World AIDS Day: find HIV testing sites by SMS

December 1st is World AIDS Day, established by The World Health Organization in 1988. Today, the Kaiser Family Foundation announced the new short code KNOWIT (566948) for locating HIV testing sites. Text your zip code to KNOWIT and you'll get a response back with nearby testing sites.

For example, I tried sending the text "10173" (a Manhattan zip code) to 566948, and got back the response:

    Testing Center: New York University School of Medicine
    and Hospitals Center (212) 263-6426. More locations
    call 1-800-232-4636.

This sounds like a good way to discreetly and easily find a testing location. It's a good resource that people should be made aware of.

Price comparison by SMS

Several companies offer price comparison checking by SMS (e.g. Google SMS), but the price comparison website AuctionShark has something different going for it: it also checks eBay for active auctions selling the product you're looking for.

So for example, say you're out at Radio Shack looking at the Tomtom 510 GPS receiver, which maybe they have on sale for $325. If you're not sure if Radio Shack is giving you a good deal, you could send the text message "tomtom 510 gps" to the email address price@auctionshark.com. In a few minutes you'd get back a text message that said something like,

    Tomtom GO 510 GPS ...
    Comparemaster.com $345.00
    eBay $204.95 - No Bids ends in 1h 6m
    Reply m for more, e to email

So now you know that the Radio Shack price is cheaper than what you might find online, but that if you hurry you could also get the GPS on eBay potentially cheaper (in an auction that ends in just over an hour). Another neat feature is that if you respond with "e", you'll be prompted to enter your email address so that you can get the listings sent to you by email for later reference.

AuctionShark is pretty cool, but has two minor problems: the first is that they seem to truncate the item name, which in many cases makes it unclear whether or not their system interpreted your search correctly. For example, if you had entered "Tomtom 510", the response message would start with:

    Tomtom Tom Tom ...

Which, according to their web site, is an appreviation for "Tomtom Tom Tom RDS-TMC Traffic Receiver (9V00.080)". Since the information isn't useful at all unless you're completely sure what product you're getting info about, it seems that AuctionShark shouldn't be abbreviating the product name, even if it turns out to be pretty long.

The second problem with their service is that they require you to send a text message to an email address, instead of to a short code, which is non-standard, has a slower response time, and requires more typing.

But other than those two quips, AuctionShark should prove useful if you want to know if you can get a product you're about to buy cheaper online.

Interesting SMS prize game

Limbo has an interesting game/contest called Limbo grab. Apparently here's how it works: every time you text a message to their short code 41414 you "hold" the prize, until someone else texts in to take it from you. At the end of the game whoever has "held" the prize the longest wins it.

As I'm writing this the current prizes they've got include a copy of Guitar Hero 3, $150 of Netflix movies, and a Sony MP3 player.

Thats a pretty unique and neat idea.

Forgot where your car is?

Hey, now this is a cool service. The Mall of America in Minneapolis just launched a new service with Philips to help customers remember where they parked among the 12,500 parking spaces at the mall. Apparently 50 people a day ask for help finding their car (300-400 on black Friday). Can't find any details for how it works, but presumably you'd text in your spot or area when you park and be able to recall it later. I'd use it, too bad its only available at the Mall of America.

Followup: Text the troops on Thanksgiving

Looks like the DoD's "Giving Thanks" program got over 130,000 responses in the week that it ran.

Text the troops on Thanksgiving

The Department of Defense is running an SMS program called "Giving Thanks". The program allows anyone to send thanks (or probably any positive message) to servicemembers abroad by texting to the short code 89279. The messages will then be viewable by the troops via a special web page (presumibly after the comments have been filtered by the pentagon...). The program will run until midnight PST Nov. 22nd.

$1 movie tickets by SMS

Fandango and MacDonalds are running a promotion offering $1 movie tickets by SMS. According to Fandango's website here's the way it works: every Wednesday at noon PST a new "Word of the Week" is posted to their website. The first 8,000 people who text that word to Fandango's short code FNDGO (36346) get a promotion code back by SMS valid for the purchase of one movie ticket for a buck. The only catch is you're opted in for free Fandango Mobile Movie Alerts. But, the good news is if you want to you can just unsubscribe from the alerts after you get your coupon just by texting END to FNDGO. Not a bad deal.

The promotion runs through December 26th.

Send a text message, get a pizza

Papa John's has just launched a new service that allows people to order pizza by SMS. Very cool, but not as cool as it could be. According to the press release, you have to first create an account at Papa John's web site, where you enter your billing info, most common orders, and delivery address. Then when you want to place an order, you text something like "FAV1" to their short code 4PAPA (47272).

This could take off if they can spread the word, considering that after introducing web-based ordering in 2001 Papa John's now gets 20% of it's orders via the web. Being able to order pizza by SMS is very neat, but what I'd really like to be able to do is text in "lrg pizza pepperoni onions", and then get prompted for my delivery address if it isn't already on file. It's very cool that Papa John's is the first company to allow pizza orders by SMS, but I hope they improve their system a bit so that you're not required to enter your orders ahead of time.

Traffic ticket issued for texting while driving

According to the Arizona Republic, the city of Phoenix issued its first traffic ticket for sending text messages while driving since it made texting while driving illegal six weeks ago. And according to Gizmodo, 89% of people surveyed support laws banning texting while driving, while 66% have done it. Does seem dangerous, though i'd be lying if I said I'd never texted while behind the wheel...

Google SMS

For my inaugural post, I thought I'd talk about Google's free SMS service. It's actually been around for a while, but I'm always surprised that so few people seem to know about it. From any cell phone, you can send a text message request to Google's short code GOOGLE (i.e. the phone number 466453, corresponding to G-O-O-G-L-E on a standard phone keypad), and you'll get back an automated text message in a few seconds with an answer to your request. Google has a lot of info available, including yellow pages, movie listings, flight status, translations, and a lot more.

For example, to find the nearest Anna's Taqueria in Boston (if you don't already know their locations by heart...) you could send the text message

    02139 anna's taqueria

to the phone number 466453 (GOOGLE). In a few seconds, you should get the text message response,

    Local Listings:
    Anna's Taqueria
    84 Massachusetts Ave
    617-324-2662

Very handy. And for many of the things Google offers this is way faster than trying to browse the web on your phone (I've actually done this speed test a couple of times with my friends who have iPhones, which btw are nonetheless very cool).

There are a few downsides to Google's service. First, it's pretty tough to remember the info they offer, and not all of their features are listed when you text "help" or "tips" to GOOGLE (though the complete list is available on the web). So sometimes you just have to send off a text message request and hope for the best. A second problem is that location-based services (e.g. yellow pages) can't handle anything too sophisticated, e.g. "starbucks 28th and 5th nyc". Looking for the nearest Starbucks in New York City by zip code is pretty much pointless.

All in all, Google's SMS service is a very useful way to find info when you're out and about (though I mainly use it for address lookups). And since its free, its a short code thats definitely worth remembering.

Welcome!

Welcome to TextEverything! TextEverything is a blog dedicated to cell phone Text Messaging (aka SMS, or Short Message Service). There are so many cool things you can do with SMS, and since I haven't been able to find a good blog focused on SMS and SMS services, I decided to start my own.