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Sending stock quotes, scores, weather, etc. reminds me of a service that Google used to offer via text message. I used that a ton before I got my first smartpho

Sending stock quotes, scores, weather, etc. reminds me of a service that Google used to offer via text message. I used that a ton before I got my first smartphone: text W[ZIP code] to 46645 (GOOGL) and it would text back the weather. Same for stock:[symbol] and many other things I've since forgotten. Of course Google killed it, but it was neat while it lasted!

CSSer 2y ago
That is a blast from the past! This was around the time of slide-out keyboards, right? I remember using this now too.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  I still miss those keyboards
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    Same. Evo Shift. I miss the days when I wasn't frustrated every time I type. Apparently this is what my gen will rocker rant about.
    - CalRobert 2y ago
      HTC Touch Pro 2 and I could type better on that than any phone since. Even managed to get it running Android (it was a Windows Mobile phone which is... old)
    - CSSer 2y ago
      Gladly! I’d go so far as to even say I was articulate.
rkagerer 2y ago
Yet the currency conversion site I use which is run by one prof, probably on a Pentium III computer stashed under a stairwell at their university, has been up and running for decades and will probably last a lifetime.
- LetsGetTechnicl 2y ago
  What website is that?
  - rkagerer 2y ago
    fx.sauder.ubc.ca
emchammer 2y ago
I had an alphanumeric pager like this in the 1990s. It had a few dozen text channels that were constantly updated with topics like news and sport.
duffyjp 2y ago
I used that all the time from my flip phone. It took forever to type out a google search and results could take a minute or two to arrive but it was better than nothing. Primarily I used it to google the address of a place I wanted to go so I could enter that in my TomTom. Times have changed.
justusthane 2y ago
In my days of messing around with PHP, I wrote a Twitter bot called "SongBuddy" for the purpose of looking up a song via SMS based on some lyrics. You would send it a DM via SMS (which Twitter supported at the time) containing a few lyrics, and it would do a Google search of "<your input> lyrics", parse the search results, and in theory return the artist and title to you via SMS. It never worked very well, but I was proud of it!
dheera 2y ago
I made a backend with Twilio and an AWS instance to give me a SMS<->ChatGPT interface. That allows me to ask ChatGPT questions from anywhere on Earth via a handheld satellite communicator (inReach Mini 2). It's kind of nice to be able to ask ChatGPT things from the middle of death valley.
1oooqooq 2y ago
we will look back on whatsapp bots and ai chatbots in 10yr like we look back on those sms services now.
scoot 2y ago
I'm curious when that was. I came up with this idea around 1995 while working for a telecoms research company (a subsidiary of Ericsson). Flight status updates was my canonical example. Nobody imagined that P2P messaging (requiring multiple presses of a numeric keypad to type one character) would become as popular as it did, so an information service was the best use I could imagine, especially given the growing availability of data through the nascent Web. (Teletext was also still a thing, and we had a separate project for scraping that...) But guess what those of us with access to SMS (and the general public) ended up using it for?

CSSer 2y ago

That is a blast from the past! This was around the time of slide-out keyboards, right? I remember using this now too.

CalRobert 2y ago
I still miss those keyboards
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  Same. Evo Shift. I miss the days when I wasn't frustrated every time I type. Apparently this is what my gen will rocker rant about.
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    HTC Touch Pro 2 and I could type better on that than any phone since. Even managed to get it running Android (it was a Windows Mobile phone which is... old)
  - CSSer 2y ago
    Gladly! I’d go so far as to even say I was articulate.

rkagerer 2y ago

Yet the currency conversion site I use which is run by one prof, probably on a Pentium III computer stashed under a stairwell at their university, has been up and running for decades and will probably last a lifetime.

LetsGetTechnicl 2y ago
What website is that?
- rkagerer 2y ago
  fx.sauder.ubc.ca

emchammer 2y ago

I had an alphanumeric pager like this in the 1990s. It had a few dozen text channels that were constantly updated with topics like news and sport.

duffyjp 2y ago

I used that all the time from my flip phone. It took forever to type out a google search and results could take a minute or two to arrive but it was better than nothing. Primarily I used it to google the address of a place I wanted to go so I could enter that in my TomTom. Times have changed.

justusthane 2y ago

In my days of messing around with PHP, I wrote a Twitter bot called "SongBuddy" for the purpose of looking up a song via SMS based on some lyrics. You would send it a DM via SMS (which Twitter supported at the time) containing a few lyrics, and it would do a Google search of "<your input> lyrics", parse the search results, and in theory return the artist and title to you via SMS. It never worked very well, but I was proud of it!

dheera 2y ago

I made a backend with Twilio and an AWS instance to give me a SMS<->ChatGPT interface. That allows me to ask ChatGPT questions from anywhere on Earth via a handheld satellite communicator (inReach Mini 2). It's kind of nice to be able to ask ChatGPT things from the middle of death valley.

1oooqooq 2y ago

we will look back on whatsapp bots and ai chatbots in 10yr like we look back on those sms services now.

scoot 2y ago

I'm curious when that was. I came up with this idea around 1995 while working for a telecoms research company (a subsidiary of Ericsson). Flight status updates was my canonical example. Nobody imagined that P2P messaging (requiring multiple presses of a numeric keypad to type one character) would become as popular as it did, so an information service was the best use I could imagine, especially given the growing availability of data through the nascent Web. (Teletext was also still a thing, and we had a separate project for scraping that...) But guess what those of us with access to SMS (and the general public) ended up using it for?