sites require cumbersome registration and bombard your
own phone with SMS messages of questionable value (which can cost you
money in the US). No registration is
required with Gizmo SMS, but it does have a security image to thwart
robots or other automated abuse.
You can make it easy for
people to send you a SMS message by providing them with a link such
as: http://gizmosms.com/18005551212
which will navigate them to GizmoSMS.com
and populate 18005551212 into the number field. We've also added
links directly from sister site Gizmo
Call which lets you call any phone right from your browser.
(Also
Gizmo Call now works with Linux! Yeah.) Whether you
want to send a SMS message (GizmoSMS.com)
or talk to someone on a phone (GizmoCall.com)
it's now just a couple clicks away all from your browser. I hope you'll
give it a try and let me know how it works for you and how it can be
improved.
-- MR
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