Sabeer Bhatia, the serial entrepreneur from India who became a household name back in the late nineties with Hotmail’s meteoric rise, has been trying hard to repeat his success, but his later projects like Arzoo and BlogEverywhere flopped spectacularly in spite of plenty of initial hype. Nevertheless, not being the one to give up, he is back again with a new product. Bhatia believes that his new venture called Jaxtr, launched in partnership with Yogesh Patel, has the potential to be as disruptive and popular as Hotmail, which pioneered the email revolution.

JaxtrSMS is a free mobile texting app that is launching with support for a wide range of platforms including Android, iOS, Blackberry, Symbian, and Java. Free texting apps are dime a dozen these days, and Jaxtr is entering a fairly competitive and crowded space. Giants such as RIM, Google, and Facebook are tugging it out with newcomers like Kik and WhatsApp. However, Jaxtr has one feature that almost all of its competitors lack – support for SMS. Jaxtr works for all your contacts, no matter where they are in the world and what phone they are using. If the receiver has Jaxtr installed then he will instantly receive your message through app to app delivery. If he doesn’t have Jaxtr installed, then he will receive a standard SMS message. Although I can’t vouch for Jaxtr’s claims of complete worldwide coverage, it did work for the Indian carriers that I tested.

Jaxtr’s user interface varies significantly across platforms. I took the Android version of Jaxtr for a spin. Although the color combination is rather distracting (the iPhone app is offensively ugly), the interface feels intuitive and familiar. However, there are a couple of annoyances that might put off users. Jaxtr transparently attaches an annoying ad (self-promotion) to every SMS sent through it, and it doesn’t provide delivery reports. On a couple of occasions, the SMS didn’t actually get delivered even though Jaxtr marked it as sent. If Jaxtr wishes to be taken seriously, it needs to sort out these two issues. However, it is undoubtedly the most promising product that we have seen in recent times from Bhatia.

160by2 announced that it has extended its SMS character space of its free messaging services. 160by2 has increased its character limit from 80 to 145 characters.

160by2 is India’s most popular website, which provides free messaging services. Using its services, you can even send free messages to countries like Kuwait, UAE, Saudi, Singapore, Philippines & Malaysia via its web portal. It also provides you the flexibility of free download of mobile applications. However, 160by2 comes with one restriction. It allows you to send up to 50 messages in a day and only 10 messages to a particular number.

Mr. Satyakalyan Yerramsetti, CEO 160by2.com said,

Our free SMS service and other offerings like mobile application have revolutionized this industry. With the tremendous success to our products, we have decided to remove the cap on the remaining 80 characters in a text message.

Via: Telecomtalk

http://telecomtalk.info/send-longer-sms-free-from-mobile-phone-using-160by2/24833/#more-24833

Aircel has introduced its new Rs 61 SMS pack in Maharashtra- Goa circle. This will allow you to send up to 500 SMS (Local or National) per day, valid up to 30 days from the date of recharge.

Until now, it seemed that Aircel was lagging behind in the completion of telecom service providers in India. While all other telecom service providers were launching their bundle of schemes, we hardly saw Aircel`s offerings. Thankfully, Aircel now has come up with a SMS pack in Maharashtra. With this, Maharashtra-Goa circle is enriched with SMS services of all major telecom service providers apart from Idea.

Let us have a close look at SMS packs launched by various providers in Maharashtra- Goa region.

1) Aircel: Rs 61
2) Airtel: Rs.67
3) Reliance: Rs.25
4) Tata Docomo: Rs 60
5) Virgin: Rs.69
6) Vodafone: Rs.66

Via: Mobigyan

Virgin Mobile GSM has introduced free local and national SMS to subscribers on their minute plan without any special pack. This offer is applicable for only those customers who have subscribed to “Per Minute Plan” paying Rs.1.5 as their daily rental. However, other customers can also avail this offer by switching to “Per Second” plan. This can be done by recharging with Rs.13, which offers a talk time of Rs 10 as well.

Virgin Mobile allows you to send up to 1000 SMS per day within the same network (Local and National) and 100 local SMS per day to any other network. In case you exceed the messaging limit, you will be charged 50 paise/SMS.

Virgin Mobiles had recently launched a SMS Pack (providing Free National and Local SMS) for its GSM prepaid users for Rs 69. Now it has come up with free SMS’s on Per Minute Plan. This is certainly a smart move, as it will force more people to switch to Per Minute Plan.

Via: Mobigyan

If you stay connected with your friends via SMS, then I have a good news for all the Tata Docomo subscribers out there in Mumbai and Maharashtra & Goa circle. Due to heavy competition from other telecom operators such as Reliance, Airtel and Vodafone, the company launched a new SMS pack in Mumbai and Maharashtra telecom circle.

The new SMS pack offered by Tata Docomo allows you to send 15000 local and national SMS to your friends in any telecom circle. This SMS pack is available for Rs.60 in Maharashtra and Goa circle and the subscribers in Mumbai circle can get it for Rs.85 only. This SMS pack is available only on special recharge for the amount mentioned above.

Earlier, Tata Docomo subscribers in Mumbai and Maharashtra circle had to shell out 1.2 INR for every outgoing national SMS, which was quite expensive as compared to other telecom operators, but now they can enjoy the same messaging experience right inside their handsets. This SMS pack is not officially announced by the company, but I have confirmed this SMS pack by activating it on my Tata Docomo number.

If you have any queries, please call Tata Docomo Customer Care by dialing 121. If this SMS pack is available in your telecom circle as well, please let us know in the comments.

Windows Live Messenger is a very popular instant messaging software that is used by millions of users. If you are a Windows Live Messenger user you can easily send a SMS to a friend for free.

Here is a video tutorial that shows you how to send a free SMS using Windows Live Messenger.

[via]

It is not possible to stay online round-the-clock just for checking new mails. Even email providers such as Gmail and Hotmail doesn’t provide any alert facilities. Today we will show you, the  easiest  way to get alerts on your mobile phone for each incoming mails and that too for free! Way2SMS, the most popular free SMS provider in India, has  introduced  a new email alerts feature that can send you SMS alerts as soon as a new mail  reaches  your inbox. This service is absolutely free and there are no strings attached with this feature.

How To Activate This Feature?

1) Register your account at Way2SMS.

2) After  registration, you will get a virtual email id <username>@way2sms.com

3) Go to settings, click on Mail Alerts tab and then activate the mail alerts feature as shown below

How To Use This Feature In Gmail And Google Apps?

1) Login to your Gmail/ Google Apps Mail Account.

2) Click on Settings.

3) Click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.

4) Enter your virtual Way2SMS email id as shown below and save the settings.

How To Use This Feature In Windows Live Hotmail?

1) Login to your Windows Live Hotmail Account.

2) Click on options and the click on more options.

3) Then click on “Forward mail to another e-mail account” under Manage your account.

4) Enter your virtual Way2SMS email id as shown below and save the settings.

We have tested this feature and have no complaints. SMS Alerts reached our cellphone within 1 minute. You can also chose when you want to receive the alerts and from whom you want to receive SMS alerts. The main benefit is that we don’t need GPRS activated on our cell phone. Moreover this service is absolutely free.

Note: 1) This feature is available only to the mobile users in India.

2) This feature cannot be activated on Yahoo! Mail as Yahoo has stopped forwarding mails feature in both version of Yahoo! Mail.

3) This feature expires in every 14 days. You must activate it in every 14 days for continues usage of this service.

All of us rely greatly on our cell-phones for staying in touch. With so many of us hard-pressed for time, we often have to settle for shorter and quicker ways of communicating text messages, which works as the perfect savior to our needs of keeping it short while keeping in touch!

However, there is a flipside to this situation. When you keep letting those SMS fly from your fingers one after another, you could end up with a pretty high bill from your network provider.

The good news is that there are several websites online which provide the services of sending free SMS throughout the world. As a result, you can easily send SMS to your friends worldwide from a place as convenient as your computer. Now most of these free SMS services have a character limit, but when you are more worried about the sheer number of text messages that you are sending, it is something you can easily deal with.

Summing up the names and special services provided by various such online websites, here are 10 online websites that let you send free SMS worldwide:

Send SMS Now

SendSMSNow is a free service that lets users who sign up at the website, send free SMS to individual mobile numbers worldwide. Services are also free for organizing phonebooks and groups and also receiving replies. However, there is a fee of 5 cents for every SMS sent to a group.

Jungle SMS

Another such service is JungleSMS which allows registered users to send free SMS from their website as well as Internet-enabled mobile phones to people all over the world. As mentioned in the website, the SMS service is free owing to the sponsorship of advertising partners, because of which, each SMS sent has a short advertisement tailing it.

Wadja

Wadja is another online free SMS service provider which lets users send 80 character SMS to friends in almost 200 countries. The site also supports the sending of SMS using mobile Internet.

Nimbuzz

There is another online free SMS service called Nimbuzz, with which, clients having the Nimbuzz application installed in their mobile phones can not only send free SMS to each other, but also engage in Instant Messaging. Mobile Internet is the only requirement.

Sea SMS

A free account at SeaSMS is another option for sending free International SMS from a computer or mobile phone that is connected to the Internet to any cell-phone in the world. You could also try a walk down SMSLane if you wish to send 1-160 character bulk SMS. However, although this service is initially free, you would need to buy new SMS credits once you run out of them.

If these do not work out to your liking, some other options that you could try out would be Text4Free, SendFreeSMS, WeTextFree and FreeSMS2World. Of these, WeTextFree, and FreeSMS2World do not require any registration before use.

The websites mentioned here should serve as a guide that will help you choose the right free SMS service based on your needs and text messaging requirements.

AOL has joined Yahoo Messenger in allowing users to send Free SMS using their AOL India Mail and AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) which they had debuted in India last year.

The offer looks good enough since it allows users to send Free SMS directly from AOL mail. This though is not a new phenomenon as Yahoo Messenger has allowed users to send Free SMS through their messenger client to any mobile devices for quite some time now.

The only catch with Yahoo was that the person who you send a SMS too needs to reply atleast once to you or else you cannot send more than 5 SMS messages to them.

With AOL I do not see any such restrictions listed out on the site, but guess they will definitely have some cap on the SMS messages you can send out. Though with SMS messages costing as low as 30 paise (approx 0.001 0.01$) in India for bulk SMS gateways it is not going to raise a huge dent in Time Warners pockets.

The service allows you to send Free SMS to Airtel, Vodafone, Aircel, MTNL and spice networks only.

If you want to start using this free service checkout AOL promos for sending Free SMS or start using the AIM Client for India.