SMS Bustracker works with “Obama Phone”
A pinch of Tropo, a dash of Bustracker, fold in a pound of jata with PHP, bake for an hour and you have jata-sms.
My Android smartphone suffered a breakdown last week. New parts should arrive soon. But in the meantime, I was at a loss without my favorite Android app jata. I use it to get bus arrival times with the local WRTA Bustracker. Bustracker has a text message interface, and I thought I would try that with the backup TracFone (Safelink Obamaphone[1]). That didn’t work. The TracFone Terms and Conditions states that “TracFone does not generally participate in Premium SMS services or campaigns.” The Bustracker SMS number is 41411, a shortcode for Textmarks, and I guess Textmarks is a premium service. Then, I remembered Tropo, a gateway for voice and SMS. It offers a free developer account and phone number, and now I had a motivation to work with it.
- [1]There could be a whole other discussion about giving away the razors (phones) to sell the blades (20 ¢ / min airtime), but I’ll leave that for another day.↩