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TechyTommy Phones: IFTTT + Text Messages!

 A year ago, I did a blog post on a website called IFTTT! If you want to view that, click here! But let me quickly explain why this is relevant to phones! Lots of carriers have a way to send text messages through email! This is carrier-specific, so you can't just send it to all phone numbers! For example, Cellcom has yournumber@cellcom.quiktxt.com and U.S Cellular has yournumber@email.uscc.net! (These are carrier emails for TechyTommy Email VIP users.) To use all of these, format your phone number like this: 1234567890! These are called "SMS to email gateways"! But what if your carrier is not listed here? Thankfully, there is a website with 92 carriers in the United States! Just go to email2sms.info if your carrier isn't in this article!

But how does IFTTT work here? While, IFTTT can send emails from your Gmail account! Previously, I was talking about connecting Gmail to Google Calendar, Alexa to Blogger, and Google Calendar to Contacts! But now, we can connect anything to SMS! Just go to ifftt.com/create! Press add, then you can choose anything! This would be really useful for the weather, so let's try that! When it starts to rain is great for text messaging! Then add a trigger! Now, add! Add Gmail, send an email! Now, send it to your carrier-specific email! For me, it would be mynumber@cellcom.quiktxt.com! Add a subject, then add a message! And attachment URLs don't work. But then add!















Now, what can you do with this? Here's a big list:

  1. Google Calendar notifications
  2. Location alerts
  3. Weather alerts
  4. Send a text message when you receive a new Zoom work phone voicemail
  5. When your favorite news website publishes a new article (or even TechyTommy!), send it to your phone
  6. When you post to your Blogger blog, text all your family about your new post!
  7. When someone says "Alexa, I am playing right now", text you so you can play with them!
  8. And more!
Why not just use IFTTT notifications? While, if you are in an area with bad reception or no data, and even if you have great reception, SMS is just more reliable, as it works anywhere you have service! But if you want to learn more about IFTTT, see my previous article! And if you want to sign up, go to ifttt.com! If you want 20 applets and multiple text messages at once, you need IFTTT Pro! If you want to only send text messages during specific conditions (for example, if there is snow in summer), and use your own services, you need IFTTT Pro+!

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