OK, those of you who know me know that text messaging sometimes gets on my nerves.  As you can tell from past articles, such as the one I wrote on the topic of texting while driving, I have a view that texting CAN be useless and even dangerous.  Well, as it turns out, Google is beginning to force me to change my mind… to a point.

ALSO, if you know me, I do not have a data plan on my phone, neither do I have the need to, neither do I see the need to in the foreseeable future.  Google is actually helping me in this area.  As long as I have unlimited SMS, I can do many cool things without an expensive data plan.

You see, I just recently upgraded my phone to one of those “messaging” phones which has a quirty keypad making texting a whole lot easier.  Having the ability now to actually type, I’ve been exploring what I can actually do with SMS besides the obvious corny messages between friend and family.  Well, as it turns out, there are several ways that SMS can enhance the way you use Gmail and Google Calendars.  I’m sure these tricks have been kicked around for awhile, but here is what I get out of it.

SMS and Gmail

There are a few ways that SMS can work with Gmail.  I’ve figured them out by either messing around or by, you guessed it, Googling it!

1. I can be notified via SMS when I get email.  That, in and of itself is cool, you can do that with any email service, just forward email to (yournumber)@(your phone carrier, such as vtext for Verizon).com.  With Verizon you can set up a nickname, too to cut out using your own number.  With Gmail’s labels and filters, I can actually choose what kind of email to notify me about.  For instance, I set up a filter to send all emails from my wife to my vtext email address.  At this point, I am notified that I need to pick up milk, or whatever.



2. I can use Gmail to take a note for me so I will remember it later when checking my email.  I set up a filter to label all email with a phrase like “makeamemo” anywhere in the email with a label such as “MEMOS.”  So now I can just send an SMS to my Gmail address and have a nifty list of memos to remember. Notice that I made sure it filters only email from my address so no mistaken mail gets plopped there.  ALSO I made sure that the messages skip the inbox so that doesn’t get cluttered.

I am sure there is more I can do with Gmail and SMS.  I am still learning.  As I learn, I will share.

SMS and Google Calendars

Here are a couple of tricks I learned about Google Calendar and how SMS can enhance my use of it.

First you’ll want to set up your Google Calendar account to work with your cell phone.  Just click settings and follow the instructions in the mobile setup section.

1. I can have Google send me an SMS reminder of an appointment coming up.  I am SO bad at remembering appointments, especially if they are made a long time in advance.  Well, I could either mess with my phone’s calendar, which I’d rather not, OR I can have Google calendar remind me.  With the flexibility and ease of use that Google Calendar provides, it seems an obvious choice.



2. I can MAKE appointments on my Google Calendar via SMS!  I think that is the coolest thing EVER!  All I have to do is send a message to the number Google provides me (48368), make sure the date, time, and details are all in there, and bodda-bing!  Google will then send a confirmation SMS making sure the date, time and details are recorded correctly so there’s no worries there.  For more information, check out the post in Google’s help pages.

The idea here is that I don’t really need a data plan when I have SMS, and therefore I save money.  I’m sure there are more ways that you can use SMS with Google’s services.  Have you read my post about filtering and canned messages?  I’m still looking to learn more so if you know of any more hacks or tricks I can use SMS for, let me know.  AND, as usual, I will share with y’all what I learn!

Admittedly, I am new to the gmail scene.

I’ve always used Hotmail, even before Microsoft took them over.  Yes, way back then.  I have been hesitating, then hesitating, and even hesitating to move to another webmail service.  There are many things I don’t like about Hotmail, but, hey, there are also many things to get used to somewhere else.  For years I’ve had this struggle, until just recently.

I signed up for a gmail account quite some time ago, but I just never got into using it.  Many parts of gmail are foreign to me, including the whole idea of labels instead of folders.  It’s just one of those things.  Gmail has kind of changed the whole email thing, to the point that sometimes it’s difficult to get into it.  Well, recently I starting using gmail a bit more.  I haven’t tossed out my Hotmail account just yet, but I’m tinkering, and I love tinkering!  I hooked up my domain with Google apps so I can have my domain’s emails handled by gmail and I kinda like that.  I hate using desktop-based email clients because I like being able to check my email from any browser anywhere.  I also didn’t like some of the other options such as Squirlmail.  SO, I starting messing with gmail once again.

Also, since beginning to write for MakeUseOf.com, I’ve had to use gmail for my @makeuseof email address, which is fine.  All of this just keeps pointing me towards taking a real look at gmail.  Well, while handling a large number of emails from MakeUseOf.com readers, I was able to learn a trick or two in order to handle the influx:

First off, I realized how easy it was to create a filter that would filter emails with specific words and give them a specific label.

This was really cool, because I had a lot of emails from people needing the same thing.  This way I could glance at just the emails filtered for me.  That was cool enough, but I can also do that with Hotmail.  I’ve talked about filtering before, but gmail’s ease is overwhelming.  The thing with Hotmail is that it uses folders.  That means that a message is either in one folder or the other.  That’s OK, but I’m beginning to prefer the flexibility of having the option to have the message show up in several places.  In other words, with gmail I’m able to have a message tagged with several labels, helping me to organize them better.  For instance, I can label all emails from a specific person with their name (or whatever) and also label all emails with a specific topic and messages from that person would show in both places.  I like that.

I realized that I could add and delete labels at will.

I could even remove the “inbox” label and remove the clutter from my inbox.  I think that the “archive” option does the same thing (removes the message from the inbox but still keeping the other tags, AND if there aren’t any, the messages will still show in search results – cool!).

I was extremely impressed with how easy it is to create and use canned messages.

If you find yourself replying with the same or similar message over and over again, you can save it and have it ready with the click of a button.  Oh, boy did this feature make my day!  In the situation with all of those emails from MakeUseOf readers, my job got A LOT easier!  All it took to reply was to click reply, click the canned response I wanted, and click send!  It sounds kind of impersonal, but in the situation it was quite necessary and it really wasn’t a big deal not responding personally.

Using filters WITH canned messages sealed the deal for me!

When I figured out that I could set up a filter, and have a canned response AUTOMATICALLY replied to the sender, I almost fell out of my seat!  This means that I could have SEVERAL things going on, people emailing me asking for SEVERAL different things, and all I have to do is set up a few filters???  Now that takes the cake!  And I love cake!

Anyways, I know gmail has been around for some time now, and that there is a possibility that some of the features are very well known, but I am still impressed!  I’m ready to learn gmail!  I’m also ready to learn how gmail can help ease the transition from other email providers.  This should be fun.