You need to drop a little bit of money and get this going over SSL. I (and neither should anyone else) give out my email, real name, phone number, username and password over a non-SSL site. I'm really interested in checking out your service but this is a show-stopper.
I wanted to use the press mentions for ODF, since it's the exact same technology, which is why I mentioned "The PENNY SMS technology has been featured on"
So it seems you're using a bunch of GSM-modems with SIM-cards on "sms flatrate" contracts. Apart from the obvious scalability concerns I really wonder whether (or rather: for how long) the carriers will let you get away with that?
import xmlrpclib
s = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy('http://api.pennysms.com/xmlrpc')
s.send(key_txt, email_txt, phone_txt, "hello")
That gets me "S:M:hello" on my phone... but good enough for my purposes (server notifications, etc, backed up by a more reliable method already in place..).
So is the real service the ability to receive responses?
Can't you send SMS messages via email for free already?
I guess the ability to send messages without knowing the carrier is pretty useful.
The problem Penny SMS solves is, without knowing the carrier, it is very hard to figure out where to route the messages to, since someone may have switched cell carriers, even multiple times, but retained the same cell number.
sometimes carrier in my country have good deal for sending sms, like 0.1c per message for gsm. $1 unlimited for cdma, etc (caveat: only within-carrier, far more expensive across-carrier)
the thing is i can't have 4 or 5 digits short sms number; however, that didn't stop me either :d
for gsm, i use gnokii, iterating on a list of number with corresponding message is all needed
for cdma, it's a bit harder since no open source program is ready-to-use-out-of-box ... basically it boils down to sending `proprietary` at commands to /dev/bla (whatever dmesg spits) or port comm (if the cdma modem only has windows driver, forcing you to)
my only gripe with sms is it's 'serial' in the sense i can't 'broadcast' -- that's it, i can only send 1 sms per say 6-10 seconds (depends on how busy the network is)
there's no handshake? so there's no way for me to know if the recipient gets it ... and sometimes they get 'empty' sms ... maybe the carriers' mechanism to block spam shrug
that's all i know about sms, i don't know about sms-center, maybe if one has access to it, s/he can broadcasts sms just like email
if someone knows more / better, please enlighten me thx
It is but the telcos don't operate in a free market. Additionally, the GSM standard puts SMS messages in a low-bandwidth channel, increasing scarcity. Of course, there are technical solutions to this problem but fixing the problem is tantamount to slaughtering a cash cow and it's not done.