SMS and Twitter - Stay in touch

As the saying goes - "Necessity is the mother of invention"... Today I devised a way to stay in touch with my dear ones even when I don't have a cellphone with me at office. The scenario is like this -

I'm not allowed to bring cellphone inside the production floor. The person I want to stay in touch with does have a cell phone with her. So, how do I communicate with her? Simple. I'm able to open some 'free sms from the web' sites on my work computer. Like - cantos.com or indyarocks.com . I can simply type my msg and send that to her number. That's for outgoing msg from my end. But as I don't have my cell with me, I can't receive her replies. :( What to do? That's the innovative part. Enter - Twitter and SMS Tweet.




Twitter doesn't need any introduction. SMS Tweet is a service that allows you to tweet using normal sms in India. All she had to do is Send an sms "REGISTER her_twitter_id her_twitter_password" to any of the following nos: 09220092200 (Mumbai) or 09243000111 (Bangalore) to get her number registered. That's all. Now, she's ready to tweet.



Now, when she receives my msg, she could reply to me by sending a msg in this format - 'TWT message' - to any of the above two numbers. All twitter formattings are allowed here. For example - 'TWT @my_twitter_id message' will show up as a reply to me in twitter. And, if I want privacy, 'TWT d my_twitter_id message' will post her message as a direct message to me; invisible from public timeline. How cool is that.....?

I kept checking my direct message inbox from time to time and whenever I saw a new msg, I replied to her via web sms as explained before. And replied to me via sms tweet. Problem solved. Thanks sms tweet. :-)

Here are the steps again -

• You - register at Cantos or any other free sms service.
• The other person can register for smstweet by sending 'REGISTER her_twitter_id her_twitter_password' to : 09220092200 (Mumbai) or 09243000111 (Bangalore).
• You can send her message via your web sms service.
• She can reply to you by sending her msg in this format 'TWT d my_twitter_id message'
• Keep checking your twitter direct messages from time to time and repeat the process from step 3

Truely, it's difficult to stay out of touch in the age of communication. No one's complaining. :-)