Use Google Push on your iPhone to cut your text message bill down.

Google's "Google Mobile" app for iPhone now supports push notifications of emails. Combine this with Google Voice, and you can send/recieve text messages very easily and for free - just set up Google Voice to email you when you get a text message. Replies come instantly in the form of a push notification. You can reply to the email it sends you, and it'll reply as a text message. Just make sure that you remove the quoted reply and your mail signature.
* If you only want push notification for texts and not all emails, make a new gmail account just for texts and tie your Google Mobile app and your Google Voice account to that gmail account. *
Steps to enable this:
  • make a gmail and a google voice account if you don't have them already
  • download Google Mobile to your phone
  • add your gmail account to Google Mobile
  • enable email alerts
  • set up your gmail to come to your phone if it isn't already (those making separate gmail accounts just for this: you also need a new Google Voice account to tie to this gmail account to be able to reply to the sent email. Google Voice is not invite-only anymore, so it's easy to make a new GV account and bind to it.)
  • start using Google Voice to send your text messages
  • to reply quickly to incoming SMS's, simply reply to the email you get sent from your phone (delete quoted portion and signature before sending)
Pros:
  • STICKS IT TO THE MAN. Text messages are all but free for TelCo's, but they charge us some ridiculous amount per volume for the piddly amount of data actually used. NO MORE!
  • Free!!
  • ties into email seamlessly
  • ties in well w/ "Google Sync" for exchange-protocol functionality (near real-time push email for a redundant text alert)
Cons:
  • ties into your google contacts instead of your phone ones (you can sync these, however, via iTunes!)
  • requires Google Voice and GMail accounts (who doesn't already have these?)
  • Have to use a webapp to send texts, (you can put an icon on your home screen for it)
  • no tie-in into the messaging app
  • no answer to MMS, other than just emailing people via @.
  • your friends have to add your google voice number to your contact (it would behoove them to do so anyway)
  • requires a data plan or wifi connection
Protips:
  • go ahead and set up your Google Voice account with phones and schedules and such, and give that out as your main number. (I've not been too quick to do this, but saving $30+/mo on my phone bill now is more than enough motivation!)
  • use Google Sync to bring gmail to your phone
  • store the emails that the reply text messages come from to the contact of the user it came from so you can use the email interface alone to text message someone
  • ties in with well with Google Voice Chrome Extension (please pardon the rushed JPG compression)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CD/DVD -R +R RW – what does it all mean ?

Unfortunately, a full description of the differences between all of the CD and DVD formats would fill an entire book. There are many, many different types of physical media, methods for storing the data, methods for writing the data and media formats (MPEG-2, MP3, AVI, MP4, etc.) But… since most people use just a few of the CD/DVD formats, we’ll cover just those. The most common formats are generically known as CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, CD-Audio, DVD-Video, and the newer HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. Vocabulary First off we need to define a few expressions and words. Burning – This is the process used to store data on the media. Which means we burn “holes” in the writable layer inside the disk. Session - ”Period of time in which something occurs”. Which translated means a file or files added in the same operation. Single Session – All files on disk are added in one operation. Multi Session – Several sessions on one disk. What is burned on disk,...
Read more

Open folders in the Dock immediately in Finder - Mac OS X

I have some folders in the Dock that I want to always 'Open in Finder.' Usually this takes two clicks, one on the dock icon, and another on the 'Open in Finder' button. (Or 'Open' in Snow Leopard.) If you make an alias of a folder and then drag the alias to the Dock, clicking on it immediately opens the folder in a regular Finder window rather than in a folder or stack popup.
Read more

Top 5 Word Processors [2010 Edition]

Image
Most of us use a word processor on a daily basis. In this article, I share five of the best word processors available and why you should consider each one for use. There are so many word processing programs out there that it would be ridiculous to say these are the only five you should consider; however, these are five of the best. Which ones did I miss? OpenOffice.org Writer OpenOffice.org is an open-source office suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases, and more. Writer, the word-processing application that comes with the suite, is the result of user feedback and constant improvements over the years. I really like OpenOffice.org and would switch to it if I didn’t already have a Microsoft Office license. Download OpenOffice.org Google Docs Google Docs is an online suite that comes with all the features you’d expect from an office suite. I use Google Docs mainly for online web forms to collect survey responses etc. Here’s a video  that does a gre...
Read more