HP Labs India has created similar (same?) technology called SiteonMobile some time before.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hp_launches_siteonmobil...
Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
11–20 of 109 posts
Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
#12Very interesting hack.
I've been trying to access the voice settings to modem-dial for a while, but I didn't think to (ab)use SMS this way.
Why T-Mobile only, though? In theory, you should be able to use this to talk to any SMS gateway, but you're going to end up paying on the gateway side ;(
Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
#13Why is it T-Mobile only?
Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
#14Very interesting hack. I've been trying to access the voice settings to modem-dial for a while, but I didn't think to (ab)use SMS this way. Why T-Mobile only, though? In theory, you should be able to use this to talk to any SMS gateway, but you're going to end up paying on the gateway side ;(
So, I looked at this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways
Of the four major US providers, T-Mobile and Verizon are the only ones with MMS gateways (I use MMS to send the responses) that don't require a sign in by a customer (I only have T-Mobile myself). I tested Verizon's MMS gateway with my friend who has Verizon cell service, but it didn't seem to work for some reason.
Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
#15Man, you are clever.
Check this. If this is based on SMS/MMS, then I should be able to text you an address and have you return the pages as MMS.
Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
#16One of these days, the network providers are going to stop putting arbitrary labels on their data, as though "voice", "text" and "data" are not all travelling through the same towers and pipes.
Well if you look at it, unless you use "text" for "surfing" like in this app, it actually does not cost much to the providers. You can not type all day, can you?
So by "unlimited" text all they are saying is that you will tire yourself texting say about X SMS and thats it per day.
1000 SMS * 160 chars * 2 bytes each (arbitrary) = 320000 bytes. Thats just 320KB. Thats cheap isn't it? Can you type more than that per day?
Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
#17Great. Now we need a way to send IP packets over a mobile voice call (using the same principles used by old-fashioned modems).
That's surprisingly hard to do ;( Neither android nor iPhone give access to the voice stream.
Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
#18HP Labs India has created similar (same?) technology called SiteonMobile some time before. http://www.siteonmobile.com/ http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hp_launches_siteonmobil...
I saw this when I was googling around to see if anyone had already done this, but I was kind of confused by what exactly it is. I don't think it's the same thing.
Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
#19Re: Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan
#20Do you use compression at all or is it straight uncompressed HTTP via SMS? Or something else entirely? This is wonderful for it's creative (mis)use of texting...
The requests (which are just URLs, and any postdata/cookies if applicable) are sent to my server via SMS. The responses are sent back to the phone via MMS, in up to 5 (I think?) segments. I download the webpage along with all resources (stylesheets, images, etc.) and put everything in a zip file. I encode the zip file as a PNG (each RGB pixel is 3 bytes of the zip file) and send the PNG in the MMS.
That's even more horribly wonderful than I expected! I suspect you'd get a 4.0 if you went for a degree in Southern Engineering.