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Business
Web-based short message services
HERE ARE a few web-based services that send text messages to mobile phones from a computer.
Most of the cell phone users would certainly be aware of the short message service (SMS), which refers to the process of sending instant text messages from one mobile phone to another. The technology is called `short messaging', as the sender cannot send a message longer than 160 characters. Similar to other new technologies such as instant messaging, on-line chatting and so on, the early adopters of SMS were young people. But, from being a youth communication tool, SMS is finding reasonably good acceptance among different categories of people including professionals and businessmen.
Though e-mail is a widely used, cheap and easily deployable communication tool, because of its asynchronous nature it may not always be possible for us to send immediate replies. As people carry mobile phones with them, this problem is solved with the use of SMS technology that allows us to send/receive messages anytime, anywhere with a mobile phone.
Besides, an enterprise can use SMS for such activities like marketing, advertising/promotion campaigns and customer relationship management.
Web-based SMS
Normally, to send an SMS message, both the sender and the receiver need a mobile phone. This means, even if you have a cell phone, clients will not be able to contact you unless they also have a similar mobile link. Of course, it is possible to send e-mail messages to a mobile phone; but for this you need to know the mobile service provider's mail server address. As there are innumerable mobile networks currently operating worldwide, this is not a simple option. So to circumvent this constraint, many web-based SMS solutions have been developed.
The advantage of web-based SMS technology is that it allows us to send messages to a mobile phone without the help of a cell phone. To send SMS through a service, you just need to access its site, type in the necessary information into the appropriate boxes available at the web-to-mobile interface and send the message. A couple of services that let us send short messages this way are discussed here.
Free SMS @SMS.AC
SMS.AC- is a wireless technology firm that provides a cheap and efficient web-based SMS messaging solution. The service lets you send short messages to various mobile phones available worldwide. To use the service, visit the site: http://www.sms.ac, go through the sign-up process and acquire an SMS-ID. At this point you will be presented with an interface where you can input such details as the message to be sent, receiver's mobile phone number, your e-mail address and so on. The mobile phone number has to be prefixed with the country code. For example, if you are sending to a phone located in India, the number should start with the code `91'. A message sent this way would normally hit your client's mobile phone almost immediately. Another advantage of this service is that you can receive SMS messages even if you don't have a mobile phone. If somebody wants to send an SMS to you through the service, he/she just needs to enter your SMS-ID instead of mobile phone number. You should also note that the service allows you to send only five SMS every day for free. If you want to send more than five messages, you need to pay. This extremely useful service has many more features that you can try out.
Krify SMS
Krify SMS, http://www.krify.com/cell/, is another service worth trying in this regard. This `Net to Mobile' service lets you send messages to mobile phones that use various cellular networks in India. This service, which has been developed by a team lead by Krishna Reddy, an engineering student from Visakhapatnam (http://www.krify.com/brainbehind.htm), is free and requires no registration. As mentioned on the site, one shortcoming of this service is that it does not support all the mobile networks that currently operate in India. Apart from the on-line SMS, you will also find many other useful tools and information products on the Krify's site like articles related to computer science and IT, links to numerous free programs and so on.
Angry IP scanner
We know that any machine connected to the Net or intranet has an IP address. The utility, `Angry IP scanner', scans a set of IPs in a network and presents valuable information on the nodes with IPs that fall in the range. The utility, which will be more useful for network administrators, can scan IPs in any range and to start the scanning process just enter a range of IP addresses and push the `Start' button. This free program can be downloaded from: http://download.angryziber.com/ipscan.exe.
NetworkView is a similar network-scanning program that can be tried out. The program, once invoked, discovers all the participating machines in a network and draws a graphical map displaying various node details like IP address, hostname and so on.
If the user wants to keep a record of these network details he/she can save it as a text file. A trial version of the software can be downloaded from: http://www.networkview.com/
Newshub: On-line breaking-news service
Interested to know the latest developments in technology, finance, science or politics?
Check out the on-line news dissemination service `Newshub' available at: http://newsxhub.com/.
As mentioned on the site, every fifteen minutes the service reports headlines collected from various news sources. Apart from displaying the current news items, it also lets you search for articles recently published on a specific subject.
J. Murali (The author can be contacted at: murali27@satyam.net.in)
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