Steve, >I've been asked to create a fairly simple sms messaging program that will alert clients' mobile phones when particular circumstances occur. Having absolutely no previous experience programming such apps I have been googling for info to help me. I found developershome.com/sms/ quite useful for gaining a beginner's insight, and at first glance setting up an app to use sms over http or https seems relatively trivial. My questions, then. to those with experience are: am I wrong? are there pitfalls I should be considering? are there reasons why another protocol should be used? do you know a good source of information . . . . ?
I have sent text messages to cell phone for years using the e-mail gateways provided by cell phone providers. I believe virtually all the cell phone providers have a domain name which supports texting via e-mail. For example, Verizon Wireless has vmail.com. To use it you send an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] where 111 is the area code, and 222-3333 is the cell phone number. Here is a web page I found that gives the details for a large number of providers: http://www.garnetchaney.com/net_research/how_to_send_text_message_to_a_m obile_phone.html You can use anything you want to send the e-mail. I wrote my own library years ago that uses MAPI to send through a MAPI service (installing Outlook installs a MAPI service. You could also use a library that supports SMTP and send the e-mail directly. I have stayed with MAPI to support automated e-mailing from the desktop because a lot of our large customers use MS Exchange and block the SMTP port on the local side of their network to defeat virus software that tries to send e-mail. So, for those customers SMTP would not work. Glenn Lawler www.incodesystems.com
