Michael Robertson


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GizmoSMS - Free SMS To Any Mobile Phone

March 8th, 2007

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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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