41–50 of 122 posts
Not that this is a solution for you now, but about 10-15 years ago there were a whole slew of SMS services which were super useful for those without data. Google 311 (EDIT: actually it was Google 411) let you conduct full searches, local listings, full text turn-by-turn navigation, weather, movie listings etc. You could also call a number and do an voice search that would text you back the results. Twitter, AIM, Face…
Not that this is a solution for you now, but about 10-15 years ago there were a whole slew of SMS services which were super useful for those without data. Google 311 (EDIT: actually it was Google 411) let you conduct full searches, local listings, full text turn-by-turn navigation, weather, movie listings etc. You could also call a number and do an voice search that would text you back the results. Twitter, AIM, Face…
I thought it was a neat idea back when everyone was still using dumb phones.
- https://slate.com/technology/2013/05/google-sms-search-shutd...
It was extremely handy in the pre- smart-phone days.
IP packets contain 20 bytes of headers, the rest is data. Theoretically you could create the world's worst VPN by stuffing the 140 bytes of an SMS absolutely full of binary data, with some compression of course. So I went looking for "IP over SMS" and actually found this: https://github.com/spandanb/ipos but it's for web browsers only. This old HN thread talks about the same concept: https://news.ycombinator.com/item…
You could quite viably fetch the latest article from an RSS feed in this space, or reply to an email, even with minimal compression. The less technical the solution is the better.
I would definitely suggest to have some commands built in and have the ability to poll the current state of your service to ensure it's not being abused, etc. You also might need a human the other side to reboot it occasionally, so make it very simple to get back online.
Which part of the world?
Alaska. It is possible to get LEO phone / data, but it is more cost prohibitive. Unlimited SMS plans on LEO satellite services are relatively cheap.
Not that this is a solution for you now, but about 10-15 years ago there were a whole slew of SMS services which were super useful for those without data. Google 311 (EDIT: actually it was Google 411) let you conduct full searches, local listings, full text turn-by-turn navigation, weather, movie listings etc. You could also call a number and do an voice search that would text you back the results. Twitter, AIM, Face…
I can't remember the name of it, but there was a service where you would text a question akin to a Google search and a real human would respond with the answer. If you signed up to be one of the responders (and proved your ability to find and return an accurate result quickly), they paid you like $0.01 per answer. I thought it was a neat idea back when everyone was still using dumb phones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note that the OP must use SMS, not MMS. In the US it wasn't an issue. What was the trouble? Keep in mind I was sending it to one or two people. I have no doubt it doesn't work on a mass scale.
JMP.chat does pure SMS by default, you have to ask to be part of the MMS beta. I've only really tried AT&Ts gateways in the US from gmail, maybe something has changed but it never worked for me.
Edit: Super important. You can turn that feature off per phone number. You (or your recipients) may have told att not to send them
IP packets contain 20 bytes of headers, the rest is data. Theoretically you could create the world's worst VPN by stuffing the 140 bytes of an SMS absolutely full of binary data, with some compression of course. So I went looking for "IP over SMS" and actually found this: https://github.com/spandanb/ipos but it's for web browsers only. This old HN thread talks about the same concept: https://news.ycombinator.com/item…