eramarswami.com

amar swami


Leave a comment

Auto-Forward SMS and Missed Calls to your Email [Android]

you may wonder why would anyone want to forward text messages or missed call notifications to their email account when the cell phone is with them all the time? Won’t these messages add more noise to an overflowing email Inbox?
Not so. For instance, some of my friends work in a company where, for security reasons, they aren’t allowed to carry personal mobile phones inside though they do have regular phones at their desk and are allowed email access. They would therefore leave the phone at home but with auto-forwarding enabled, they’ll get an email alert as soon as someone sends them an SMS or calls on their cell during office hours.

Such a feature may also be handy for people who have recently switched to a different phone number and would like to keep track of all incoming calls and messages received on their previous phone but without having to carry it all the time.

The Android Market has dozens of apps that can bring the auto-forwarding feature to your mobile phone but the one that I like most is SMS2Gmail. It says “SMS” but the app can forward both SMS text messages and missed calls to your email address. You will get the complete message text in your email and the sender’s name as well provided that that number already exists in your phonebook.

sms auto forwardIt takes just one step to get it up and running. Launch the app, provide the credentials of your Gmail account and done. It needs the Google credentials in order to send email notifications but if that doesn’t make you too happy, just create another Gmail account and set it to auto-forward messages to your primary email account.

One more thing. You turn on email notifications manually but in a situation where you have have forgotten the phone at home, or have misplaced it somewhere, you can remotely activate auto-forwarding by sending an SMS from any another phone to your phone.

The app lets you assign an Activation Keyword (see screenshot) and as soon as a text arrives with that keyword, the auto-forwards will be enabled automatically.


Leave a comment

Send SMS Text Messages from Computer to Mobile Phone via Outlook


With Microsoft Outlook 2007, you can easily send (or receive) SMS text messages from computer to any mobile phone – just write a new SMS text message (like the way you compose emails in Outlook) and hit Send.

Similarly, you can also forward emails, pending tasks and calendar items from Outlook to your mobile phone via SMS.

How to send SMS text messages from computer using Outlook 2007 ?

To SMS enable your copy of Microsoft Outlook 2007, first register your mobile phone number at SMSOfficer. This new service from Microsoft supports almost all cellular operators in US and other international countries including India.

You will soon get an SMS verification code on your mobile phone, confirm and the SMS feature is activated in your Outlook without you having to download any additional software – you will need to click on a configuration link which sets the entire configuration for you.

sms via email forwardForward Emails as SMS Text Messages
To compose an SMS message in Outlook, select New -> Text Message. Outlook is automatically set up to use the standard text message limit of 160 characters. If your message exceeds the 160 character limit, the extra characters are truncated and delivered as a separate text message.

There are no registration charges and you also get 10 SMS credits for free at the time of joining SMS Officer. Once you exhaust the free limit, you need to pay for using the Outlook SMS service – payment can be made via PayPal.

When the other person replies to your SMS message, it will arrive in your mobile phone. Am not sure if you can use Outlook 2007 to send bulk SMS messages – i.e., one SMS message addressed to multiple recipeints.


Leave a comment

How to Get SMS Alerts for Gmail via Twitter

You can use Twitter as a Gmail notifier and receive SMS text alerts on your mobile phone for new email messages in your GMail mailbox.
couch mode
print story
Twitter SMS Arrives in India via Airtel
Auto-Forward SMS and Missed Calls to your Email [Android]
Twitter Guide: How To Do Interesting Things With Twitter
Post to Twitter from Mobile Phones Without SMS
How to Monitor your Website’s Uptime with Google Docs
How do you get SMS notifications on your mobile phone for important emails in your Gmail? Google doesn’t support text notifications for their email service but Twitter does. If we can figure out a way to connect our Twitter and Gmail accounts, the Gmail notifications can arrive as text on our mobile via Twitter. Let me explain:

Twitter allows you to follow any @user via a simple SMS. They provide short codes for all countries (see list) and if you text FOLLOW to this shortcode following by the  username, any tweets from that user will arrive in your phone as text notifications. For instance, if you are in the US, you can tweet FOLLOW labnol to 40404 to get my tweets as text messages. Similarly, users in India can text FOLLOW labnol to 9248948837 to get the tweets via SMS.

The short code service of Twitter can act as a Gmail SMS notifier. You create a new Twitter account, set the privacy to private and this account will send a tweet when you get a new email in Gmail. Follow this account via SMS from you main Twitter account and the SMS notifications will start pouring in.

<img src=”http://img.labnol.org/di/gmail_twitter.png&#8221; height=”555″ width=”555″></img><br>

Use Twitter as a Gmail Notifier with Google Scripts

Here’s a step by step guide on how you can use Twitter to get SMS notification for important email in your Gmail account. It will take a minute to setup and, internally, there’s a Google Apps Script that’s doing all the magic. It monitors your Gmail mailbox in the background and as soon as a new message arrives in your account, the script sends out a tweet.

  1. Log out of your existing Twitter account and then go to twitter.com/signup to create a new Twitter account for your Gmail account.
  2. Confirm your email address, then open the Twitter settings page and check the option “Protect My Tweets.” This will make your Gmail notifications private and neither search engines nor other Twitter users will be able to see tweets generated through Gmail.
  3. Click here to copy the Google Sheet and choose Authorize under the Gmail to Twitter menu (near Help). Remember to authorize with your new Twitter account.
  4. Once authorized, choose Start from the Gmail to Twitter menu and enter yourGmail search query. For instance you can say is:important is:unread in:inbox newer_than:1d to only receive notification for new, unread and important emails in your Gmail. Click OK.

That’s it. The Gmail notifier is running and it will tweet when a matching email is found. It runs every 10-15 minutes and will only work on incoming email, not the old message. The messages will also be logged in the Google Sheet so you know what’s happening behind the scene.

Get SMS Alerts for Emails at Gmail

Open a new browser session in Incognito mode, log in to your old Twitter account and send a follow request to your new Gmail account on Twitter. Approve the new follower request and you should now see tweets for new Gmail messages, as they arrive, in your main Twitter timeline.

Should you wish to receive SMS alerts on your mobile phone for new Gmail messages, just open the Twitter profile page of your Gmail bot and turn on Mobile Notifications. This will obviously work only if you have connected (and verified) your mobile phone with your main Twitter account.