Infinite SMS ends the text messaging rip-off. Sort of
More and more people are picking up on the fact that SMS text messaging is a scam - VentureBeat writer MG Siegler complained about the text message rip-off in the iPhone 3G pricing plan last June, and even The New York Times has looked at accusations of carrier price-fixing. There have been some applications offering workarounds on the iPhone - such as SMS for Free, which lets you send, and only send, a text message from your email account - but they’re not very satisfying. Now a developer called Innerfence has released the Infinite SMS app, and it offers a reasonable if imperfect solution.
Basically, Infinite SMS plugs into Google Talk to send messages (something which that instant messaging service now allows). Once you’ve activated the app and logged into your Gmail account, it works almost exactly like normal text messaging on your end, and it looks like a standard iPhone SMS exchange, too. The message recipient, on the other hand, gets a text with your Gmail address explaining what’s going on, then they can respond as normal. (The text comes from a 406 area code number.)
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