SMS Broadcast

[Dave Flowerday]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Now, the holy grail would be an answering machine that could have its messages set remotely...but if you had a mentor that would host it out of their house (and would be willing to put up with a ton of 8:00-AM-on-a-Saturday calls), good enough.

Or, if you were willing to shell out a bit more for peace and quiet and a clear phone line during such times, a second line for our house is $15.82 per month. $70 for such a system during the season (for three months, rather) doesn't seem too terrible...but even better might be to set up a separate voicemail account through the school for the team, if your IT minions are cooperative.

Behold the power of VOIP... if you're comfortable with computers, you can build yourself a VOIP solution for either free or very cheap, depending on your needs.

First, get yourself a Gizmo account (www.gizmoproject.com). It's like Skype but uses standard, open protocols. Next, get yourself a VOIP phone number. If you don't mind making your teammates call long distance (which often isn't a big deal since cell phone LD is usually free), you can get a FREE* phone number at www.ipkall.com which can forward calls to your Gizmo account (Gizmo, of course, has built-in voicemail which is where you could put announcements, etc). If you'd prefer a local phone number, you can get one from www.sipphone.com for fairly cheap (like $4/month). With a little tinkering, you should have your "team hot line" all set to go. I don't think you'd even have to leave the computer running (Gizmo voicemail should work even when you're computer's off I think). Note that these solutions allow call-in only (you'll have to buy call-out minutes if you wish to do so from the Gizmo software). You'll have to do some searching on how to point your IPKall number to Gizmo (SIPPhone numbers get set up for Gizmo automatically I think). There's plenty of information out there so it's not hard.

If you try any of this out and have success, post a response here. I think it'd be neat to see someone use this for their team.

* So you're asking: what's the catch? How can they do that for free? Well, first there's no ads, so don't worry about that. Apparently, whenever a long distance call is placed, the phone company who owns the number which receives the call is paid a small amount by the phone company from which the call originated. IPKall manages to take these small payments and fund their whole operation off it. I've used it for goofing around with VOIP for a few years with good success, and no ill side-effects.