RSS + SMS

[Kris Kumar]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008706.html' target='_blank'>http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008706.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Okay, so I decided to wait a bit to see if anyone glommed onto the really big news yesterday from Yahoo!, but no one seemed to get it. Most posts I saw focused on the new RSS aggregator in the Yahoo! Mail beta (which is definitely cool, don’t get me wrong), but only sorta mentioned the new RSS Alerts bit. Actually the really important announcement yesterday was in the latter. But this is okay, that’s what I’m here for. :-) To tell you the truth, I’m so insanely excited about the Yahoo! Feed Alerts functionality I can barely contain myself. I think this is easily the most important service any online company has launched in the past half decade. Really. Yep, I may be a little biased, but this is really, really big. (Damn, I wish I had something to do with it! Congrats to the My Yahoo! team for thinking it up and getting out there!) I’m not kidding. This is going to change the world."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/Kris-Dec05-SMSRSS.jpg" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/> <br /><br />Do you think RSS + SMS is going to change the world? :roll: First of all I don't find SMS cool anymore. Thanks to our Smartphones with decent E-Mail clients and in the not so distant future, the push E-Mail system will make SMS <i>almost</i> obsolete. I am sure at some point in time you all must have signed up for the SMS alerts for news, stocks, sports, weather etc., but are you still using that service? I am not. I found the 120 character limitation of the SMS messages too annoying. :evil: In this information overload age, this seems like another one of those features that is going to spam our bandwidth. What are your thoughts?

[Sven Johannsen]

Well, first to vote. Don't recall if it was Yahoo's or some other similar thing I commented on somewhere else. My comment was, does Yahoo get a kickback, er-uh, commision, on every SMS sent? Seems like just a money maker for the carriers to me.

[Kris Kumar]

Well, first to vote. Don't recall if it was Yahoo's or some other similar thing I commented on somewhere else. My comment was, does Yahoo get a kickback, er-uh, commision, on every SMS sent? Seems like just a money maker for the carriers to me.

Good point. In fact make money from gullible customers. Sad...pretty sad!

[Sven Johannsen]

Hey, you up there with the unlimited SMS. Who is that with? Cingular's most is 2500 for $20/month. To me that is about unlimited based on the 2 in three months I get/send, but is there a carrier out there that has an unlimited plan? The ridiculous cost of SMS is one of the reasons I never got excited about MSs AUTD e-mail solution. From my point of view SMS and MMS is really just data and should fall under my unlimited Data plan, but they wouldn't make money on teenagers passing notes that way.

[Jerry Raia]

I use SMS sporadically. It can be convenient at times. Whenever I have used it for news I have found it annoying.

[Rocco Augusto]

Well, first to vote. Don't recall if it was Yahoo's or some other similar thing I commented on somewhere else. My comment was, does Yahoo get a kickback, er-uh, commision, on every SMS sent? Seems like just a money maker for the carriers to me.

yes they do. if youre a cingular customer you might notice several $0.30 charge on your bill that read something like PREM TXT or premium text message. with this yahoo gets a $0.15 kickback and Cingular makes the other $0.15.

you mostly see this if the server that is sending you the message is kept outside the united states.

[OSUKid7]

Maybe this just shows my (young) age, but I use SMS in much the same way as IM, while RSS is more like my email usage. Email, for me, is either for newsletter-type mass messaging or professional correspondence, while IM is what I use for everyday communication (with most people...there's still a few people [aka family] who I can't talk into using IM ;)). When I want my news, I want to chose when to read it. Sure even I get breaking news email alerts, but most of the time I fire up FeedDemon or check NewsGator Online for my latest news and blog posts. Likewise, with SMS, I've tried the occasional automated news alert, but I typically use SMS for communicating with friends while away from my PC.

[Kris Kumar]

Maybe this just shows my (young) age, but I use SMS in much the same way as IM...

Glad that you mentioned - SMS as an IM tool is great. That is what I think SMS is meant for and excels at. My wife and I exchange a lot of SMS, find it better and faster than voicemails. Also, as you mentioned I use it to send messages to folks who are not computer savvy. :-) And that is why SMS will survive.

But SMS with the 120 character limitation does not work well for news items or alerts. It just cannot provide enough information.

[encece]

The service is stupid if you have an RSS Reader. I currently have about 25 feeds in Newsbreak and probably read (at least the headlines) about 200-300 items per day ro more. These are all sorted by category then from their source. No way am I going thru unsorted text messages for that same purpose.

I text message about 20 times a week. Convenient for short messages and it keeps me from having to dial into voicemail often.

Email is only good phone to phone if the other person has a quick and convenient email client.

If voicemail went directly to the phone instead of having to dial in (on all phones)...SMS will probably die IMO. With EVDO and Edge, there's no reason why Voicemail cant be sent directly to phones as MP3s. SMS Text is nice...but Voice would be faster and more convenient.

[Kris Kumar]

If voicemail went directly to the phone instead of having to dial in (on all phones)...SMS will probably die IMO. With EVDO and Edge, there's no reason why Voicemail cant be sent directly to phones as MP3s. SMS Text is nice...but Voice would be faster and more convenient.

Another awesome idea, check this out. (http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=62802) ;-)

[Foxbat121]

I'm on an AT&amp;T blue plan which has unlimited incoming SMS for free. This service is perfect for me.

[Jerry Raia]

If voicemail went directly to the phone instead of having to dial in (on all phones)...SMS will probably die IMO. With EVDO and Edge, there's no reason why Voicemail cant be sent directly to phones as MP3s. SMS Text is nice...but Voice would be faster and more convenient.

Believe it or not I had an old Motorola flip phone that had a built in answer machine. You could even screen the calls as they came in. It wasn't the StarTac but a model or two before it.

[xerxes]

Most cell phone users don't have smartphones and aren't interested in "computer functions" on their phones. You've got to think a bit broader.

99% of the cell phones out there can handle SMS.
Most of the cell phones sold in the last 3-5 years have had some sort of email client on them but how many people actually download email to their mobile?
SMS is the fastest growing service offered by carriers world wide.

This is not a service aimed at smartphone users or Blackberry users. It's aimed at the other 90% of the world.

Personally I cannot think of any internet information that's important enough for me to subscribe to - but I know a lot of people who will definitely sign up for football results, cricket scores, stock alerts, BBC news etc.

[Kris Kumar]

Most cell phone users don't have smartphones and aren't interested in "computer functions" on their phones. You've got to think a bit broader.

Pretty good point.

But isn't the 120 character limit restrictive? What good is an alert information if the complete message doesn't get delivered? :?

Long long time ago, I used a Microsoft Outlook plugin or extension, that sent me a SMS for every new mail that I received. I liked it because ItWouldStripOutSpacesJustLikeThisSentenceToCompress the text. :-) And also break the SMS into multiple ones, if it reached the char. limit. But regardless I found it annoying because it would send 3 SMS for the same alert. And since they get delivered in a wacko sequence, I could never really figure things out. Well I could, but it was annoying.