It occurred to me that a useful facility would be to look up alternative numbers using SMS. I've written a proof of concept ... happy to discuss.

Andrew

I was hope there would be more feedback on this ...

I'd like to know if anyone thinks this is worth pursuing, so am going to enable it today only (as I have to pay for the outgoing messages myself).

It's provided without any warranty whatsoever, and I won't be able to refund any text message charges if it doesn't work for any reason.

text "gn <0870 number>" to 07624800481, and you should get back the result.

Note that on some networks, 07624 is treated as an international number so you will be charged accordingly. It will only return verified numbers, and limits the reply to 3 messages.

Let me know what you think.

Andrew

When it comes to innovations on this site, things tend to move very slowly. Things like mobile versions of the site have been suggested before, but have never come to fruition.

You are probably better off PMing the site admin Daniel (admin) and suggesting it to him. My only comment would be not to use an 07624 number (because of the possibly higher cost - something we are campaigning against  :P)

You'd need to be careful about your source of data, as there are assertions almost on a par with copyright or similar; someone else setting up a wap look-up arrangement ran into a dispute several months after asking permission and getting no response at all.

That said, I tested it and got 3 useful replies to one query. As for the potential costs, these numbers are inclusive for some people, whereas short codes are always chargeable.

Quote:

You'd need to be careful about your source of data, as there are assertions almost on a par with copyright or similar; someone else setting up a wap look-up arrangement ran into a dispute several months after asking permission and getting no response at all.

It seems that this poster needs to be much more careful concerning their unsubstantiated, destructive criticisms? If you look at most of his postings, they have a similar style of bombastic destructiveness, which on any other forum would be called "flaming". Almost all of these criticisms are always unsubstantiated. To whom is the first statement addressed here? Is it the OP or the member replying to the OP? What on earth is "there are assertions almost on a par with copyright or similar" supposed to mean? Exactly what assertions are on a par with "copyright", and what is "similar" supposed to mean here? Who was it who is supposed to have set-up a WAP look-up arrangement and ran into a dispute? What was the dispute? These allegations are all totally unsubstantiated and unexplained, and thus are of no assistance to the OP. Where is the evidence of these claims and criticisms?

You tested it. Who are you anyway? What global accreditation is there in you claiming to have tested it, relative to the real world? What was "it"? What were the "useful replies to one query"? What was the query? The replies may have seemed useful to you, but would they be seen to be useful to anyone else?

Then we have
Quote:

As for the potential costs, these numbers are inclusive for some people, whereas short codes are always chargeable

What is that supposed to convey to us? What on earth does it mean anyway? It is very very clear that you need to be much much more careful about what you post here, and above all you need to substantiate your criticisms and claims in an objective manner, if your statements are to have any credence at all. If Gordon Brown claims to have tested something, then we know who he is and we can base our credence on his position and status, what we know of him and his perceived competence. You, we do not know or recognize; we do not know your competence, although we can begin to come to an assessment of it on the basis of what you post here. So far that assessment does not seem to be very impressive I would suggest.

Andrew, do not be discouraged by this unwarranted and unsubstantiated criticism.  Continue to develop your idea if you want to. jgexernite's idea is good. Try that to expand the approach.

Thanks for your feedback. I'm pretty clear on what the copyright issues are ... will PM Daniel.

Andrew

dorf wrote on Mar 12^th, 2008 at 12:33am:

Quote: You'd need to be careful about your source of data, as there are assertions almost on a par with copyright or similar; someone else setting up a wap look-up arrangement ran into a dispute several months after asking permission and getting no response at all. It seems that this poster needs to be much more careful concerning their unsubstantiated, destructive criticisms? If you look at most of his postings, they have a similar style of bombastic destructiveness, which on any other forum would be called "flaming". Almost all of these criticisms are always unsubstantiated. To whom is the first statement addressed here? Is it the OP or the member replying to the OP? What on earth is "there are assertions almost on a par with copyright or similar" supposed to mean? Exactly what assertions are on a par with "copyright", and what is "similar" supposed to mean here? Who was it who is supposed to have set-up a WAP look-up arrangement and ran into a dispute? What was the dispute? These allegations are all totally unsubstantiated and unexplained, and thus are of no assistance to the OP. Where is the evidence of these claims and criticisms? You tested it. Who are you anyway? What global accreditation is there in you claiming to have tested it, relative to the real world? What was "it"? What were the "useful replies to one query"? What was the query? The replies may have seemed useful to you, but would they be seen to be useful to anyone else? Then we have [quote]As for the potential costs, these numbers are inclusive for some people, whereas short codes are always chargeable

What is that supposed to convey to us? What on earth does it mean anyway? It is very very clear that you need to be much much more careful about what you post here, and above all you need to substantiate your criticisms and claims in an objective manner, if your statements are to have any credence at all. If Gordon Brown claims to have tested something, then we know who he is and we can base our credence on his position and status, what we know of him and his perceived competence. You, we do not know or recognize; we do not know your competence, although we can begin to come to an assessment of it on the basis of what you post here. So far that assessment does not seem to be very impressive I would suggest.

Andrew, do not be discouraged by this unwarranted and unsubstantiated criticism.  Continue to develop your idea if you want to. jgexernite's idea is good. Try that to expand the approach. [/quote]

To take your closing remarks first, this is a totally false accusation against me. I tried this service and it worked, and I very clearly said it had worked.

As you say, jgxenite offered useful advice. Although mine was more cryptic, it in fact says something very similar, to approach the person who controls the database. I also comment on the very same issue of the numbers used.


Where is the evidence you demand? Some is on this forum.

http://www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?num=1177323217

Note I wasn't proposing to carry out the work myself, but hoped that someone might. A question in my first post was a bit rhetorical, as I already knew one answer, as my second hints.

It had in fact been mentioned as a proposal on here some time earlier, by someone who did some work on it, but a search now shows me that some posts have been deleted. In addition to that, I'm not privy to communications between other parties, so although I understand something of the gist of the reasons, it isn't my place to comment further. Sorry if you think that this is still too cryptic;  I didn't know this earlier.

You want more specific results from the test I tried? I entered an 0870 number for Carphone Warehouse, sent the text message, and within a few seconds received 3 replies with numbers listed in each one. How on earth can my remarks be deemed critical? Instead of perversely slagging me off for saying it was useful, did you test this at all yourself?

The portal is an Isle of Man mobile number; 07624 8xxxxx (the next digit mostly 0) are used by another company by arrangement with Manx Telecom, to provide text-based services. I assume that the OP has a temporary arrangement with this company, but that need not concern us.

Calling an Isle of Man mobile comes from some but not all networks' contract inclusive minutes; some networks publish that they are excluded, and some customer services just do not know.

Texts may differ in charging - after a discussion on another forum, and phoning a firm using a Jersey mobile number for a text service (as the Millionaire TV programme has done), I learned that Jersey mobiles can come from contract inclusive texts even though they don't from minutes; T-mobile the exception. I don't know if the same applies to IoM numbers, but I will assume that it isn't easy to find out.

All of this boring detail lies behind the OP's advice that it might consitute an international text message. Hence, for people who don't know, this would probably hint to make one single query, not several, until they know the answer.

And hence my remarks too, slightly qualifying what jgxenite said about access cost. In other words, I hope that might continue and with both number options (but renting a dedicated short-code is expensive, so maybe a shared access with a prefix in the message).

(contd)

(contd)

Apologies for the long post above, but which nevertheless needed some detail

dorf, I totally rebutt your accusations that I was slagging off this person's efforts. As that should show, I tried it and it worked, and I said so. If you tried it, you didn't bother to tell us.

I thought my remarks about the relative costs of 07624 numbers and short-code numbers were reasonable enough the first time, but in case other people would misunderstand, I've expanded them to explain what I meant.

It doesn't matter that you refuse to recognise my competence. When you've got something objective to say about telephone systems, perhaps even on this thread and actually relevant to its subject, I'll be interested to see it.

I used this 3 more times the other day, each time receiving a reply message about 7 seconds later. Did anyone else try it?

Hello all,

I have tried contacting the site owner (using the contact section of the site) about what I believe to be an even more cunning idea for mobile users like me who's fascist mobile company charge for all non geog numbers:

A free / open source java based application (should run on most modern phone) where you can enter a non geog number, perform a search using saynoto0870.com in the background and automatically dial the geographical alternative. It would cost a fraction of a penny to hit saynoto8070.com to find this information for users with GPRS.

I have written a 'Proof of Concept' application which works nicely but need permission to use saynoto8070.com to proceed.

What do you think? Would anyone use this?

I think this is a good idea too ... I went for SMS because it's a lowest common denominator, but reckon there's room for both.

I didn't have much success with PM'ing the site admin; pity really because I think both of these would increase the site's popularity.

awhitehouse wrote on Mar 27^th, 2008 at 6:13pm:

I didn't have much success with PM'ing the site admin; pity really because I think both of these would increase the site's popularity.

Hi Andrew,

I replied to your PM on 12th March, but haven't heard back from you since, and the reply is showing as unread.

Please can you check your Private Messages.

Thanks
Daniel

Doh, I need 5 posts to sent an instant message.

I love the site by the by the way, saved me a fortune :-)

awhitehouse wrote on Mar 7^th, 2008 at 11:18am:

I'd like to know if anyone thinks this is worth pursuing, so am going to enable it today only (as I have to pay for the outgoing messages myself).

As I nored above, I tried this a few days later, but because of your note that you were paying for the reply messages, I haven't used it for a while now.

Is it still in use, and can the incoming messages to the portal number subsidise the outgoing ones, or will it be tricky to mitigate costs you might incur? Perhaps a subscription with a p-sms? - but then keeping account details would get more complicated and add more cost anyway ...

What about an SMS->Site gateway?

It's one thing to be able to browse the site on your mobile, but what about a service which lets you text an 0845 number to a certain phone number, and in reply you get an 0800 or Geographical alternative?

It wouldn't be too hard to do, there are plenty of ways you could do this, even if it involved sticking a short advert in the reply message after the number (many gateway services will give you free SMSs in return for a small amount of advertising)...

pacifist wrote on Jan 6^th, 2009 at 7:17pm:

What about an SMS->Site gateway? It's one thing to be able to browse the site on your mobile, but what about a service which lets you text an 0845 number to a certain phone number, and in reply you get an 0800 or Geographical alternative? It wouldn't be too hard to do, there are plenty of ways you could do this, even if it involved sticking a short advert in the reply message after the number (many gateway services will give you free SMSs in return for a small amount of advertising)...

This has been brought up before and I have joined your comments to the existing thread. If you opted to receive emails when someone posts a response, you will need to resubscribe by clicking here.

Just one small point  :-/

Who's going to pay the person that looks up the number for you and then sends it back ??

How about we make it an 070xx number you send it to, or something similar like the 82xxx competition numbers (cost to be decided), then you could get upto 5 possible numbers sent back to you, depending on if there's anything in the database ??

For a number that gives problems, a reply advising a delay shouldn't cost the person providing the service (on unlimited texts).

I could go for that  ::)

Hi Dave,

I thought this thread had gone cold - pleased to see it hasn't.  :)

My original proof of concept was based on scraping the site using the verified database (i.e. no person involved in supplying the data). I can re-enable it if you want to try it.

If the request is texted to an 8xxxx number, I think this it is reasonable for the user to pay 15p/25p to get the alternative numbers given that the facility needs to pay for itself and the potential saving per minute on the call, especially from mobiles.

How do you want to proceed?

Regards,

Andrew

awhitehouse wrote on Jan 7^th, 2009 at 4:36am:

Hi Dave, I thought this thread had gone cold - pleased to see it hasn't.  :) My original proof of concept was based on scraping the site using the verified database (i.e. no person involved in supplying the data). I can re-enable it if you want to try it. If the request is texted to an 8xxxx number, I think this it is reasonable for the user to pay 15p/25p to get the alternative numbers given that the facility needs to pay for itself and the potential saving per minute on the call, especially from mobiles. How do you want to proceed?

As I said ages ago, I tried it a bit and liked it, but I seem to have been the only person basing my comments on actually using it.

Does revenue on the incoming message to the IoM number subsidise the replies, or does it need the shortcode to pay its way?

Though I'd like to see it, I wonder if the increase in mobile internet add-ons on contracts means that more people can now browse here on their phone

I wonder if there won't be any more comments for another few months

I'd probably use it - I get free SMS on my mobile, but cannot access the web. (Well, I can via GSM dial-up, for free, but my current phone doesn't support that, only GPRS, which my very old but cheap tariff doesn't allow me to use!)

I was actually looking into SMS facilities myself for another project, and a&a supply VoIP numbers (£1/month+vat) which will accept incoming SMS messages (on 020 3 numbers at least) delivered either by email or an http POST for free.  Obviously your replies can be sent via any suitable means, so find a cheap or free web based sms...  

Obviously, though, if it were to cost more than a few pennies to use, one might as well call the 08* number ....

Me, I'd charge by using reverse-charged SMS on the replies.  That way you can send a free "no matches" message back, and only charge for verified results.  Thus avoiding annoying people by charging them for nothing.  I've no idea how much it would cost to implement reverse-charging, though, and of course you immediately fall under the remit of PhonePayPlus if you do so, and they impose BIG fines if you get things wrong!

Do you have a link for the SMS -> VOIP gateway details? Seems like an interesting option.

awhitehouse wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2009 at 10:24am:

Do you have a link for the SMS -> VOIP gateway details? Seems like an interesting option.

http://www.aa.gg/kb-telecoms-sms.html  

But according to support, it's currently only on 020 3 numbers, not the 03's I have.

You don't need to use their numbers for VoIP, BTW, they'll also forward to a normal phone, but then you pay for the calls.

irrelevant wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2009 at 9:19am:

Me, I'd charge by using reverse-charged SMS on the replies.  That way you can send a free "no matches" message back, and only charge for verified results.  Thus avoiding annoying people by charging them for nothing.  I've no idea how much it would cost to implement reverse-charging, though, and of course you immediately fall under the remit of PhonePayPlus if you do so, and they impose BIG fines if you get things wrong!

So what happens when a verified number is "wrong" or "doesn't work"?

Dave wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2009 at 2:37pm:

So what happens when a verified number is "wrong" or "doesn't work"?

Ah, well that's the tricky part.  If you charge people, then you suddenly have a much bigger responsibility w.r.t. the accuracy of the data.   I was only trying to say that, were I to charge, that's HOW I'd do it, rather than imply that I would want to do so.

You can cover this in your site Terms and Conditions, i.e. we make best endeavours to ensure the number are correct but we don't guarantee them. Then if it turns out the number really is wrong you can give them some sort of credit for the next search.