Send text messages to anyone for free from your computer
Reader Stephen Wallace just told me about a very useful web utility that will send a text message to anyone for free. "Oh, don’t forget" has a simple web interface where you enter in the phone number to send the text message, the date and time to send it and the text message contents. The date and time provide the ability to schedule sending the text message and can contain simple English phrases like "today 3pm". Here’s a test message I sent myself using Oh Don’t forget:
Stephen credits finding this from Adaptive Path. Thanks Stephen!
i’ve always been very interested in services like these mainly because i work for a newspaper & this is how we encourage anon tipsters.
the problem is the list i used to give out is getting shorter & shorter. the favorite by far used to be http://www.anontxt.com but they recently shutdown because a few pranksters are using the service to screw with their friends.
does anybody have a good list of sites to use? preferably US compatible & require no scripting (for people who use FF + Tor + NoScript).
So the widget tells me to register my phone # before using. I don’t see that option on the site. Hmmmm. Either way, I sent myself a test msg and received it just fine. Not ideal for txt’ing friends though, since you need to type “Hey this is ___” in ever msg!
Not very useful, IMO. I don’t want to ues an inherently unreliable messaging service for reminders. And I don’t think it makes much sense (in most cases) to send SMS to friends/family from this service given that they can’t easily reply. Exception might be if I am abroad and don’t have cellphone coverage (but for some miracle reason a working computer connection).
Those are valid issues. Without some kind of advertising deal, it’s unclear to me how it can be free in a foreseeable future. Carriers and gateways do charge good money for SMS…
We offer a solution to this by having our desktop app to send the messages through your cell phone via Bluetooth. No scheduling support yet, though there’re plenty of other interesting features:
http://www.easypctexting.com/
http://www.easypctexting.com/send-sms-from-pc.html