8 ms·

Show HN: Smozzy (for Android/T-Mobile) - browse the web without a data plan

293 points by FaceKicker 15y ago

rorrr 15y ago
This is hilarious, gotta be the most inefficient way to access the web.
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  It's definitely not fast, but it's not quite as bad as you might think. While I was testing it, the whole pipeline, from pressing the "go" button to the page being fully rendered could take as little as 15 seconds. Granted I'm just releasing this now, so if it gets any users at all we'll see how my cheap VPS holds up...
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    >While I was testing it, the whole pipeline, from pressing the "go" button to the page being fully rendered could take as little as 15 seconds. How is that possible? I thought the whole point of SMS was that it resided in the wasted bytes towers use when they "ping" phones. The reason text messages aren't instant is that these pings aren't sent frequently. I could be way out to lunch on my understanding, but this seems to be a latency killer (not to mention the limitations of packet size).
    - FaceKicker 15y ago
      The responses aren't sent by SMS, but MMS. My understanding is that to download an MMS you essentially get a data connection with your provider that only lets you download MMSes.
      - sirclueless 15y ago
        This is exactly why you are gonna get shut down.
  - jjoe 15y ago
    Hello, Let me know if you need a hand with hosting (VPS, dedi, etc). Don't worry about cost (no strings attached). Feel free to drop me a line at joe@unixy.net Cheers P.S: We've recently deployed a several 24-core SAS nodes so there's plenty of capacity to spare.
    - FaceKicker 15y ago
      Wow, thanks, I really appreciate the offer. I'll definitely let you know if I need help.
- pkulak 15y ago
  The downstream is sent by MMS, which is just a file download over the internet, so it's not bad. Though, when I first saw it I thought he was base-64 encoding entire requests and stuffing them into 160-char text messages, which really would be crazy.
- tomBobs 15y ago
  Richard Stallman's way is a close 2nd: For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time. http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/009889.html http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/009889.html
- akent 15y ago
  I thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers took that prize.
fishtoaster 15y ago
That's pretty great- wish I had an android to try it! I can't help but wonder what kind of speed you actually get through that- would it be sufficient for day-to-day use, or just enough for a few patient page loads now and then?
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  Not sufficient for day-to-day use, probably between 15 seconds and a minute to get a page. But if you don't have a data plan, it's possibly better than nothing...
SwellJoe 15y ago
One of these days, the network providers are going to stop putting arbitrary labels on their data, as though "voice", "text" and "data" are not all travelling through the same towers and pipes.
- brainless 15y ago
  Well if you look at it, unless you use "text" for "surfing" like in this app, it actually does not cost much to the providers. You can not type all day, can you? So by "unlimited" text all they are saying is that you will tire yourself texting say about X SMS and thats it per day. 1000 SMS * 160 chars * 2 bytes each (arbitrary) = 320000 bytes. Thats just 320KB. Thats cheap isn't it? Can you type more than that per day?
- apike 15y ago
  This is almost certain. Even more certain is that they will fight it as long and hard as they can, even if it kills them. The reason we want this to happen is the same reason the carriers don't want it to happen: it's a lot harder to make margins on being a dumb pipe.
- mdasen 15y ago
  Actually, there is a distinction to the carrier. Text messages are an interesting one. Essentially, they cost nothing to the carrier in that they get transmitted as part of the control channel. However, there is a cost to supporting a phone idling on a network. The control channel has to be in communication with it using up bandwidth. So, the SMS gets put in with the control channel instructions and so its marginal cost is 0, but there's still a cost. Beyond that, your carrier has to pay a termination fee to the receiving carrier when you send a text message to them and that is a cost. So, when you send a text message off-network, there is a cost to your carrier. Voice similarly travels a different path. In CDMA systems, the voice channel and data channel are physically separate. Even with UMTS where the voice and data traffic travels over the same channel, there have been significant advancements for data transmission (HSPA, HSPA+) that allow for greater efficiency. Even with VoIP, a real distinction can be made. Like texting, the carrier of the receiving party charges a termination fee to the carrier of the calling party. So, if you're on Verizon and call a user on Sprint, Sprint charges Verizon to connect the call (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_rates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_rates). That means that while VoIP would use network resources in the same way as data, the carrier would face a higher cost because of the termination rate. This is also why many free VoIP services won't let you call those free conference call services (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/att-says-google-voice-violates-net-neutrality-principles/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/att-says-google-voi...). They're usually set up with a carrier who charges an absurd termination rate that pays for the service. While they are travelling through the same towers, they're taking different paths and those different paths do have different costs. Part of it is regulatory: termination fees are meaningful costs to carriers even if one considers them artificial. Part of it is the current time: in 3-5 years, we'll probably be on VoIP. Part of it is that data transmission (wired or wireless) has low marginal costs, but decent fixed costs: it doesn't cost the carrier much to support you as a marginal user, but they have put tens of billions into their network even if your phone just idles on it. Right now, wireless is priced in a "consumer" way. We don't pay for what we use, but rather some awkward approximation based on what they think consumers will accept charges for. This is in contrast to, say, utilities which usually have a fixed charge for being on the network (to cover fixed costs) and then a usage rate (which covers marginal costs). I don't really have a conclusion. Carriers are trying to make more money off you in a way that's objectionable, but they aren't the same. I won't defend the pricing, but I want to point out the difference.
calebmpeterson 15y ago
Do you use compression at all or is it straight uncompressed HTTP via SMS? Or something else entirely? This is wonderful for it's creative (mis)use of texting...
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  The requests (which are just URLs, and any postdata/cookies if applicable) are sent to my server via SMS. The responses are sent back to the phone via MMS, in up to 5 (I think?) segments. I download the webpage along with all resources (stylesheets, images, etc.) and put everything in a zip file. I encode the zip file as a PNG (each RGB pixel is 3 bytes of the zip file) and send the PNG in the MMS.
  - calebmpeterson 15y ago
    That's even more horribly wonderful than I expected! I suspect you'd get a 4.0 if you went for a degree in Southern Engineering.
  - pkulak 15y ago
    Haha! Dude, you are an evil genius.
  - lancefisher 15y ago
    That's really cool. I didn't realize you could do a lossless 24-bit palette with PNG.
    - jmaygarden 15y ago
      A PNG is pretty much a zlib compressed bitmap.
      - ars 15y ago
        That's not true. PNG has some filters that pre-compress the image before sending it to zlib.
teyc 15y ago
Cute and clever. Browsing the web at 140 characters at a time.
- happyhacker 15y ago
  Do you not fucking understand the concept of this technology? He's SMS'ing a png that is actually a a zip of the HTML + images/js/etc; and then "inflating" this on the client phone. He's not doing this at "140 characters at a time"
- corin_ 15y ago
  Wrong on two counts, the first being that SMS messages are 160 characters, Twitter is 140, the second being that SMS is only used for sending requests, the real data arrives via MMS.
  - PanMan 15y ago
    By default SMS is 160 characters, but only in the default 7 bit encoding. It's 160*7 bits (of content), which is actually 140 chars in 8 bits. I guess it depends on your type of characters :)
hollerith 15y ago
Great. Now we need a way to send IP packets over a mobile voice call (using the same principles used by old-fashioned modems).
- e1ven 15y ago
  That's surprisingly hard to do ;( Neither android nor iPhone give access to the voice stream.
  - hollerith 15y ago
    Good to know.
  - logic 15y ago
    Interesting thing about that: if you're curious, dig into the SoCs used for this stuff, and you'll see that's really not about "giving access". The voice handling in most smartphones never leaves the SoC, and the OS just communicates with it like you would with a modem: "call XYZ", "hang up", etc, usually with a familiar AT command set. Useful side-effect: if the OS crashes, your phone call will typically remain alive. (You probably won't be able to hang up without powering off, though, and definitely won't be able to dial another number.) Or, if you have an original iPhone 3G like mine that's sluggish at the best of times, it doesn't affect the phone call. :)
- dools 15y ago
  I was going to say that we should be encoding IP packets to be sent over SMS so that we can do VoIP over SMS.
- Mvandenbergh 15y ago
  This is very difficult because the carrier can/will apply various signal processing algorithms to voice streams, these will really screw with your modulated data.
Garbage 15y ago
HP Labs India has created similar (same?) technology called SiteonMobile some time before. http://www.siteonmobile.com/ http://www.siteonmobile.com/ http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hp_launches_siteonmobile_web_surfing_via_sms_or_voice.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hp_launches_siteonmobil...
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  I saw this when I was googling around to see if anyone had already done this, but I was kind of confused by what exactly it is. I don't think it's the same thing.
  - shawn-butler 15y ago
    It is the same thing. I created a similar tool for use on s60 (symbian) on several carriers in africa. Sitonmobile "packages" up the interactions with a web server into a series of compressed images and delivers it via mms where it can be replayed. It is obviously less interactive but works fairly well for web 1.0 content.
    - rwolf 15y ago
      He's sending back html+js+css+images, not a static image. It is not the same thing; it is a better thing.
      - shawn-butler 15y ago
        No, it is the same thing. Data is encoded into a static image format only in order to be transported by mms. The difference being that my system and hp's system packaged up a static route through the site so a large amount of ondemand processing was not necessary. It appears this is being done entirely dynamically per request which is an improvement but my experience tells me is not scalable.
e1ven 15y ago
Very interesting hack. I've been trying to access the voice settings to modem-dial for a while, but I didn't think to (ab)use SMS this way. Why T-Mobile only, though? In theory, you should be able to use this to talk to any SMS gateway, but you're going to end up paying on the gateway side ;(
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  So, I looked at this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways Of the four major US providers, T-Mobile and Verizon are the only ones with MMS gateways (I use MMS to send the responses) that don't require a sign in by a customer (I only have T-Mobile myself). I tested Verizon's MMS gateway with my friend who has Verizon cell service, but it didn't seem to work for some reason.
LukeShu 15y ago
Why is it T-Mobile only?
rokhayakebe 15y ago
Man, you are clever. Check this. If this is based on SMS/MMS, then I should be able to text you an address and have you return the pages as MMS.
- rwolf 15y ago
  You would still need an app that could translates the MMS back into a page and open it in a browser on your end.
  - Tutorialzine 15y ago
    Unless it reformatted the page, returning only the textual content. With the maximum size of an MMS being around 100kb (depends on the operator), this is a lot of text. You could fetch a number of pages at once and read the response even on a feature phone. This can also be combined with a web interface to bundle pages or feeds together and associate them with a shortcode.
cloudwalking 15y ago
You should make an entertaining mini-game to play every time the page is loading. Since you can consistently count on long load times, make the best of it :)
outside1234 15y ago
3 2 1 ... no unlimited text plan
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  T-Mobile's terms (and I would presume other carriers) already say they can cut your unlimited text off if you're using it as some sort of automated gateway. This is meant to keep you from using your cheap text plan as a commercial SMS service (ex: Twitter), they could cut this off as well.
ltamake 15y ago
Wow, that's actually a really cool idea. When do you guys plan to expand outside the US?
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  I don't currently have any plans to expand this since I can only receive SMSes from US phones. Sorry :(
mattbillenstein 15y ago
This is gonna get shut down so fast...
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  I'd be surprised if so, the userbase is probably going to be pretty tiny. It's not really easy to get an Android phone without a data plan (although it's possible), and there's not really any reason to use it otherwise, other than initial curiosity.
  - LightInChains 15y ago
    I can't find it searching for smozzy in the market or by clicking the link on the webpage, so...
    - FaceKicker 15y ago
      That's odd. It might not show up in your Market search if you don't live in the US (I set it to US only since it won't work for anyone else) or if your device doesn't have the required capabilities for the app (telephony and touchscreen). No idea why you wouldn't be able to get to it using the direct link, though.
  - LightInChains 15y ago
    Oh wait, I missed the US only part. That's why.
  - greengirl512 15y ago
    I think it could be handy in places where T-Mobile doesn't have data coverage.
wingerlang 15y ago
Reminds me of a similar service that would email you a pdf of a site. edit: http://www.labnol.org/internet/receive-web-pages-by-email/18117/ http://www.labnol.org/internet/receive-web-pages-by-email/18...
dave1010uk 15y ago
PPK came up with JSON over SMS, which would be a great way for people to use apps with phones (or in countries) that don't support data (including MMS). I guess this is a much bigger problem in developing countries. You can see his slides about this here: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/10/fronttrends_sli.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/10/fronttrends_...
martinshen 15y ago
This is so clever. So impressed right now but I feel like this is going to get shut down so fast....
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  Thanks, it was a lot of fun :) I hope it doesn't get shut down TOO fast. I think it has a chance since the userbase will probably be very small, since the number of people who have Android phones without a data plan with US T-Mobile is probably on the order of thousands...
dll 15y ago
I remember getting an Ericsson (A2618?) phone in around 2000 that was advertised as a WAP phone and being very disappointed that it only supported WAP over SMS (UK networks didn't allow that - I think the closest network with support was in Greece).
vladoh 15y ago
A cool idea :) This reminds me of that joke: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck loaded with hard disks :)
- jurjenh 15y ago
  Funny thing is, I just transferred 1TB of data from work to home (offsite backup) in just 5 minutes today... via bicycle even! Didn't even think of that until just now. Guess the saying still holds true then! Although to be fair, doing the backups took considerably more time - a usb external hard disk doesn't copy 1TB that quickly...
  - killerdark 15y ago
    Switch to Esata with a $30 Esata docking station. I backup with bare drives (cheaper, no usb enclosure needed) at on average 90MB/s (2TB drives, 3Gb/s sata controller).
luckyisgood 15y ago
Impressed with your resourcefulness! Now, if only people at US T-Mobile saw your app the way I see it - an alternative way of accessing and browsing the web in cases of emergency - not only would you not get shut down, but you'd be given extra resources to develop this further, public praise on creative use of their services and so on. Of course, if I was Verizon - whose service you say did not work - I wouldn't wait for T-Mobile to get their hands on you first. I'd contact you immediately and I would make sure Verizon's network worked like a charm. There's ton of completely free PR to be gained here.
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  Thanks very much for the praise! However, unfortunately I don't think emergency use when data services aren't up is a legit use case, since webpages are sent from my server to your phone via MMS and I think MMSes are downloaded via a data connection.
stefanobernardi 15y ago
You sir, are a genius. This definitely helps a lot for tourists that can get unlimited text plans without data. I'll get you a few beta-testers.
speleding 15y ago
Great hack! I wonder if it's possible to reverse engineer the protocol so an appropriately crafted SMS message will send a goatse page to a friend's Android. :-)
- itiztv 15y ago
  faggot!
realschool 15y ago
Amazing idea.
rexreed 15y ago
How does this work for sites that use Ajax / Javascript that requires server connections? What about streaming audio / video, and how about cross-site stuff? Does all that get passed through SMS as a proxy?
- FaceKicker 15y ago
  None of those things work right now (and honestly probably never will). This only has very basic HTTP functionality. One of the most annoying ones is when sites have Javascript redirects, because my server doesn't know how to follow those. So going to "twitter.com" doesn't work because they have a Javascript redirect to HTTPS. :|
rdelk 15y ago
Just one (awesome) step forward towards the unification of cell technology for the end user.
yoavyaari 15y ago
Great work guys!
peterwwillis 15y ago
I know a way to use another mobile carrier's data network without paying for any service at all. I thought about making a mobile app to exploit it, but I know they'd probably just close the hole in a couple weeks. It would make a good first attempt at an Android app, though...
a_dy 15y ago
Great. Now make an app that does the opposite :)
kennywinker 15y ago
Good lord! What an abomination!
jbuzbee 15y ago
Cool hack! Along the same (disturbed) lines, I wonder if it would be possible to do tcp/ip over SMS using a tun or tap type driver? i.e. take the packet, encode, break into parts, SMS to a remote gateway, undo the packing, reassemble and send it on it's way. Sort of like RFC 1149, "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" but using SMS. Probably slower than pigeons though :-)
eogas 15y ago
This is a cool idea, but it sounds like something that will be shut down pretty quickly. If not directly, then by carriers who decide that your unlimited texting plan actually does have a limit, kind of like your "unlimited" data plan.
dongsheng 15y ago
This is punishing mobile carriers instead of enjoying surfing web :-)
haridsv 15y ago
I am wondering how expensive this would be for a pre-paid plan as a last resort to google information or fetch some mobile sites. I know it is 10c to send SMS and 25c to receive MMS, so can we assume that it would cost a minimum of 35c per each request? If the browser requests more resources when the JS is executed, would it automatically result in more requests to be sent? Can this be somehow controlled? I have unlimited data, so don't need this, but the wife uses a prepaid plan and T-Mobile has no viable data options, so would like to give this option in case of "emergency".

293 points by FaceKicker 15y ago

rorrr 15y ago

This is hilarious, gotta be the most inefficient way to access the web.

FaceKicker 15y ago
It's definitely not fast, but it's not quite as bad as you might think. While I was testing it, the whole pipeline, from pressing the "go" button to the page being fully rendered could take as little as 15 seconds. Granted I'm just releasing this now, so if it gets any users at all we'll see how my cheap VPS holds up...
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  >While I was testing it, the whole pipeline, from pressing the "go" button to the page being fully rendered could take as little as 15 seconds. How is that possible? I thought the whole point of SMS was that it resided in the wasted bytes towers use when they "ping" phones. The reason text messages aren't instant is that these pings aren't sent frequently. I could be way out to lunch on my understanding, but this seems to be a latency killer (not to mention the limitations of packet size).
  - FaceKicker 15y ago
    The responses aren't sent by SMS, but MMS. My understanding is that to download an MMS you essentially get a data connection with your provider that only lets you download MMSes.
    - sirclueless 15y ago
      This is exactly why you are gonna get shut down.
- jjoe 15y ago
  Hello, Let me know if you need a hand with hosting (VPS, dedi, etc). Don't worry about cost (no strings attached). Feel free to drop me a line at joe@unixy.net Cheers P.S: We've recently deployed a several 24-core SAS nodes so there's plenty of capacity to spare.
  - FaceKicker 15y ago
    Wow, thanks, I really appreciate the offer. I'll definitely let you know if I need help.
pkulak 15y ago
The downstream is sent by MMS, which is just a file download over the internet, so it's not bad. Though, when I first saw it I thought he was base-64 encoding entire requests and stuffing them into 160-char text messages, which really would be crazy.
tomBobs 15y ago
Richard Stallman's way is a close 2nd: For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time. http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/009889.html http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/009889.html
akent 15y ago
I thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers took that prize.

fishtoaster 15y ago

That's pretty great- wish I had an android to try it! I can't help but wonder what kind of speed you actually get through that- would it be sufficient for day-to-day use, or just enough for a few patient page loads now and then?

FaceKicker 15y ago
Not sufficient for day-to-day use, probably between 15 seconds and a minute to get a page. But if you don't have a data plan, it's possibly better than nothing...

SwellJoe 15y ago

One of these days, the network providers are going to stop putting arbitrary labels on their data, as though "voice", "text" and "data" are not all travelling through the same towers and pipes.

brainless 15y ago
Well if you look at it, unless you use "text" for "surfing" like in this app, it actually does not cost much to the providers. You can not type all day, can you? So by "unlimited" text all they are saying is that you will tire yourself texting say about X SMS and thats it per day. 1000 SMS * 160 chars * 2 bytes each (arbitrary) = 320000 bytes. Thats just 320KB. Thats cheap isn't it? Can you type more than that per day?
apike 15y ago
This is almost certain. Even more certain is that they will fight it as long and hard as they can, even if it kills them. The reason we want this to happen is the same reason the carriers don't want it to happen: it's a lot harder to make margins on being a dumb pipe.
mdasen 15y ago
Actually, there is a distinction to the carrier. Text messages are an interesting one. Essentially, they cost nothing to the carrier in that they get transmitted as part of the control channel. However, there is a cost to supporting a phone idling on a network. The control channel has to be in communication with it using up bandwidth. So, the SMS gets put in with the control channel instructions and so its marginal cost is 0, but there's still a cost. Beyond that, your carrier has to pay a termination fee to the receiving carrier when you send a text message to them and that is a cost. So, when you send a text message off-network, there is a cost to your carrier. Voice similarly travels a different path. In CDMA systems, the voice channel and data channel are physically separate. Even with UMTS where the voice and data traffic travels over the same channel, there have been significant advancements for data transmission (HSPA, HSPA+) that allow for greater efficiency. Even with VoIP, a real distinction can be made. Like texting, the carrier of the receiving party charges a termination fee to the carrier of the calling party. So, if you're on Verizon and call a user on Sprint, Sprint charges Verizon to connect the call (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_rates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_rates). That means that while VoIP would use network resources in the same way as data, the carrier would face a higher cost because of the termination rate. This is also why many free VoIP services won't let you call those free conference call services (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/att-says-google-voice-violates-net-neutrality-principles/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/att-says-google-voi...). They're usually set up with a carrier who charges an absurd termination rate that pays for the service. While they are travelling through the same towers, they're taking different paths and those different paths do have different costs. Part of it is regulatory: termination fees are meaningful costs to carriers even if one considers them artificial. Part of it is the current time: in 3-5 years, we'll probably be on VoIP. Part of it is that data transmission (wired or wireless) has low marginal costs, but decent fixed costs: it doesn't cost the carrier much to support you as a marginal user, but they have put tens of billions into their network even if your phone just idles on it. Right now, wireless is priced in a "consumer" way. We don't pay for what we use, but rather some awkward approximation based on what they think consumers will accept charges for. This is in contrast to, say, utilities which usually have a fixed charge for being on the network (to cover fixed costs) and then a usage rate (which covers marginal costs). I don't really have a conclusion. Carriers are trying to make more money off you in a way that's objectionable, but they aren't the same. I won't defend the pricing, but I want to point out the difference.

calebmpeterson 15y ago

Do you use compression at all or is it straight uncompressed HTTP via SMS? Or something else entirely? This is wonderful for it's creative (mis)use of texting...

FaceKicker 15y ago
The requests (which are just URLs, and any postdata/cookies if applicable) are sent to my server via SMS. The responses are sent back to the phone via MMS, in up to 5 (I think?) segments. I download the webpage along with all resources (stylesheets, images, etc.) and put everything in a zip file. I encode the zip file as a PNG (each RGB pixel is 3 bytes of the zip file) and send the PNG in the MMS.
- calebmpeterson 15y ago
  That's even more horribly wonderful than I expected! I suspect you'd get a 4.0 if you went for a degree in Southern Engineering.
- pkulak 15y ago
  Haha! Dude, you are an evil genius.
- lancefisher 15y ago
  That's really cool. I didn't realize you could do a lossless 24-bit palette with PNG.
  - jmaygarden 15y ago
    A PNG is pretty much a zlib compressed bitmap.
    - ars 15y ago
      That's not true. PNG has some filters that pre-compress the image before sending it to zlib.

teyc 15y ago

Cute and clever. Browsing the web at 140 characters at a time.

happyhacker 15y ago
Do you not fucking understand the concept of this technology? He's SMS'ing a png that is actually a a zip of the HTML + images/js/etc; and then "inflating" this on the client phone. He's not doing this at "140 characters at a time"
corin_ 15y ago
Wrong on two counts, the first being that SMS messages are 160 characters, Twitter is 140, the second being that SMS is only used for sending requests, the real data arrives via MMS.
- PanMan 15y ago
  By default SMS is 160 characters, but only in the default 7 bit encoding. It's 160*7 bits (of content), which is actually 140 chars in 8 bits. I guess it depends on your type of characters :)

hollerith 15y ago

Great. Now we need a way to send IP packets over a mobile voice call (using the same principles used by old-fashioned modems).

e1ven 15y ago
That's surprisingly hard to do ;( Neither android nor iPhone give access to the voice stream.
- hollerith 15y ago
  Good to know.
- logic 15y ago
  Interesting thing about that: if you're curious, dig into the SoCs used for this stuff, and you'll see that's really not about "giving access". The voice handling in most smartphones never leaves the SoC, and the OS just communicates with it like you would with a modem: "call XYZ", "hang up", etc, usually with a familiar AT command set. Useful side-effect: if the OS crashes, your phone call will typically remain alive. (You probably won't be able to hang up without powering off, though, and definitely won't be able to dial another number.) Or, if you have an original iPhone 3G like mine that's sluggish at the best of times, it doesn't affect the phone call. :)
dools 15y ago
I was going to say that we should be encoding IP packets to be sent over SMS so that we can do VoIP over SMS.
Mvandenbergh 15y ago
This is very difficult because the carrier can/will apply various signal processing algorithms to voice streams, these will really screw with your modulated data.

Garbage 15y ago

HP Labs India has created similar (same?) technology called SiteonMobile some time before. http://www.siteonmobile.com/ http://www.siteonmobile.com/ http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hp_launches_siteonmobile_web_surfing_via_sms_or_voice.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hp_launches_siteonmobil...

FaceKicker 15y ago
I saw this when I was googling around to see if anyone had already done this, but I was kind of confused by what exactly it is. I don't think it's the same thing.
- shawn-butler 15y ago
  It is the same thing. I created a similar tool for use on s60 (symbian) on several carriers in africa. Sitonmobile "packages" up the interactions with a web server into a series of compressed images and delivers it via mms where it can be replayed. It is obviously less interactive but works fairly well for web 1.0 content.
  - rwolf 15y ago
    He's sending back html+js+css+images, not a static image. It is not the same thing; it is a better thing.
    - shawn-butler 15y ago
      No, it is the same thing. Data is encoded into a static image format only in order to be transported by mms. The difference being that my system and hp's system packaged up a static route through the site so a large amount of ondemand processing was not necessary. It appears this is being done entirely dynamically per request which is an improvement but my experience tells me is not scalable.

e1ven 15y ago

Very interesting hack. I've been trying to access the voice settings to modem-dial for a while, but I didn't think to (ab)use SMS this way. Why T-Mobile only, though? In theory, you should be able to use this to talk to any SMS gateway, but you're going to end up paying on the gateway side ;(

FaceKicker 15y ago
So, I looked at this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMS_gateways Of the four major US providers, T-Mobile and Verizon are the only ones with MMS gateways (I use MMS to send the responses) that don't require a sign in by a customer (I only have T-Mobile myself). I tested Verizon's MMS gateway with my friend who has Verizon cell service, but it didn't seem to work for some reason.

LukeShu 15y ago

Why is it T-Mobile only?

rokhayakebe 15y ago

Man, you are clever. Check this. If this is based on SMS/MMS, then I should be able to text you an address and have you return the pages as MMS.

rwolf 15y ago
You would still need an app that could translates the MMS back into a page and open it in a browser on your end.
- Tutorialzine 15y ago
  Unless it reformatted the page, returning only the textual content. With the maximum size of an MMS being around 100kb (depends on the operator), this is a lot of text. You could fetch a number of pages at once and read the response even on a feature phone. This can also be combined with a web interface to bundle pages or feeds together and associate them with a shortcode.

cloudwalking 15y ago

You should make an entertaining mini-game to play every time the page is loading. Since you can consistently count on long load times, make the best of it :)

outside1234 15y ago

3 2 1 ... no unlimited text plan

ConstantineXVI 15y ago
T-Mobile's terms (and I would presume other carriers) already say they can cut your unlimited text off if you're using it as some sort of automated gateway. This is meant to keep you from using your cheap text plan as a commercial SMS service (ex: Twitter), they could cut this off as well.

ltamake 15y ago

Wow, that's actually a really cool idea. When do you guys plan to expand outside the US?

FaceKicker 15y ago
I don't currently have any plans to expand this since I can only receive SMSes from US phones. Sorry :(

mattbillenstein 15y ago

This is gonna get shut down so fast...

FaceKicker 15y ago
I'd be surprised if so, the userbase is probably going to be pretty tiny. It's not really easy to get an Android phone without a data plan (although it's possible), and there's not really any reason to use it otherwise, other than initial curiosity.
- LightInChains 15y ago
  I can't find it searching for smozzy in the market or by clicking the link on the webpage, so...
  - FaceKicker 15y ago
    That's odd. It might not show up in your Market search if you don't live in the US (I set it to US only since it won't work for anyone else) or if your device doesn't have the required capabilities for the app (telephony and touchscreen). No idea why you wouldn't be able to get to it using the direct link, though.
- LightInChains 15y ago
  Oh wait, I missed the US only part. That's why.
- greengirl512 15y ago
  I think it could be handy in places where T-Mobile doesn't have data coverage.

wingerlang 15y ago

Reminds me of a similar service that would email you a pdf of a site. edit: http://www.labnol.org/internet/receive-web-pages-by-email/18117/ http://www.labnol.org/internet/receive-web-pages-by-email/18...

dave1010uk 15y ago

PPK came up with JSON over SMS, which would be a great way for people to use apps with phones (or in countries) that don't support data (including MMS). I guess this is a much bigger problem in developing countries. You can see his slides about this here: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/10/fronttrends_sli.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/10/fronttrends_...

martinshen 15y ago

This is so clever. So impressed right now but I feel like this is going to get shut down so fast....

FaceKicker 15y ago
Thanks, it was a lot of fun :) I hope it doesn't get shut down TOO fast. I think it has a chance since the userbase will probably be very small, since the number of people who have Android phones without a data plan with US T-Mobile is probably on the order of thousands...

dll 15y ago

I remember getting an Ericsson (A2618?) phone in around 2000 that was advertised as a WAP phone and being very disappointed that it only supported WAP over SMS (UK networks didn't allow that - I think the closest network with support was in Greece).

vladoh 15y ago

A cool idea :) This reminds me of that joke: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck loaded with hard disks :)

jurjenh 15y ago
Funny thing is, I just transferred 1TB of data from work to home (offsite backup) in just 5 minutes today... via bicycle even! Didn't even think of that until just now. Guess the saying still holds true then! Although to be fair, doing the backups took considerably more time - a usb external hard disk doesn't copy 1TB that quickly...
- killerdark 15y ago
  Switch to Esata with a $30 Esata docking station. I backup with bare drives (cheaper, no usb enclosure needed) at on average 90MB/s (2TB drives, 3Gb/s sata controller).

luckyisgood 15y ago

Impressed with your resourcefulness! Now, if only people at US T-Mobile saw your app the way I see it - an alternative way of accessing and browsing the web in cases of emergency - not only would you not get shut down, but you'd be given extra resources to develop this further, public praise on creative use of their services and so on. Of course, if I was Verizon - whose service you say did not work - I wouldn't wait for T-Mobile to get their hands on you first. I'd contact you immediately and I would make sure Verizon's network worked like a charm. There's ton of completely free PR to be gained here.

FaceKicker 15y ago
Thanks very much for the praise! However, unfortunately I don't think emergency use when data services aren't up is a legit use case, since webpages are sent from my server to your phone via MMS and I think MMSes are downloaded via a data connection.

stefanobernardi 15y ago

You sir, are a genius. This definitely helps a lot for tourists that can get unlimited text plans without data. I'll get you a few beta-testers.

speleding 15y ago

Great hack! I wonder if it's possible to reverse engineer the protocol so an appropriately crafted SMS message will send a goatse page to a friend's Android. :-)

itiztv 15y ago
faggot!

realschool 15y ago

Amazing idea.

rexreed 15y ago

How does this work for sites that use Ajax / Javascript that requires server connections? What about streaming audio / video, and how about cross-site stuff? Does all that get passed through SMS as a proxy?

FaceKicker 15y ago
None of those things work right now (and honestly probably never will). This only has very basic HTTP functionality. One of the most annoying ones is when sites have Javascript redirects, because my server doesn't know how to follow those. So going to "twitter.com" doesn't work because they have a Javascript redirect to HTTPS. :|

rdelk 15y ago

Just one (awesome) step forward towards the unification of cell technology for the end user.

yoavyaari 15y ago

Great work guys!

peterwwillis 15y ago

I know a way to use another mobile carrier's data network without paying for any service at all. I thought about making a mobile app to exploit it, but I know they'd probably just close the hole in a couple weeks. It would make a good first attempt at an Android app, though...

a_dy 15y ago

Great. Now make an app that does the opposite :)

kennywinker 15y ago

Good lord! What an abomination!

jbuzbee 15y ago

Cool hack! Along the same (disturbed) lines, I wonder if it would be possible to do tcp/ip over SMS using a tun or tap type driver? i.e. take the packet, encode, break into parts, SMS to a remote gateway, undo the packing, reassemble and send it on it's way. Sort of like RFC 1149, "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" but using SMS. Probably slower than pigeons though :-)

eogas 15y ago

This is a cool idea, but it sounds like something that will be shut down pretty quickly. If not directly, then by carriers who decide that your unlimited texting plan actually does have a limit, kind of like your "unlimited" data plan.

dongsheng 15y ago

This is punishing mobile carriers instead of enjoying surfing web :-)

haridsv 15y ago

I am wondering how expensive this would be for a pre-paid plan as a last resort to google information or fetch some mobile sites. I know it is 10c to send SMS and 25c to receive MMS, so can we assume that it would cost a minimum of 35c per each request? If the browser requests more resources when the JS is executed, would it automatically result in more requests to be sent? Can this be somehow controlled? I have unlimited data, so don't need this, but the wife uses a prepaid plan and T-Mobile has no viable data options, so would like to give this option in case of "emergency".