Google Apps Hacks

129

HaCK 52:



If your cellphone provider offers an email address to receive

SMS messages, you can kidnap this address to forward certain

messages to your mobile phone as text messages.

Thanks to Bryan Burkholder for suggesting this hack.

Depending on your mobile phone provider, you may be able to forward selected email messages

to your cell phone via SMS. For instance, let’s say you are a webmaster for the large web site

Example.org. Whenever the server gets trafc peaks that cause the server CPU to work overtime,

you want to get an alert right away. You don’t always check your email, but you always carry your

cellphone with you, and a sound alerts you when a new text message arrives—a message like

“There’s a trafc peak at Example.org, please check soon!”

But just how do you get Gmail to contact your phone? Here’s how; rst, you need to determine

which messages you want to forward. In the case of above example, you should rst make sure that

the status messages sent from your server to your Gmail account will always be using the keyword

[cellphone alert] somewhere in the subject. You’ll have to congure this on your server, or whatever

device is sending you notications.

Now, you can dene a lter. In Gmail, click “Create a lter” next to the search box. In the

Subject eld, enter “cellphone alert” or “[cellphone alert]” and click the T