Google Voice texting tool.
My wife and I sometime volunteer to be leaders for the new students at our university. Since we need to contact 30 students at a time, and they all have cell phones, texting is the way to go. The problem is that it seems like most cell phone carriers (including google voice) don’t allow sending an SMS to more than about five people at once (to reduce spam?). Here’s the script I wrote to get around that:
Google Voice, a marvelous tool:
If you haven’t checked out Google Voice yet, I highly recommend doing so. Google Voice provides Free SMS plus a number of other features. I use SMS most regularly though. I love the ease with which I can view and compose text messages right from the browser. It does require that you sign up for a new free number. I did that a year ago, and I just give people my google number now, which forwards to my cell number.
Google voice in the browser will not let you send an SMS to more than five people at once, so here’s where I had to turn to:
pygooglevoice
pygooglevoice is a python API for google voice. This means that I can use the functions that GV offers without having to use their interface. It means that I can use them from a script, which is MUCH more convenient for mass operations.
To install it on mac os X, i just opened the terminal and run this command:
sudo easy_install -U pygooglevoice
Could you write a script or app that would allow you to automatically send out a pre-written text on a schedule? Say I have a company and a list of opt-in clients that want a text every time I have a deal. I would want to just put in the deal and say send it out to this list on the Monday of next week. How about something like that?