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I am a little confused with SMS and how to send them. I been searching around and I see you can purchase sms texts. I seen some where you get 10k text msgs for $490 but I find this very expensive and I am wonder if there is a better way that would be well free.
I know many sites use have SMS reminders such as google calendar. I am sure google hosts there own server or something.
I also know of alot smaller sites that charge $3/month for their service and one of the features in their service is to send you sms alerts. I highly doubt that they are paying 4cents at text and allow unlimited reminders.
So is there a gateway that I can host myself that is free? Preferably something that works on windows machines.
Or do these sites use like email to sms or something like that and thats how they get it for free?
I am trying to figure out how to make it free on my end to send. I find it kinda stupid that services have to pay to send these messages. I would have figured it would be like email where you can send them for free.
I understand the person receiving the SMS message might have to pay but that depends on their cell phone plan.
Your options:
Email-to-SMS Gateway
Pros
Free
Cons
Delivery not as reliable as native
Non-standard message formatting between carriers
Subject to stricter 'spam' guards that can catch non-spam messages
You have to know what carrier your user is using, and they have to notify you if it changes
SMS Gateway
Pros
More reliable
Consistent formatting
Easily handle replies
Virtually indistinguishable to a carrier from text messages sent from a human
Most offer a simple API
Cons
Costs money. This won't change until the carriers stop charging for them on both ends, which I wouldn't hold your breath for since it's such a huge profit center for them.
Do-it-yourself
Pros
You get to learn how GSM modems and AT commands work making you a 1337 hax0r.
Cons
Complicated
Still have to pay carriers per message
Doesn't scale.
I happen to work for a gateway (Twilio) so I deal with this question a lot. We frequently have customers that started down the email route and gave up due to the hassles associated with that method. You can get away with email-to-SMS for small volume, non-important messages. If you're serious about it, sign up for a gateway. There are a lot of them out there.
One way to do this is to use an email to sms gateway. Here, you just send a short plaintext email to a special address like #vzwtext.com for a Verizon number.
A quick search turned up this list: http://www.mutube.com/projects/open-email-to-sms/gateway-list/.
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I was wondering if anyone can suggest a third-party solution to do the following?
I'm a developer/freelancer. I need an online solution to let beta-testers and other developers communicate bug reports, submit feature requestes (from "internal" beta-testers, and just not software users) back and forth between our small team. Preferably the system that can be updated from both ends: developers - beta-testers, that could also keep history of all such communication.
I have a webform to a local mailbox that triggers a mail to my personal account when there's something to read (that means: when unread inbox messages count changes from 0 to 1). When the message requires an answer I send an email to the user (users are required to provide a valid email on registration).
In extreme cases I leave a personal message to the user popping as a simple javascript alert next time he/she logs in or (if already logged in) requests a page. If I need to make sure he/she will read it I use confirm method and keep showing it in every page loaded until accept button is pressed.
You can set up a free online chat applet on a webpage to complement that. Check this one out, for example: http://www.phpfreechat.net/demo
Facebook also works quite good (instant messaging, posting to everybody).
A Blog with RSS (any CMS: wordpress, drupal... includes a number of modules to set up a blog in a minute with just a few wizard steps) is also a good way to communicate news and updates.
A Forum (phpBB for example) is very easy to set up, but more difficult to maintain (repeated posts, scattered info without structure, etc... It's less resource efficient than other systems, in my opinion).
A wiki is a good solution for FAQs and user manuals. You can read more about it here: http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Wiki
A dedicated Q&A site can also be a good idea because people vote the most interesting and useful topics, but it has the same drawbacks as the forum, though they're (in my opinion) easier to handle. There are many precooked Q&A opensource projects with almost if not all the functions you can find here on the stackexchange network, ready to deploy in a minute. I particularly like this one: http://www.question2answer.org/
A bugtracker is quite technical but it works as a charm with experienced users (If your beta testers belong to the programmers community don't even think it twice: just have it online ASAP!). I like bugzilla, but you have many different ones to choose from. A comparison of bugtracking systems can be found on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_systems
Finally, but not the less important, don't discard deploying surveys, they're very good to make statistics on your project's weak and strong points and also on user experience and expectations (functionalities to add/improve and fix). Some sites like surveymonkey.com make this very easy.
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I want to start a simple windows P2P instant messenger in C#, similar to AOL, ICQ, etc, but much more simple (plain text messages between 2 guys)
I don't need examples on how to do it. I can find them myself.
What I do need is a general idea of how instant messaging works (P2P, not multichat) without many technical details.
For example:
Will I need a main server to make the communication between user1 and user2 happen or user1 can send the strings directly to user2? How is this called?
If user1 is logged in, how does he know of an incoming message from another user (or the online status of their friends)? Does the chat client app check every X seconds with a main server?
Any clues that might help me clear the general data flow idea will be very much appreciated.
A flowchart may also be helpful if you find one to share.
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE (NEW QUESTION) - July 6
Let's say the user had successfully logged in, and the app needs now to get and populate the list of contacts (saved on my apache/php/mysql server).
How would you implement the data retrieval (important) and later population of the contacts list? Is WebClient.DownloadString[Async] a good approach? Is there a better way?
How often should the app check for updated list (online/offline statuses). Recommendations accepted.
How can I parse JSON data on C#.NET (Visual C# Studio 2010)
I will get JSON strings.
Thanks!
If you really want to build a p2p app, there should be no server. However, this is not straightforward.
There are lots of different approaches to creating a chat system, mostly involving servers. Research comet (a good solution if implemented properly, terrible otherwise), polling (checking every x seconds) or using sockets, however there are lots of issues to be considered - and caveats, particularly firewalls/nat routers. A socket solution could potentially be 'p2p', but the polling and comet ones are not.
For your use case, I would go with a simple socket solution (one side as server, one as client) and configure your router firewall by opening a port at the server end.
You could extend this so that both sides could be both servers (listening on a port) and clients, so you could both 'call' each other.
You will need to have a permanent ip, or use a service like dyndns to get this to work properly.
Update
Yes, DownloadString or DownloadStringAsync would be a fine method.
How often is really up to you. I assume that this is only for a few users from what you said in the question, so you don't need to worry about overloading the server. Once a minute sounds reasonable, but once a second would proabably be fine too if you feel that way inclined... Parsing JSON in .NET answers your final query.
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How can I make my application send SMS using C#? My current configuration sends E-mail alerts but SMS alerts are better suited for my purpose. Any way I can do that for free/paid?
You need an SMS provider. One such provider is clickatell.com who I have bought in bulk from before. They have a good service, and an extensive API. You have to pay for the SMS, but like everything in life, the better quality stuff costs more. I've found them reliable and their phone support is good.
There are a few free ones out there, but they are obviously going to be heavily restricted and finding one that allows use for commercial products would be hard to find. You also have to be careful with user data, free ones may auto sign your numbers on for marketting etc, so make sure your users are aware of that if that's the route you wish to take.
Just a disclaimer that I have no affiliation with Clickatell, and there are lots more options out there, but beware of resellers who provide sub par service at inflated prices.
Second vote for ClickATell for fast, flexible, simultaneous SMS delivery (and full tracking of SMS message delivery status).
An alternative is that you could use a USB/serial GSM modem (WaveCom) or cell phone and send SMS's via the venerable 'AT' command set. For serial-based SMS, there are quite a few .NET component sets, to make it easier. One such component set is TOxygenSMS. Going the serial route means each SMS takes about 5 seconds and must be sent in series.
I have used both with great success. Use a SMS gateway if you have Internet access and a GSM modem in other cases.
We have been using Essendex for a while now and it works well and pretty reliable.
without a SMS sending gateway it is not possible. you need a services provider who provide you a services to sending sms see here a aticle
http://www.developershome.com/sms/howToChooseSMSGateway.asp
If this is for a small application the you don't need to pay for a gateway. Assuming that you know the provider, you can just use this list of SMS transit providers. For the most part, the big players offer it but they may have some limitations for number of texts per day. It works very well - you just have to send an email to: 1234567890#sms.provider.com.
I have written a C# library for Twilio that lets you send SMS in two lines of code.
Note that while I now work at Twilio, I released this library prior to working here.
A free option to get text message alerts is actually just create an account on www.totxt.com and you can just send an email to USER_NAME#totxt.com and receive it via SMS. This is better for alerts for a small group then for bulk SMS.
alternative to SMS Gateway is using a Modem maybe a phone or a GSM Modem and study of AT Commands.
you can use .net SerialPort Class
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How can I send an SMS message to a cellular phone number from an ASP.NET web site?
If you know the service provider you can send an email to their phone, which is then converted into an sms message. For instance with Verizon Wireless phones it would be phonenumber#vtext.com
Here is a list of popular US carriers and the email addresses they use.
If you don't you could try an SMS gateway service. I'm not sure of any because I have never tried.
You will need to use an SMS service provider. They will have an API, such as a web service or some other url, which you will call to send the SMS.
There are two ways:
1) Get a contract with the network onto which you want to send SMS.
it will probably be quite expensive if your not sending alot of messages.
You will need a new contract with each network provider you want to use.
2) Use a sms service provider.
Which one to use depends on where you live and what networks you want to send to.
we use http://www.cellsynt.com/en/ simple and reliable.
You could ofcourse use some Mail2SMS provider, but then you need to know what network the number is on. In case of sending SMS to your friend that is an option but if there could be any other number your better of using option 2 until you send tons of messages then option 1 might be cheaper.
As most people have already said you can use a service provider, you can also get a connection to a carrier's SMSC (unlikely) another option is using a GSM modem. They usually come with an API that will allow you to among other things send SMS messages.
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Anyone know of a free SMS library or webservice for .NET that will allow me to send text messages to people's cell phones?
What are you looking for actually? a Library or a Proxy?
a Library is just an API that you can program to in a user-friendly way... that, there are hundreds out there, because that you need to add all the payed proxies, they all give you an API to program to.
If you are talking about Proxies, 98% of the proxies out there are not for free, and you need to pay a monthly basis amount of per SMS sent, it's up to you. All of them have trial versions (for example 100 SMS that you can send for free... normally called Credits).
There is some open source projects for SMS proxies, but for the Linux world like Kannel.
You can make your own using COMM interface and have a old mobile with a card that you can send commands to and make your own API interface based on that (there are plenty of SMS free packages and you might have it as well in your country)
for now... try this link:
http://email2sms.ru/sms.php
and a nice but old article on how to send sms using your own phone:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2003/10/10/sms.html
Try bulksms, very cheap and provide an incoming and outgoing service in pretty much every country for local SMS rates.
ReadWriteWeb
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zeep_mobile_free_sms_gateway.php
Clickatel and most other SMS gateway providers provide some trial credits. And some service providers provide Email2SMS conversion. i.e You can send an email to +94xxxxxxx#yourprovider.com and it will be sent as an SMS.
These information does not answer your question directly but they would be useful in your taks..
Use a SMS provider like clickatell. Sending a SMS is just a matter of sending a correct HTTP GET request containing your account information, the message and the recipient. See: http://support.clickatell.com/guides/clickatell/api_guide.php.
From .NET, you simply use the System.Net.WebClient class to create a correct HTTP GET request. Docs: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webclient(VS.80).aspx
Actually I found a pretty good one called PennySMS. It has a pretty good and simple web service I can consume and seems to work with all different types of cell phones.