My phone carrier gives me a use-it-or-lose-it monthly allowance of 1000 #SMS txts within #Belgium. I only use ~50 or so. Any ideas on how I can use them and be less wasteful?

I’m not really looking for a big project. Just numbers that give free services. E.g. there are probably numbers I can SMS and get back the weather. Or even better, I would love to be able to SMS a Belgian phone number that would forward my SMS to an international number. Not sure if gateways like that exist.

If I were looking for a project, I could probably sell a SMS service. So for example I could proxy SMS messages for people outside of Belgium for a fee. It would be interesting but more effort than I want.

#askFedi

  • nickwitha_k (he/him)
    3•11 months ago

    Here’s an idea for a not particularly useful way to use them (supposing for carrier allows SMS <-> Email):

    • Create an application that implements Conway’s Game of Life. And an API that controls ticks, resets, and renders the board in a 160 Unicode characters.
    • Setup a mailserver and email address to perform scripted interactions with the API when it receives messages from your number.
    • Setup IFTTT or similar to fire of an SMS to the mailserver every time that you should be taking a break, specifying a number of ticks and request for the game board.
    • Enjoy. You now have a way to remind yourself to take breaks and waste SMS quota at the same time!
    • @activistPnk@slrpnk.netOP
      1•11 months ago

      Your SMS <-> Email arrow is bidirectional. I’m curious about that because I know it’s common to send an email to something like $bobsPhoneNum@sms.carrer.tld which then goes to his phone, but unfamiliar with the other direction. How can I send an SMS that gets proxied into an email?

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)
        2•11 months ago

        It varies by carrier but some allow sending an SMS to an email address, instead of a phone number. Their system then proxies it and generally sends the message as an attachment.