I have free text messaging. Thanks to Sprint SERO unlimited texting ! And this is how I try to use / utilize the service. (listed not in any specific order)

1) When I want a quick lookup I SMS GOOGLE with the question. I have free internet but SMS is much quicker. Lets assume I am in a debate on if Abraham Lincoln was born before 1800 or not. All I need to do is send a quick SMS to 466453 (’GOOGLE’ ) with the words “abraham lincoln birthday” and continue the discussion. Soon I will get an SMS with the result : “Abraham Lincoln
Date of Birth: 12 February 1809″. Cool !

Google SMS has lot of other uses. For eg. you can get directions to a place using your cellphone by sending quick SMS to google maps. Send “directions 94133 to 94043″.

2) I use Google calender for all my appointments and reminders. Google allows you to send reminders by SMS. So every thursday, at 5pm I get an SMS reminder to get my garbage bin out.

3) Most cellphone providers allows you to send SMS through an email id. For example, for sprint mobile users, you can send an SMS by emailing 10digitnum@messaging.sprintpcs.com. So you can send quick notes, addresses etc to your phone using SMS. Lets assume I need to go to this car mechanic’s place. I google the address and I just send the address by email to my phone via the email-sms id. Now I have the address or any notes at my phone.

4) I have a few friends and a few acquaintances who stay abroad and when they are online for chat, I would like to be online to chat with them. Some of them are not close enough and so I do not want to reveal my cellphone number to them. So what I did was that I set an email filter on my gmail to forward all my emails to a specific id to my sprint sms email id. For example if my id is johnsmith@gmail.com … I have setup all emails to jo.hnsmith@gmail.com to be forwarded to my sms. So when my friend wants me to come online, he sends a quick email to jo.hnsmith@gmail.com and I get the SMS. ( gmail does not distinguish or recognize the “.”. So johnsmith and jo.hnsmith and john.smith are all delivered to the same inbox.

5) if you have free sms texting, you can install those IM (AIM, yahoo messenger or gtalk) applications on your phone which use SMS to transfer messages. This is only if you do not have free internet or do not want to pa the internet fees for the mobile usage. I do not use SMS for instant messaging as SERO provides free internet. But asynchronous messaging is better because the phone does not need to constantly poll for the messages.

6) And yes you can SMS your friends and family as much as you like. This is the most popular form of communication among young people. But in my case, most of my friends have to pay for SMS, so this is not the preferred means of communication. But for short messages, I find SMS a much more friendly way to send messages than calling the the person. For eg, if you want to meet for quick lunch on a wednesday and you do not know if your friend is in a meeting, you can simply send a quick sms “coming for lunch”. If he is free, he can call you. If you had called him and he was in a meeting, he would have sent it to the voicemail and you would be waiting for his response way beyond the lunch time.

7) And finally if you have free unlimited text messaging, you can explore ways to using that to improve your day to day like. And maybe come up with such articles to share with fellow netizens hoping that your article will be of some use.