While playing around with Meebo and JiveTalk on an iPhone, I started thinking about the iPhone's SMS capabilities. As you probably know, you can use iChat on a Mac to send an SMS message to an iPhone, and the iPhone can reply to that message. (The messages count against your iPhone's SMS allotment.)

 

I wondered how to do it the other way - send an SMS message from my iPhone to iChat to initiate a session. I've tried searching the Web for help, but all I find are articles about iChat-to-SMS messages, not the other way around. Why would you want to send a text message to someone on iChat? The main reason is that a recipient only has access to iChat. (Practical? Probably not.)

 

The problem is that when you start a new SMS message, you can't just enter the recipient's user name in the To field. You have to use either a mobile phone number or a valid short code. Enter a user name and you get an error message (I don't know if the error message counts against your monthly allotment).

 

Instead, you need to enter a code into the To field. Then in the message box, type username: (the recipient of your message) followed by your message. Here's how it's done.

 

In the To field, type 265010. In the message box, type username: and then your message. Tap send.

 

The message was received on the Mac using iChat. However, the response from iChat is seen as a different message on the iPhone. In the picture below, the response is listed above the message I initally sent, labeled with a new code (we can use this code number later).

 

Tap to open the response that came from iChat.

 

When you open the response, your messaging session will be contained in that particular session. You don't have to keep going back out to your Text Messages list to see follow up messages.

 

Next: Another way to SMS to iChat.

 

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If you've ever received iChat messages on your iPhone via SMS, you may have noticed that your messages are listed as being from a number code, not the sender's user name. This number code is a temporary code assigned to the sender. For a limited time, you can use that number code to start a fresh, new session with an iChat client. Using this code means you don't have to type 265010 and username:. I'll explain using photos from my iPhone.

 

I'm doing some research to find out how long the assigned number codes remain valid. If you can provide some insight, please post a comment.

 

I received this SMS message on my iPhone. The sender used iChat.

 

See the number in the top bar? That number is used to identify the user (you'd think it would be the user name, but it's not). When you check you message list, this number is used. For an example, see the photo below.

 

iPhone identifies received iChat messages with a six-digit code. (Yes, the numbers in the examples don't match, but it's still applicable.)

 

Next: Use the code to initiate SMS-to-iChat messaging.

 

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The photos don't show it, but I've received several iChat messages while testing this method out. Each one followed the 265-0xx pattern. In this particular example, the person I want to contact has the code 265-061.

 

After clearing all my text messages from my iPhone, I tuned it off for a while and did something else. A couple of hours later, I came back to try to send a text message to 265-061.

 

Sending a message to 265-061, which should go to the iChat ID I use for testing.

 

After I sent the message from my iPhone, my iChat client on my Mac got it seconds later. I typed a response, as shown below.

 

The iPhone initiated this session using the six-digit code number.

 

On my Mac, I replied to the message using iChat. It was sent as a text message to my iPhone, as shown below.

 

Mnemonics are fun!.

 

The six-digit codes that are generated are attached to users you have iChatted with and as far as I can tell, the codes are unique to each iPhone. In my example, 265-061 always goes to rugunlutula on AIM/iChat. On another iPhone I checked, 265-061 wasn't assigned to anyone.

 

I'm doing some research to find out how long the assigned number codes remain valid. If you can provide some insight, please post a comment.

 

I'm waiting to hear back from Apple on some questions I have about all of this. If you have knowledge you'd like to share, please post in the comments section below.