Navarr's Tech Side

Last Night I was working on a job site, and I had checked into it using Foursquare (twice, the first time a typo).  I was wondering if there was a way to undo a check-in, or something similar.  So, of course, I texted “help” to 50500 (the US Shortcode for Foursquare) and I got back the following message:

2 Vicinite alerts/wk, tones/video clips: $0.49-$9.99/mth+ msg&data rates may aply.  Visit vicinite.com/index2.html or 8666443345. STOP 2quit.

Wait, what?  That has nothing to do with Foursquare at all.  What is going on here?  So, I decided to google the shortcode for more information, and found out its ALSO used for Contxts, another service I used.  Just to make sure, I texted “David” to 50500 and what do I know?  His business card was texted right back to me, with the sender labeled as “Foursquare” due to me having set the number as Foursquare’s in my address book.

This is kind of fishy, in my opinion.  How, and Why do these three services share the same shortcode number?  They seem to have nothing to do with each other, either.

So then… how do they pull it off?

Google Voice, albeit still in Beta, is a very popular Google application for creating a single phone number to manage all your phones, with texting, and times to ring and not ring them.  It’s very powerful.

One of the nicest additions is the ability to read and reply to SMS on your computer.  I, personally, find this one of Google Voice’s best features.  Even if you don’t have a Cell Phone – you can sign up for Google Voice and now you have free texting.  What could be better?

Well, I can think of one thing – Connecting it with Outlook

Outlook has, in the last few versions, supported adding a SMS Bridge using whatever protocol it is they use in addition to a MAPI store.  It wouldn’t be very hard for Google Voice to tap into this, and provide free text messages for all Outlook Users – It would even gain a competitive edge over other service providers, in that your text messages from outlook would come from your actual phone number, and replies to them would be sent to your computer and your phones.

Now, I was going to be mean and keep this idea all to myself – but not only do I NOT have hosting with SSL (I can’t afford it~) but I don’t know anything about the various protocols I would need to know in order to make this work.

So Google, don’t you think it’s time to take the Business World by storm with your revolutionary phone service?

(PS: I would also like MMS.  Even the iPhone got it before you did, and that’s sad.)