JSMS - desktop app to use your free text message allocation (multi-operator)

The Kid

dal wrote: »

Thanks a million for this update.

No worries - it took me a lot longer than I had intended. Learning how to build a DMG image for Mac OSX on a Windows box had my head wrecked... And the GUI layout stuff is still taking me *way* too long...

Let me know if ye see any major bugs - meanwhile, we'll be ploughing on with working on new features...

Hey Dal, I got a few more people using AFT as well. Works a treat... The apps make a good combo - AFT when on the road and JSMS when at you desk...

Fresh Pots

Am i just missing something or is it not possible to enter a recipients number without saving it into the phonebook?

The Kid

lonely_soldier wrote: »

Am i just missing something or is it not possible to enter a recipients number without saving it into the phonebook?

You're right - currently we don't support entering phone numbers on the fly - but you're the second person to mention that feature to me, so I'll take a look at working it into the next release....

Fresh Pots

cool thanks, it would be handy!

The Kid

FYI,

Meteor customers may have noticed that JSMS is not working for them at the moment (it complains about network connectivity).

This is *not* a problem with JSMS -- it is because the Meteor website is not accepting logins at the moment. Normal service should resume once the Meteor website is fixed.

Note that I will endeavour to enhance the connectivity check in future releases so that it can better pin-point the location of the outage.

The Kid

The Kid wrote: »

the Meteor website is not accepting logins at the moment.

It was a short lived outage - everything seems to be working fine again...

meanpeoplesuck

On the surface JSMS seems to be working fine (no errors are occuring, and texts are sending perfectly alright) but none of the messages are actually being delivered.

If I text myself (not something I do often ) on JSMS it sends but never arrives, while if I do it on meteors website it arrives instantly.

JSMS has always worked great for me, and I haven't messed with any settings I don't think

The Kid

meanpeoplesuck wrote: »

On the surface JSMS seems to be working fine (no errors are occuring, and texts are sending perfectly alright) but none of the messages are actually being delivered.

Thanks for reporting that... It looks like Meteor have changed the way their server works internally. JSMS is causing the server to produce an unexpected "internal error" and this is not being shown to you.

First of all -- this problem *only* effects Meteor users. JSMS is still working on Vodafone and O2...

I have a fix for this problem, but I need to test it a little more as it involved reworking some of the HTTP client code common to the three operators. I hope to be able to release it tomorrow evening all going well...

I've also added code that should make error checking *much* more robust . It should also help you to diagnose problems such as being unable to connect to the Internet (e.g. bad proxy settings), the operators website being down or being unable to login to the operators website due to a bad username and password.

meanpeoplesuck wrote: »

JSMS has always worked great for me, and I haven't messed with any settings I don't think

No - it's certainly not your fault... Hopefully I'll have you up and running again tomorrow...

Thanks again for pointing out the problem!

The Kid

meanpeoplesuck wrote: »

On the surface JSMS seems to be working fine (no errors are occuring, and texts are sending perfectly alright) but none of the messages are actually being delivered.

This issue should be fixed in version 3.3.3 of JSMS with is now available on our sourceforge site.

Details of the features/changes/fixes available in this release will follow.

The Kid

- Fixed bug where Meteor accounts were not sending texts and not showing an error.

- Fixed bug where Vodafone accounts would not send second part of multi-part messages.

- Added ability to install and uninstall dictionaries.

- Enhanced connectivity check to detect and diagnose network problems:
1) Test Internet connectivity.
2) Test connection to operator website.
3) Test login to operator website.

- Added progress dialogs that inform what is happening when update and connectivity checks are running.

- Moved Group Chooser to be accessed via a button on the phone book.

- Enhanced layout of Group Chooser dialog.

- Fixed bug where character count was set to zero if you changed users with text already typed in the text area.

- Added ability to read the README file from "Help" menu.

db40

Hi there. Great app. Being using it since nearly the first version. I installed v. 3.2.2 on OS X Leopard and it worked great but it crashed when I tried to copy and paste numerous contacts into the new contact feature. I eventually Force Quit and since I've lost the main interface window I've tried reinstalling, then installed 3.3.3 and 3.3.4 and it's the same for them all. 3.2.1 still works but has stopped sending since the change to meteor's website.

Anyone got any ideas? I tried looking into Java and stuff but haven't a clue.

Thanks, D

The Kid

JSMS 3.3.4 has been released and it fixes a bug where the phone book and preferences dialogs could not be opened when running on some platforms.

There are no other functional changes in this release.

The Kid

db40 wrote: »

Hi there. Great app. Being using it since nearly the first version.

Cheers mate - sure after nice words like that we'll have to get you up and running again!! :-)

db40 wrote: »

but it crashed when I tried to copy and paste numerous contacts into the new contact feature.

I've never seen a problem like this but I can only imagine that we've somehow corrupted the data store area when the phone book and other preferences are stored.

Try this to see if it helps:
1. Back up your phone book entries and save them off somewhere.
2. From a command line run JSMS passing it the command "clearPrefs" e.g.
java -jar JSMS.jar clearPrefs
3. This should reset all of your preferences (including phone book entries).
4. Try restarting JSMS normally again.
5. Hopefully you will then be able to open your phone book and start adding your contacts back in.

Let me know if it doesn't work and we'll try a few other things. We'll get it fixed though - I don't doubt that... :-)

If you find it handier you can mail us directly on jsmsirl@gmail.com

db40

That's great. Thanks a mill. Clearing the preferences worked a treat. Handy thing to know. Ur a star.

The Kid

db40 wrote: »

That's great. Thanks a mill. Clearing the preferences worked a treat. Handy thing to know. Ur a star.

Cool! A friend of yours ran into the same problem - and from looking at some logs he sent me I think I know what caused the problem. Did you by any chance have names in your address book that used accented characters? Possibly some names as gaeilge containing a fada?

If so I think that the problem was that characters you were using were not recognisable by Java's character sets. And I believe that Java then failed to display the entries you had entered and this in turn prevented it from opening the main window.

I'm going to see if I can reproduce (and fix) the problem using your friend's logs, but I still don't know the particular characters he was using. And it's also possible that I won't be able to reproduce it on Windows...

Finally, your friend also pointed out the bug you entered on our site a few days back. The site is supposed to mail us when new posts appear but didn't -- so please accept my apologies for not responding sooner... I simply hadn't seen the post...

Kind regards, happy texting and beware of strange characters with funny accents! :-)

db40

I noticed an "í" in my phone book entires. Probably that so. Pretty impressive to be writing OS X installers on Windows. Be more impressive to do it as Gaeilge Don't know anyone else with the same prob but I'm glad it's solved it for more.

Keep up the great work. D

The Kid

db40 wrote: »

So Java doesn't speak Gaeilge

Well we do have a Gaeilge dictionary for the spell checker so technically JSMS *does* speak Gaeilge! :-)

db40 wrote: »

I noticed an "í" in my phone book entires. Probably that so.

Most likely - although I've been able to enter accented characters and they work fine for me. I'm not sure how your character sets got confused...

db40 wrote: »

Pretty impressive to be writing OS X installers on Windows.

Not exactly fun though! Particularly when I hadn't a clue what I was at! :-)

db40 wrote: »

Be more impressive to do it as Gaeilge

I wish - I'm only just struggling with English - I'm ashamed to say that the beer has got the better of the cúpla focail that I used to have!

db40 wrote: »

Don't know anyone else with the same prob but I'm glad it's solved it for more.
Keep up the great work. D

Thanks - spread the word!

samsamson

I can log into my account on meteor.ie just fine, but get this error in JSMS:



If I keep logging in again and again, it'll eventually send a message for me

The Kid

samsamson wrote: »

I can log into my account on meteor.ie just fine, but get this error in JSMS:
If I keep logging in again and again, it'll eventually send a message for me

This error appears when JSMS times out trying to connect to your operator's webiste (i.e. Meteor.ie).

I have a few questions for you:

- Do you see this message only when you try to send a message or do you also see it as soon as you log into JSMS?

- If you go to "Tools->Preferences->Proxy Settings" and press the "Test Connectivity" button, does it always report success? If not JSMS is actually having difficulties talking to the Internet, and not just to Meteor... We'll just need to figure out why... :-)

- It would be normal to see this message if the your operator's website is running slowly or experiencing connection errors. You should try again now that some time has passed to see if it still behaves the same. This would also tally with your observation that the message is successfully sent sometimes. The Meteor and O2 websites seem to be particularly susceptible to outages and go-slows...

- If the problem persists, I can show you how to turn on logging and we'll be able to see where exactly the connections are timing out.

It might be easier/quicker to work through the problem over email. If you send me a mail to jsmsirl@gmail.com, we can work through it from there... And don't worry - we haven't encountered an issue yet that we haven't been able to solve! :-)

Cheers!

samsamson

Great, I've sent you an email now and I'll post back here with whatever ends up fixing it!

samsamson

Seems to have been a mixture of problems to do with my internet and a few others things. I'm using a different version of JSMS now and it's working much much better. The Kid was a great help

Do I have to enter each new number into the phone book before I can send the message to them? Also what is the point of this program...why not just surf to the website?

The Kid

samsamson wrote: »

Seems to have been a mixture of problems to do with my internet and a few others things. I'm using a different version of JSMS now and it's working much much better. The Kid was a great help

No worries - glad to be assistance...

The Kid

Deleted User wrote: »

Do I have to enter each new number into the phone book before I can send the message to them?

For now - yes. But the upcoming version will allow you to manually enter numbers and will then give you the option to save it for you... There's a good few other improvements and features in the new version too... We're currently testing this new release so we hope to be releasing it very soon.

Also what is the point of this program...why not just surf to the website?

* Time - and time is literally money... It takes time to surf to the website, login and navigate to the text page and send the message. Sometimes you might feel it's quicker to just text from your phone... But that costs money! Instead, you can leave JSMS running on your PC (or even get it to start when your PC starts up) and then sending a free text is only a click away...

* JSMS supports sending text messages larger than 160 bytes in size. The websites do not.

* JSMS can spellcheck your texts for you as you type and/or before sending them. It support hundreds of languages. Note that the current version has a bug whereby the spellchecker does not get enabled after you install JSMS. To work around the problem, go to the "Tools->Preferences..." dialog and select the "Spell Check" tab. Reselect the English dictionary and then press "OK". Finally, restart JSMS.

* JSMS can be used to send texts from your workplace without having the website visible on your screen to prying eyes who'd much prefer you weren't spending your time sending texts!

* The phone book can be split into sections to help you find more commonly used contacts quicker.

* You can easily create groups from your phone book to send texts to.

* Multiple users can use JSMS - each can have his/her own phone books and preferences.

* Privacy is of prime importance to JSMS: your texts are sent using secure HTTP and are NEVER sent to third party servers. And the JSMS source code is freely available to anybody doubting that.

* JSMS runs on any PC Operating System that supports Java...

* Text's can be sent from the command line -- especially useful if you want to be able to send yourself a message after a script or batch process completes...

* And it doesn't stop there - we've lots of cool new features in store... Watch this space for details! We'd have them all for you tomorrow, but I'm afraid we need day jobs to pay the bills :-)

fbradyirl

The Kid wrote: »

...
* JSMS can be used to send texts from your workplace without having the website visible on your screen to prying eyes who'd much prefer you weren't spending your time sending texts!
..

Ha I love it. Defo the best point! Great work K. Some really nice new features coming in there. Oh yeah, I'll update the website in the next few days. (I'll do a complete revamp when I get back in August with new screenshots etc)

The Kid

fbradyirl wrote: »

Ha I love it. Defo the best point! Great work K. Some really nice new features coming in there. Oh yeah, I'll update the website in the next few days. (I'll do a complete revamp when I get back in August with new screenshots etc)

Cheers mate! I've a new release under test at the moment - as usual it's delayed because I need to get my hands on a Mac to test it on! :-)

It will be capable of automatically updating itself when future releases are made, but as I say, I have to get the mechanism working on a Mac yet....

Anyway, enjoy your travels and watch this space for more news! Pass my regards onto herself...

K.

wasim21k

man this is brilliant tool, i love it i already sent about 50 txt from my work place where i normaley dont want to open web all the time,
just quick question is there a way to just copy and past my address into like some txt file????
how i can embaded this tool in some web page? i mean html??

The Kid

wasim21k wrote: »

man this is brilliant tool, i love it i already sent about 50 txt from my work place where i normaley dont want to open web all the time

Excellent! Pass the link to our website onto your friends!

I think you'll like the new version too... It looks a lot better (I think anyway) and there's a good few improvements going on... I'll post here when it's available for release.

just quick question is there a way to just copy and past my address into like some txt file????

Just open the "Tools->Edit Phone Book..." dialog and then click your mouse in the text area where there phone numbers are. Select the entries you want to copy using your mouse (or just use CTRL-A to select all entries). You can then right click your mouse and select "Copy" from the popup menu, or simply press CTRL-C. Then just paste the copied entries into your text file.

We will get back to enhancing the Phone book in the future, but we've a few more new features to add before we will get to that...

how i can embaded this tool in some web page? i mean html??

If you own the web page (i.e. it's on your server) then you can just install JSMS on the same server. To send a message you need to get your code to invoke the JSMS command line API as follows:

java -jar JSMS.jar <Meteor | Vodafone | O2> <login> <password> <destinationNo> <message> [<proxyHost> <proxyPort>]

wasim21k

ooh man that is brilliant, i even can send txt from command prompt. awesome man good work, (i also make some small apps for my workplace to do work fast) but i m not really programmer.

Mr. Flibble

Hi all. I've just discovered this. Nice work!

I want to use this so send smss from my iPhone. My 1st instinct is to make a web page that will interact with it and access that through safari and gets the server to send the sms's. Before bundling on with that I idea I guess I should ask has anyone else done similar - made a web page to interact with the java?

Or, even better, is anyone working on an iPhone app that sends meteor smses?

One last thing, wtf is the plural of sms?