Five Uses for Text Messaging If You're Over 15 [Part 5]

Five Uses For Text Messaging
If You're Over 15
(Or Even If You're Not)

(5) Regular, Automatic Reminders

Want an alarm clock every morning? Don't want to pack it in your suitcase?
Don't want to fiddle with those tiny buttons on your watch? Don't want to fuss with the keypad on your cell every night, setting its "Organizer" to ring the next morning?

Have your computer send email to your cell at 6:00 every morning that says, "Wake up!" You don't have to take your computer with you -- just your cell. Wherever you are -- at home or on the road -- it'll ring you at 6.

On Linux (or, surely, the Mac) use your favorite graphical interface to the reminder service to set up periodic reminders, and have those reminders send you text messages, by email.

Or you can get a command prompt, type "crontab -e", and add a line that looks like this:

00 06 * * * mail -s "Wake Up!" 7205551212@tmomail.com < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1

You're done!

[You may be able to do something like these on Windows, too. You'd have to ask someone who does Windows.]

Try it out.

Set an alarm for lunch time. Once you see it works, you can modify the time to be whenever you want.

Of course, it doesn't have to be daily. You can use this for any regular event: monthly, weekdays, every other Tuesday, .... Anything you can set up your computer to do regularly, you can get sent to your cell.

300 text messages a month is about 10 a day. I can spend one of those -- a penny a day -- on a daily reminder, like an alarm clock without feeling like I'm wasting it.