Ex-Googlers Launch MightyText, An iMessage For Android Users(techcrunch.com) |
Ex-Googlers Launch MightyText, An iMessage For Android Users(techcrunch.com) |
Also, koush's DeskSMS has been around much, much longer and is the exact same as this.
At first we had proprietary protocols like ICQ, AIM and MSN. Then we got clients that reverse-engineered the protocols and supported logging onto multiple networks, which was nice, but the cat-and-mouse game between IM vendors and the people reverse-engineering the protocol was annoying for all parts (i.e clients stopping to work and wasted effort on the IM vendor side).
In all this mess, Jabber was born, trying to standardize IM with the XMPP protocol and the Jabber implementation.
It never flied.
And now we are at a point where all these additional IM services pop up. Ironically, all of them are using XMPP under the hood but all of them go great lengths in adding crypto to make absolutely sure that they are not interoperable.
This is one of the rare cases where a standard was created which everybody is actually following, but which didn't create any kind of interoperability between clients.
It pains me endlessly that I must know whether I can contact person X via iMessage or WhatsApp or now this. And this time it's not even about reverse-engineering protocols. It's just about checking whether your client is a "legitimate" one. There's no technical reason besides actually removing checks and making server names configurable why WhatsApp couldn't talk with iMessage or why GTalk can't talk with WhatsApp and so on.
I think the situation is short term though (5 years?). Right now there's a battle for dominance on the mobile front and everyone is taking the proprietary route in an attempt to gain market dominance.
AOL had this chance with standardization years ago with AIM but they not only screwed up the entire company but this product as well.
The great thing about SMS is the asynchronous nature of the conversations.
What's even cooler about iMessage and Whatsapp is that the conversations are stored and you can access them from different devices.
I believe there should be a standard to connect services like iMessage, Whatsapp and the likes. XMPP does not permit that.
The only additonal part is the background notifications which use Apple's (or Google's on Android) proprietary system. But once you start your client app, they connect to the server via XMPP and use that for message delivery.
It's critical to realize that you are interacting with the MightyText webapp over the internet, it runs on their servers. When your phone receives a SMS it will upload it to their servers so it shows up in the web-interface.
When you write a SMS in their web-interface then your phone will later pick it up (by polling their servers) and send it out via your phone's GSM.
Notice something?
Right, all your SMS conversations now run through their servers. Also, if their servers get compromised then the new owner will gain significant control over your phone; at the least they will be able to send SMS in your name. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
If you're looking for a better implementation of this concept (convenient web-interface to send/receive SMS) then look for "EasySMS" in the android market.
EasySMS runs a webserver directly on your phone, which you connect to with your browser. It's your own local MightyText. No middleman involved, no need to upload all your SMS to remote servers, no need to give a third party remote-control over your phone.
I may misunderstand but all of your text conversations are available through their servers while they still go through your phone. You can still just directly send a text from your phone, right?
My point was that you're then sharing all your conversations with their servers. That's imho a bad trade-off when you can just run the web-interface directly on your phone.
the others (desksms, mightytext) are much higher.
i know that's not your point (security concern), but, still.
I've been using this for around 2 months now. It is VERY buggy. Sometimes you'll experience delays in receiving and sometimes you don't even know if your text was sent out. You have to kind of get used to its 'quirks'.
Having said that, it has gotten a lot better and I expect it to continue. Anyone who texts a lot during the day should love setting up MightyText.
I'm trying to remove my account too..
By installing the app, you enable MightyText to take your SMS and send SMS in your name. You have to trust them.
This smells like danger to me.
My current interpretation is:
"This app lets your phone forward texts to your computer, tablet, or any other device. It also works in reverse so you can text people from any device. The texts are synced on all devices."
the problem with the "phone off" thing is -- then you don't get texts to your # at all.
I hope carriers will work with MightyText to do direct integration.
Also, why is there so much emphasis on browser sync? Is the browser install a dependency? Does this work if, say, my browser is closed or my PC is shut down? I would assume that it does, but with the browser sync instructions so heavily emphasized in the install instructions, I'm not sure.
Edit: Nevermind, after installing and playing with it, it even consumes my native SMS messages. A nice touch for sure.
been using it for a few weeks, really like it.
> Uses your current Android phone number.
This is awesome. I hope it takes off quickly.
SMS as a separate product made sense when it was first introduced- email on phones didn't exist. But in 2012 it's time they were integrated.
As an aside I also wish that carriers would stop doing voicemail and the various (broken) text->voice services and just record the message as an MP3 (low quality is good) and message it to me- again having it turn up in my mailbox would be even better.
https://mightytext.net/app -> " Error in GetUserInfo: timeout" whether I'm logged into Google or not.
Too bad. I like DeskSMS and I'd prefer something like it only free.
imho, the solution isn't to build yet another android app but to make google voice a natural/default choice for android users. if you have an android phone and haven't tried google voice yet, i highly recommend you give it a shot. having used it for the last few years, i can't imagine ever going back to carrier sms/vmail.
It's not hard to figure out how to block all "private" and "unknown" calls. So that means surveys or telemarketers or whoever have to use a number that you can block.
The Google voice extension for Chrome works very well for texting. Nice to use a full-size keyboard.
I was thrown off by the comparison to iMessage in the article title.