Free SMS texting chat style from your laptop
Do you want to SMS a friend in a hurry who is in US or India or Malaysia or Pakistan or maybe even Canada? All those free SMS sites that you go to bring the untold misery of pop ups and unnecessary registrations. Right?
So, you are on your laptop / pc and your cell phone service doesn’t include overseas SMS facility. How do you still get to SMS your family member or friend. In fact even better than just normal text, you can chat along with the person in another continent over his/her phone and your laptop!!
It can be easily done using your Yahoo messenger.
Here are the simple steps.
Step 1: Go to “Action” on the menu of the messenger and select “Send an SMS Message”. Or Simply press Ctrl T
Step 2: Next, go to “Other Contact” – if you already have your friend in the list with her/his phone number then use the “My Contacts” option and right click on that contact and use Send an SMS Message option. But, Other Contact option is the easiest to use.
Simply type in the number of your contact in the format shown. For India it is important that you type the format just as shown in the image below. So, enter the number and press enter. A pop up will open – it will take some time (a few seconds).
Step 3: The pop up will be like the normal Yahoo chat box, as shown below. Now, you can type the messages just as you type in your IMs for chatting. The other person can simply reply to those messages and you will have a nice chat session going on!! 🙂
I have used this feature from yahoo a lot for last several years. Its been very useful in times when I had to quickly contact a friend or a family member.
According to Yahoo, phones on only a few service providers in the countries served can be texted to. Here is the list:
United States: AT&T, Alltel, Nextel (including Sprint), Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile
Canada: Rogers, Fido, Telus
India: Vodaphone Essar, Airtel, Aircel, Spice, Escotel, Reliance, BPL, BSNL, IDEA, MTNL
Indonesia: XL, Indosat, Hutch 3, Telkomsel
Malaysia: Celcom, DiGi, Maxis
Philippines: Globe, Smart
Thailand: AIS, DTAC
Vietnam: Mobifone, Viettel, Vinaphone, S-Fone, HT, EVN
Kuwait: Wataniya
Pakistan: Mobilink
As you can see India and US have almost all the service providers. And of course, it can be used from US to US, from India to India, from India to US and back. Try it!