Send link through free web SMS service

Hello

I recently became interested in writing applications for mobile phones and I am currently trying to educate my self on this topic. I have already found a few tutorials about the coding aspect, but I am still in the dark on how to deploy the application on a mobile phone. From what I have gathered on the internet, one way of doing this over the air is to send an SMS that contains a WAP link to the application. How can I send such an SMS and is it possible to do so from a free web SMS service such as Yahoo! Mobile?
Thanks,

Boz

That's an interesting idea. I have received url's on my mobile in the past and wandered what that was about.

Sending sms to a mobile phone from your application or website is not a difficult process, in most cases it would be a case of using http or sending an email.

But make sure that the "free" supplier allows you to do it.

Some companies, for example, provide free sms to drive us to their sites and so sending sms remotely defeats that purpose, and would therefore be against their terms & conditions.

Others limit the length of your messages and append adverts to your messages, in which case you should make sure that the space allocated is sufficient for your messages.

Hope that helps.

I am not really trying to send SMS from my website or application. Rather, I am looking for a way to get my application onto a mobile phone. I know this can be done over a data cable but I'd rather do it over the air. From what I understand, it is possible to do this by sending an SMS containing a link to the application. What I do not know is how to send an SMS that has a link. I appreciate any hints or links to articles and tutorials on this topic.
Thanks,

Boz

I'm not sure, but i doubt it would as simple as sending a link via sms.

It's more likely to be a case of downloading the application in its totality.

You might want to try www.textually.org, it's a really good blog that might have info on what you're looking for or, at least, links pointing to what you're looking for.

You can't send a wap link in a standard SMS message since it's a text only format. In order to this OTA you need the capability to send wap push messages which is a binary sms format that can contain rich media content and allows you to provide wap links in the message which I'm guessing would be suitable for offering your application. However, it's unlikely you will find anywhere that you can send these message for free.

An alternative to wap push is to simply send a wap bookmark (which could include a link to your application) to the users phone.

Again, it's likely that any service provider will charge you to send a wap bookmark, saying that this then brings in the whole supported handsets thing and as for wap push this can be disabled in most phones so even that's not foolproof.

You can send a WAP Push SMS (SI or SL) that triggers the application download via GPRS.

Most phones today support WAP Push Service Indicator, which will prompt the user whether to download the file, e.g. Java Midlet. The other kind of WAP Push is WAP Push Service Load, which is disabled some models.

A pre-requisite is that the phone user must have GPRS configured and enabled on his mobile.

Trust me on that one, no matter how you word it, no matter how big it is written people will order whatever you're selling them without having WAP / GPRS. Then complain they it's an injustice that they are daft and din't read / take notice! lol

If I had a pound for every time I've heard "I've not got WAP" I'd have ££££££££