How to SMS txt message without a phone?

TalonSE

This should be possible but I've yet to find a way to do it. I'm in the US and have a friend in Australia. She has a mobile phone. I don't. (I know, shocking.) We'd like to be able to stay in touch via text message and I thought I could do this via Skype but while it allows me to send texts to her phone...there's no way for her to reply to me unless I also have a mobile phone registered with them. Which is stupid because if I did, why would I be bothering with Skype? Anyway, does anyone know of a way to actually send and receive SMS text messages online?

blanknogo

Yahoo Messanger does this, but its list of supported countries does not include Australia... might want to try anyways?

http://messenger.yahoo.com/features/sms/

George Fornby Grill

Google Voice!
Once you get your account, you just set up call-forwarding to your home phone, don't need a cell.
You can send SMS by just entering a number/choosing a contact, and received SMS are just put into your inbox if you don't have SMS forwarding set up.

matthias00

I'm about 75% sure you can set up gmail's chat thing/google talk to send texts to people when they're not online, and I am relatively sure they can send replies to you that will show up in your chat window. I tried it out a year or so back and I'm pretty sure it worked, not totally sure though.

TalonSE

Thanks for the responses. Already tried YIM, they don't support it. Going to try gmail chat or voice now.

Update: Well gmail chat SMS is restricted to US phones and google voice requires an invite I don't have. Any other ideas?

Jimmy King

If the other person/people will sign up, you could use twitter. There may be country restrictions that I am unaware of since I haven't looked into those at all.

Daenris

Can't she send texts to an email? I can send a text message from my phone to any email address. I can then reply to the email and get a text message on my phone. I know this is carrier specific because the carrier has to assign an email and deal with forwarding them to the phones, but are you certain her carrier doesn't do this?

FunkyWaltDogg

TalonSE wrote: »

Thanks for the responses. Already tried YIM, they don't support it. Going to try gmail chat or voice now.

Update: Well gmail chat SMS is restricted to US phones and google voice requires an invite I don't have. Any other ideas?

I can toss you an invite for google voice, send me a PM if you're interested.

DHS Odium

I recommend Google Voice. Since we're on the subject, I just recently transitioned from one Gmail account to another, and need to transfer my Google Voice, which I can't do, so I need to make a new one. Problem is, I can't find the invite button anywhere on my old one. Where is it?

clsCorwin

AOL Instant Messenger lets you send IMs as texts. Just add her to your buddy list as +13035555555 except you know, put in her real phone number.

and gmail chat supports the AIM protocol, so you can probably do that in there.

Topweasel

Daenris wrote: »

Can't she send texts to an email? I can send a text message from my phone to any email address. I can then reply to the email and get a text message on my phone. I know this is carrier specific because the carrier has to assign an email and deal with forwarding them to the phones, but are you certain her carrier doesn't do this?

This should work. Usually the phones SMS address is phone# @ special carrier domain.

I just did a test with that on my phone and it worked both ways.

FunkyWaltDogg

DHS Odium wrote: »

I recommend Google Voice. Since we're on the subject, I just recently transitioned from one Gmail account to another, and need to transfer my Google Voice, which I can't do, so I need to make a new one. Problem is, I can't find the invite button anywhere on my old one. Where is it?

It's the very last thing in the left column.

Mmmm... Cocks...

Topweasel wrote: »

Daenris wrote: »

Can't she send texts to an email? I can send a text message from my phone to any email address. I can then reply to the email and get a text message on my phone. I know this is carrier specific because the carrier has to assign an email and deal with forwarding them to the phones, but are you certain her carrier doesn't do this?

This should work. Usually the phones SMS address is phone# @ special carrier domain.

I just did a test with that on my phone and it worked both ways.

Actually, if it's still around you can use teleflip so you never have to check the carrier domain.
I did this for a while when I broke my phone.

DHS Odium

FunkyWaltDogg wrote: »

DHS Odium wrote: »

I recommend Google Voice. Since we're on the subject, I just recently transitioned from one Gmail account to another, and need to transfer my Google Voice, which I can't do, so I need to make a new one. Problem is, I can't find the invite button anywhere on my old one. Where is it?

It's the very last thing in the left column.

Weird, nothing shows up for me. In the left column, the last thing that shows up for me is the calling credit area, ending with add credit, rates, and history. I guess not everyone can send invites out yet.

Saddler

Another thing to try: go to the website of your friend's cell phone carrier. See if you can send her text messages from there. It works on the Sprint website, but it might be one way communication only.

Willeth

On the odd occasion I've sent a text to a landline, it's simply been read out in a robot voice. This may be unique to BT, though.

There are landline phones that allow text messaging, but if you're spending money on that you may as well go and grab a prepaid phone. I second the idea of Twitter.

contraband

Jimmy King wrote: »

If the other person/people will sign up, you could use twitter. There may be country restrictions that I am unaware of since I haven't looked into those at all.

yeah, twitter. make an account, make it private, have her subscribe and recieve sms updates.

Willeth

Twitter SMS updates don't work properly outside of the US. In the UK it's limited to certain networks, and elsewhere I have no idea.

If she has an iPhone, Blackberry or Android device, though, she can get tweets on the move no problem. And given the timezones, I'm not even convinced that the OP requires instant messaging, so Twitter would work fine anyway.

Iceman.USAF

There should be an email domain you can send emails to that pop up as SMS for her. Her replies would come back to your email addy. Very handy.