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Ping.fm SMS

  • Apr. 9th, 2008 at 4:10 PM

9th April 2009 - Update: After exactly one year of running this unofficial service it's time to close it down. But don't worry, I've worked with the awesome guys at Ping.fm to bring you an official UK gateway. The old service I talk about below runs on a Nokia handset connected to a PC which, while having a certain cyberpunk charm, isn't very reliable.

The brand spanking new official Ping.fm International SMS service runs on redundant equipment distributed across several data centres with an interconnect directly with a major UK mobile operator. Which is considerably more reliable.

Thanks to the Ping.fm guys for acknowledging the needs of their international userbase and asking me to set this new service up for them :)

Read More about this at the Ping.fm Blog or just dive right in and start using it.

Enjoy.


(ps: I'm a London based telecoms consultant, if you're looking for that sort of person do get in touch)


Quick hack to let you update all your social network statuses via sms until Ping.fm get an official version up and running (which I'm sure they will!)

1. Signup to ping.fm (use the invite code "pingofpings").
2. Setup all your services with Ping.FM
3. Send a text message to +44 7890 716 820 in the following format:

P USERID MESSAGE


Where USERID is the bit before the @ on the posting address that ping.fm gives you for e-mail (USERID@ping.fm). For example:

P thi9Fova This is a test :)


This hack uses the same gubbins as [info]sms_to_lj.
  • Location:SE18
  • Mood: accomplished

Comments

( 19 comments — Leave a comment )
[info]Andrew Trinh [ancyru.net] wrote:
Jun. 20th, 2008 12:30 am (UTC)
Just came across this & it was the push for me to completely use Ping.fm for all my social media updates.

Excellent work!
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[info]http://claimid.com/clairecircuit wrote:
Jun. 29th, 2008 03:27 pm (UTC)
Fantastic
This was the only thing that Ping.FM was missing. Amazing. Thank you.
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Jul. 8th, 2008 09:06 pm (UTC)
Brilliant! Cheers for putting the work in for this :)
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[info]spufidoo.myopenid.com wrote:
Jul. 14th, 2008 07:34 pm (UTC)
Thanks
Works a treat!
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[info]chmac wrote:
Jul. 25th, 2008 12:24 am (UTC)
Nice. Simple yet effective. Thanks for offering this to the community.

I just tried a test text and it hasn't arrived yet. Is there a delay on the posting? Is the gateway up right now? Perhaps it's being overloaded by ping.fm users... :)
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Aug. 1st, 2008 03:57 pm (UTC)
This works a treat, thanks!

@chmac My updates normally make it to Twitter within a minute or two. Is your Twitter password entered correctly in ping.fm? I changed my Twitter password and forgot to also change it on ping.fm, which meant my texts were making it to ping.fm but not to Twitter for a few days.
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Aug. 5th, 2008 05:18 am (UTC)
Thanks so much for this service ...
It worked great for me and it's exactly what I've been after.

Not sure why the guys at Ping.fm can't provide this service ...

Thanks again,
benaud
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[info]Andrew Trinh [ancyru.net] wrote:
Aug. 22nd, 2008 04:44 am (UTC)
Re: Thanks so much for this service ...
Because they don't have any income or revenue. Do you want to fund them so the rest of us could benefit from a SMS service?
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Aug. 22nd, 2008 03:29 pm (UTC)
Thank you for this - so useful! :-)
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[info]shazzerlive wrote:
Aug. 22nd, 2008 09:00 pm (UTC)
Super solution!
Thanks so much for sharing it! (Now all I have to do is commit my weird random USERID to memory.)
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Nov. 19th, 2008 07:01 pm (UTC)
try a template on your phone...
i have a samsung sgh 600 which allows you to create sms templates....which i have done and just left the subject off.

all i need to do is call up the template, add the subject, and send to 'ping' in my phonebook.

:-)

thanks for the sms app
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[info]dan_lane wrote:
Nov. 19th, 2008 08:17 pm (UTC)
Re: try a template on your phone...
A fine suggestion :)
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[info]wwhyte wrote:
Nov. 29th, 2008 12:00 am (UTC)
This is excellent. Thank you very much for setting it up.
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Dec. 10th, 2008 03:28 pm (UTC)
Just expressing my thanks for this very useful tool.
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Dec. 31st, 2008 02:48 am (UTC)
Dan you are a legend, this allows me to update by twitter and FB with a number that is inclusive from me free sms allowance!
Cheers
Ricky
www.rickyc.co.uk
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Jan. 15th, 2009 10:39 pm (UTC)
Thank you.
Just wanted to drop a quick thank you. This works excellently for me. I was updating my Myspace once a day, and it would update my Twitter which in turn updated my Tumblr and Facebook. But I had to do it from the web, and resolved to only do it once a day. Now I can update them all anytime anywhere...love it!
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[info]shazzerlive wrote:
Mar. 5th, 2009 07:32 pm (UTC)
Still working?
This wonderful hack seems to have stopped working for me today. Anybody else having problems with it?
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[info]dan_lane wrote:
Mar. 6th, 2009 12:53 am (UTC)
Re: Still working?
Ahh the gateway died and I've been busy all day... thanks for the heads up, I've just restarted it and it's cleared a backlog of posts.
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[info]shazzerlive wrote:
Mar. 6th, 2009 10:31 am (UTC)
Re: Still working?
Thanks so much Dan! Ping.fm keeps promising that international SMS support is coming, but I'm not holding my breath! Have a nice weekend!
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( 19 comments — Leave a comment )