
Penny SMS - stirman
http://www.pennysms.com/
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geuis
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.

~~~
timf
What's more worrisome is that the API key is sent out over http on each
call...

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stirman
SSL enabled for web front end and the api.

~~~
timf
Nice! That makes me and I'm sure many others more comfortable.

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elai
How will you prevent API key spoofing? Capture that XML-RPC request, and
voila, security breached until customer complaint.

~~~
rbreve
https ?

~~~
stirman
SSL enabled now.

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stirman
My new little project aimed at taking the complication and expense out of
programatically sending SMS messages.

~~~
nixme
How do you manage to provide such a low rate?

I also can't seem to find the TechCrunch mention that's claimed at the bottom
of the front page. Can you provide a link?

~~~
stirman
Penny SMS is the API from a site I built a few years ago,
www.ohdontforget.com.

TC mentioned it here: [http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/27/mobaganda-a-dead-
simple...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/27/mobaganda-a-dead-simple-
invite-site-built-on-googles-app-engine/)

CrunchBase Profile for ODF: <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/ohdontforget>

My CrunchBase Profile: <http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jason-stirman>

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"

Does it come off as bad form?

~~~
mildavw
Bad form? Nah.

How do make money with such a low rate?

------
timf

      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..).

Thanks!

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vyrotek
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.

I've used sources like this in the past to send SMS messages:
[http://www.livejournal.com/tools/textmessage.bml?mode=detail...](http://www.livejournal.com/tools/textmessage.bml?mode=details)

~~~
stirman
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.

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_pius
I've gotta say, I'm really curious how you're getting your rate. :)

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hs
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

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thehickmans
Any plans for receiving SMS messages?

~~~
stirman
You can view replies to the outgoing messages, see the 'from' field
description here: <http://www.pennysms.com/docs>

As for routing them back through SMS, we could do that, but thought being able
to field replies via email would be more convenient.

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timf
Interesting, signing up for a key.

I don't understand how your per-month & after-the-fact billing model is
feasible if you factor in per-transaction costs?

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rbreve
I guess this is USA only?

~~~
stirman
North America for now, working on expanding asap.

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catch23
1 penny still sounds expensive for 140 bytes of data.

~~~
silentOpen
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.

