Get a hold of your on-the-go friends without running up your mobile phone bill. Open iChat, go to File > New Chat With Person, and a new Instant Message window will appear with a field for the name of your invitee. Enter a mobile number, starting with +1 and omitting the dashes (+14445551212 for example). (One caveat: This only works with U.S. phone numbers.) After that, all you'll see it a regular chat window - but whatever you type into the text field gets sent to that phone number as a text message. You might want to sign your name, too. If the recipient replies, the response appears in your iChat window as if it's a regular IM session. You can even add the phone number to your Buddy List.
morwen
August 10, 2007 at 1:26pm
Tried this with both my .mac and aim login to my Sprint phone #. Got "this person not online" with both. Maybe it depends on the phone carrier?
btw, Sprints sms is 1xxxxxxxxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com
muskateergraphics
August 10, 2007 at 11:07am
Bell Canada is
5555555555@txt.bell.ca
And this little tidbit works well with their customers.
Joe
August 09, 2007 at 10:25am
Apparently this only works with .Mac accounts? I tried it while logged in using my AIM account and all I got was "The person is not currently on line."
Ernest Phillips
August 09, 2007 at 10:34am
This should work with regular Screen Names on AIM, not just .Mac names. However it can be glitchy (occasionally doesn't work), sometimes reports and error if that person's phone is off, sometimes doesn't, and as I understand it some carriers don't support this (messages sent this way to Sprint customers did not used to work, I don't know about now).
What I'd love to see is a list of SMS email formats. I know that AT&T is 1112223333@txt.att.net and I belive Verizon is 1112223333@vcast.net (thanks to people on the forums who told me those), but I don't know any others.
