Using textfree with SMS services

[atad6]

I just downloaded textfree and while it looks like a useful app one of the reasons I decided to give it a try was the hopeful possibility of using sms notification services for things such as google calendar so I could receive notifications with my ipod touch without using the limited texting plan on my cellphone.

It seems though that with most services entering the textfree address username@textfree.us does not appear as a valid number. Is there anyway around this?

Has anyone else been successful at combing textfree or any other texting app to enable the use of pushing notifications from all the various sms services out there?

The only idea I could come up with was using google voice to somehow forward texts to the textfree address. I don't have an invite yet so I don't know if it would work, plus this seems like an overly complicated solution.

 

[Letsjoeblue]

Try email option

Often these types of services have an email notification option too. Your @textfree.us address is a valid email, so you can plug it in there.

In the case of Google Calendar specifically, there is an email notification option, though it only appears to go to your gmail account. Fortunately, Google made it pretty simple to create a filter in gmail that forwards calendar notifications to your @textfree.us account. Viola!

 

[atad6]

The ability to send emails to textfree is useful but the ability to have services send sms notifications is much more useful because of the formatting of push notifications.

Perhaps there will be a way around this in the future.

 

[atad6]

It seems like textfree doesn't like forwarded messages. Does anyone have any ideas to get around this? It would be nice to at least get it to work so that I can use gmail's filters + forwarding as sort of a universal notification gateway for things that I want push notification for.