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I've been looking at systems such as txtlocal, esendex and clickatell. I need to send out a very large number of messages and ideally would like to go in at a lower level then using systems like these. Does anyone know how these SMS gateways like I've listed work in terms of actually sending out the messages? Will they have agreements with different carriers and be sending them out programmatically? I've tried contacting some UK carriers directly but as of yet haven't had any success getting any information from them.
Aggregators typically work by talking directly with a mobile carrier's internal SMSC using IP/X.25/frame relay and using a protocol like SMPP/CIMD to request a message send.
They will have connections to multiple networks SMSC's so they can do least cost routing (i.e sending a message to a user on their home network being cheaper).
Here are some contact details for Orange/Voda.
That said, MXTelecom as mentioned by Phill offer a good gateway service, as do mBlox - both of whom have already done all the hard (and expensive) work for you.
Working with an aggregator is definitely worth the effort. They handle the legal contracts with the providers as well as with the auditing services. You can go directly to a provider (e.g. AT&T, etc.) and broker the deal yourself but generally speaking you'll only need that if you have very specific program/campaign needs. Coke, for example, brokered their own deal to get the four-digit shortcode for COKE (2653).
Keep in mind, when working with an aggregator like MXTelecom you'll be signing a contractual agreement with them (usually for 6 to 12 months) and it'll take between 8-12 weeks (in the US) to get your shortcode provisioned and setup. It's not the funnest process, IMHO.
Oh, and don't forget, they will audit your system to make sure it does what it says it will do in your campaign document.
It is also possible to create your own system (at least in the US) and use a long code. One of our original prototype systems was built with Kannel using a mobile phone tethered to an Ubuntu box. With an unlimited plan it was quite nice. Usage is related to your carrier contract so be mindful.
Per your question of how they work... They generally work via an API (HTTP or SMPP are most common). Depending on your in/out volume you may want to put a queue in between your application and the aggregators API.
First if you're going to do any bulk SMS messaging you should get a Short Code. An aggregator will have all the necessary API's/SDK and documentation for you.
Try MXTelecom (AKA OpenMarket)
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I am working on a small web-app as a hobby, and I would like to avoid any functionality that would trigger GDPR requirements. As such, the web-app neither collects nor processes personal data, does not set cookies (or otherwise track individual users), and also does not integrate any services that do these things.
My question is, if I deploy this app on Heroku, does Heroku do anything behind the scenes (e.g., collecting IP addresses) that would then impose GDPR requirements on my web-app?
Another way to put this would be, is it possible to use Heroku and have GDPR not apply to your website? (without preventing traffic from EU countries)
The first thing to check is hosting location. When you create an app, Heroku allows you to select whether it's hosted in the US or Europe (though no more specifically than that – you just have to hope it doesn't include the UK!).
Next, because Heroku is a managed app service, it means that they get more access than a typical VM would have. You then need to read their privacy policy, which presents a problem: Heroku is owned by Salesforce.com, who have taken a belligerent Facebook-style head-in-sand denial approach to recent court verdicts in this doc. They say in there that the ECJ did not invalidate standards contractual clauses (SCCs), which is true, but not the end of the story. The ECJ said that while SCCs are valid as legal instruments, they can only be used to manage transfer between jurisdictions that uphold EU data protection and privacy standards (which, as far as the US is concerned, has been shot down with the collapse of Privacy Shield), and this is deemed to be the responsibility of the service in question to substantiate. So, what you then want to know is where is the detailed analysis of the US legal position and the audit of the US security services that Salesforce is required to conduct if the SCCs they are using are to be considered valid?
This is of course a rhetorical question: Salesforce has conducted no such audit, nor could they do so in sufficient detail, which then means of course that SCCs are not a valid mechanism for transfers between the EU and US for any service that Salesforce runs.
That said, their privacy policy is pretty large, and I recommend you read it, though they still make reference to the now-defunct Privacy Shield, and make some assertions that would concern me. I'd suggest finding out exactly what they do with data held in EU data centres, what they do with logging, and look harder at their third-party sharing, as that's often the biggest problem area.
This isn't really the place to go further into this, so I'd recommend you read their policies, and also read the GDPR (that's not the official source, but I find it's much more usable), or find a lawyer if you want a more precise analysis. The primary focus of GDPR is on the broad principles, not implementation details, so if something seems dodgy, creepy, or overreaching, it probably is.
I apologise if this has raised more questions than it's answered!
I am currently working on a personal project that involves data mining SMS messages. The problem is that I am at the point where I want to be working with realistic data besides my own SMS messages, and need about a years worth of history.
I do not feel comfortable asking acquaintances for this data because of how deeply personal it can be.
I am wondering if there is already a data set out there that I can use for these purposes, either free or for purchase.
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We are planning to introduce real time chat feature in our mobile apps. Ofcourse we would be going the XMPP way.
Can anybody shed some light on stats for maximum number of concurrent users Openfire has supported on EC2 instances (windows server) of different sizes in the real world?
We are looking at numbers ranging from 22500 concurrent users to 75000 concurrent users depending upon growth patterns predicted for app downloads and user adaptability for this new real time chat feature. time range = next 12 months.
From whatever googling I have done so far, it seems Openfire may not be the best bet when it comes to scaling out so can these numbers be supported on a single instance of ec2 over time? ie: we start hosting on smaller instances and keep increasing instance size as load demands.
Ejabbered seemed to be the best option when it comes to scaling out but since we would need to have erlang skills in order to extend it makes ejabbered a difficult choice for us. The other alternate is tigase which is java so we could extend it much easily but if Openfire can work for us for the next 12 months or so by scaling up versus scaling out, we would be happy to use it for now and see how well this new chat feature is embraced. Number one reason being ease of management.
Lastly, if you could help with links on SaaS / PaaS providers for XMPP chat + Push Notifications to mobile devices when user is offline, it would be awesome. We got in touch with quickblox.com but their enterprise offerings appear to be expensive for us at the moment. We want 100% ownership and portability of our data if we go the SaaS / PaaS way.
There are several references to Openfire handling those and larger numbers of concurrent users on a single server.
There is document on scalability from 2007 that shows 50000 users supported on version 3.2. The current release is 3.7.1. Don't forget that that also means a much slower machine than anything you are likely to run on today.
You also have to take into account what features of XMPP you will be using, but simple messaging should be able to easily handle the numbers you are referring to.
The numbers you mention should be easily handled by ejabberd.
I am unsure as to how you want to "extend" ejabberd. Multi-user chat and messaging are handled fine by all servers and of course ejabberd. Additionally, if you are thinking of custom protocols, these can be written in your language of choice and connect to ejabberd as an XMPP component.
The only thing you might miss is a web interface (which ejabberd has but it's rather limited), but then again if you expect to manage things through a web UI for an application, you will need to think again ;)
if you want to go with ejabberd, you can always get support from ProcessOne.
This is another plus for ejabberd, as it can be commercially supported if you want to / can afford.
Android Push Notification is a good solution.
With Android-Push services, you (Android developers) can send messages directly to the people who have installed your app. All you need is to include a code snippet into your app, and post to a specific URL to reach your app users, even if your app is inactive on their phone.
Feature:
Free
Free, unless you need extensive number of pushes for your app. Of course you can pay for more push and a quicker tech support.
Easy
Extremely easy to integrate into your app
Super simple to push to the app: just send a URL request
No C2DM limit, you don't have to have a gmail account to use the push service
Cloud service, no need to setup your own push server
Effective
Low battery and network consumption on the phone
Track user interaction, find out how users react to your push
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I'm looking for a modem where I can host 10-15 normal sim cards. The modem will be used to send and receive SMS messages. This modem need to send a lot of messages at the same time.
Fifteen of the cheapest available USB-stick 3G modems attached to a tree of hubs is probably cheaper than either building something sophisticated from scratch or looking for the sort of cellular-network analysis kit that might be able to deal with your problem.
What you want is called a GSM gateway. There are many manufacturers and suppliers this is just one example. However programtically sending SMS messages through it is likely to be complex and network providers don't like them and tend to cancel sims if they detect that they are being used in gateways. If you want to send bulk SMS messages you are better off partnering with a telecoms company that offers a web service API.
I would suggest using a SMS/MMS Aggregator like www.openmarket.com as carriers will block GSM Gateways if you start to send in bulk.
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I was brainstorming interesting usages of Twitter and came up with the following:
An application can use it as a call home mechanism
An application that has an invalid license could broadcast its location
A software company could use it as a remote shell like interface and issue commands to shutdown, restart and to publish patches
An application can use it for heartbeat purposes
Has anyone else came up with other non-standard usages of Twitter?
I fail to see the advantage of using a proprietary, third-party chat site in place of an appropriate networking protocol.
Matthew nailed the point that all these "applications" just represent a communications protocol between twitterer and remote host, and there are lots of mature protocols you could use instead right out of the box, rather than rolling your own on twitter.
But depending on your situation, of course there could be scenarios in which twitter is the easy way. I have written similar hacks that use e-mail as transport mechanism for automated tasks, simply because corporate red tape doesn't permit us other more conventional means. They can reboot machines, restart processes, post public messages, etc.
One of it is already available for Windows - "TweetMyPC v2.0 lets you shutdown/restart/LogOff and lots more in your windows PC.remotely."
I'm not sure this counts as a very practical use (a bit of fun mainly), but it certainly attracted my interest:
Twitter image encoding challenge
The idea of this challenge is to try to encode a picture into a 140 (Unicode) character Tweet. It's quite astounding how much information some of the algorithms posted there can fit into a message.
Scott Hanselman used Twitter to create an app for ordering a sandwich.
Check out his post
I think the main advantage of using twitter in instances like this is its SMS capabilities (and the fact they're free - whereas you can buy services that charge a monthly fee to allow you to receive SMS messages to a HTTP page or something like that).
I'd considered using it to make a little budget app for myself where I could SMS twitter things I'd bought to a private twitter account, similar for tracking petrol usage I was planning on smsing the odometer reading,cost etc in a certain format and capturing it at home to run statistics and stuff on it. There are limitations to it though - like you can only hook up an SMS number to 1 twitter account...
It's good to think outside the box, but don't be too focused on using just twitter because it's cool.
If you were comfortable setting up sensors and such, you could get a microcontroller, hook it up to a twitter feed, and then give it remote commands.
For instance, remote controlled house lights. You could then just tweet "Home lights on GXSDFXV" (The garbage at the end is to prevent real tweets from turning on and off your lights).
I wouldn't use Twitter in particular for transferring any private information (think about security if someone hacks the account and can shutdown your corporate servers or transfer fake licenses). For that I would setup a private server which implements the open microblogging protocol (like identi.ca) as long as - like others already said - there is another more suitable protocol.
For publishing PUBLIC information (heartbeat messages can be considered that, too) I like the idea pretty much. We recently had a very successfull (but unfortunately effectless) E-Petition in Germany where a Twitter account posted the number of signatures every couple of minutes.
Carsonified are using this to allow people to discover other people sitting in the same room at their conferences.
They label each chair with a tag and then you tweet that tag to an account they have and it registers you on a floorplan on the venue. Users are coloured in on the plan by their interests.
Clever but a bit overcomplicated for my tastes...
http://hello.carsonified.com/Home/Faq