10 Great Apps For SMS

With service providers, including Verizon and AT&T, offering unlimited SMS text-messaging plans for almost a year, there haven't been any huge, blaring headlines about new killer apps for the service. Still, if you look hard enough there are a number of new, improving or developing apps to improve and extend the SMS platform for both personal and business use -- and the trend is that there will be many more of them, not fewer of them, as time moves on. Here is a quick look at 10 applications we found that can give SMS more flexibility, reach or functionality right now.

Google Voice is the application that began life as "Grand Central," a nifty call-forwarding and call-management service that Google eventually bought from an independent company. The SMS feature on Google Voice allows a user to send and receive text messages from a PC, as well as forward them to e-mail addresses. It's great for those who frequently switch between PC and smartphone use and holds out the promise of getting even better if Google ever deigns integrate it with Google docs, Gmail or other services.

A nice little app for the iPhone, Voxie was developed by Bottle Rocket, an ISV that focuses on iPhone and mobile software. Voxie allows a user to dictate and record messages to the iPhone and then takes it to a next step. For a fee it will transcribe recorded messages and send them as SMS text messages to others for you.

Developed by Pinger, this is another iPhone application that adds a friendly user interface to SMS. Textfree provides both a paid app (for $5.99) or a free app (you have a limit on texts per day and have to look at advertising), and lets you turn text messaging into a softer, instant-messaging look. Textfree provides a greater assortment of themes and alert tones, as well as push notifications, beyond what iPhone offers natively.

This may be an obvious choice, but Twitter was the original SMS "killer app" and remains so today. Not only does it build a bridge between the PC and mobile device for text messaging (you can still send and receive Twitter updates and private messages via SMS), it extends it with its powerful social networking architecture.

The third of the iPhone apps we're looking at for SMS, and developed by HRL Technologies, Voice Text Pro is a $4.99 application that also takes dictation and forwards it as an SMS note. It takes a roundabout way of sending via e-mail, and takes time to learn your voice (like most voice-recognition apps.) Worth a try for those who seek to send texts while driving, etc.

Developed by Botstation, SMS 123 integrates Lotus Notes and text messaging -- giving users the ability to send SMS messages directly from the Notes client or Web interface. We haven't tested this application, but the idea of integrating SMS as part of a messaging and collaboration suite makes sense and Botstation appears to be out in front.

Simple and straightforward, Skype not only allows for VoIP-based calls but provides a nice interface for contacting any mobile phone via SMS. If you've already got Skype on your PC, but haven't made much use of the SMS feature, now might be the time to give it a new look.

No mess, no fuss: Task.fm just delivers task reminders quickly and neatly to your smartphone via SMS. Once you enter an item into the PC-based Web-interface (although it also works on the iPhone's Safari browser), it will send you an SMS text reminder exactly when you need it. The price is also right: It's free.

While this isn't exactly the slickest interface, Pingie.com is a powerful service that keeps track of RSS feeds and sends you an SMS text message or e-mail whenever that feed updates. This is a must-use service if you're on the road and need to keep track of corporate updates, news or blog updates, alerts or any information that is RSS-based and changes.

Ribbit has delivered a very popular, very elegant application for Salesforce.com -- an application that combines CRM, voice messaging and SMS into a single app. Ribbit for Salesforce allows users to communicate with colleagues and customers via SMS directly from a smartphone or the PC-based Salesforce.com console, create tasks and manage events. (It also will back up your smartphone and allow you to make calls directly from a PC-based console.) Extending this app to people on the go from both sides of the sales equation is just a smart way to build an application, and Ribbit has done just that.