* Pros and limitations of Short Message Service
Those text messages that appear on you cell phone – also known as Short Message Service – hold tremendous promise to do for cell phones what e-mail has done for normal phones. For instance, rather than getting a call on your cell phone with instructions to stop on the way home from work to pick up some items from the grocery store (and more than likely you’ll forget one of the items), you simply receive the shopping list directly on your phone.
Those text messages that appear on you cell phone – also known as Short Message Service – hold tremendous promise. For instance, rather than getting a call on your cell phone with instructions to stop on the way home from work to pick up some items from the grocery store (and more than likely you’ll forget one of the items), you simply receive the shopping list directly on your phone.
Nevertheless, SMS has some definite limitations. The first is that many of us find it a bit unnatural to “type” on your cell phone – and most cell phones don’t include a keyboard. The logic in the phones for guessing which word you’re using works amazingly well, but it still takes some getting used to. The good news about phone-to-phone SMS communications though, is that you have a pretty high probability (though it is not guaranteed) that your message will get through regardless of whether you and your intended recipient are on the same cellular network.
For many of us, the option of sending text messages from e-mail applications to cell phones is even better. You have your normal user interface and, more importantly, your keyboard. All of the major service providers offer both e-mail and Web-based interfaces. For instance, if you happen to know that the intended recipient of your message uses Verizon as their wireless provider, you simply send the e-mail to the phone number and add @vtext.com. Similarly, an AT&T user with phone number 555-123-1234 could be reached at 5551231234@mobile.att.net.
Pretty cool, huh? But we see a fundamental problem. The above e-mail-to-SMS scenarios assume that you know the wireless service provider that your intended recipient is using – and having that critical piece of information is far from being a given.
We’ll continue this discussion next time.
