Forward your google talk IM To your phone via SMS using iChat & applescript

[pringlet]

Problem: I'd like to receive Google Talk messages to my Windows Mobile phone without having to run any IM software such as fring or Mundu or whatever. As far as I know all WM Instant Messaging clients require your phone to be 'On' (as in non-sleeping) and connected to the data network. This means that my phone cannot enter the low-power standby mode. If it does, my presence on the IM network will be dropped. The other option is leaving my phone on all of the time but that means my battery is toast by about 9:30am on a weekday.

Goal: To forward Instant Messages from Google Talk, Jabber and AIM accounts to my cell phone as a SMS text message via AIM's text messaging service. Eventually I'd like to be able to respond via text message too.

A solution: AIM has built in mobile forwarding of IM’s to SMS. I wrote a small applescript to forward messages on other protocols and their sender out over the AIM service. This feature coupled with an always on Mac, some setup steps, and the applescript below will get you started with a rudimentary way to push IM’s to your phone as text messages.

Steps:
1. Configure iChat to use an AIM account and make this your first account in the accounts list

2. Add your Google Talk and Jabber accounts
3. Edit the following applescript and replace the #’s in +1########## with your 10 digit phone number. It has to have the +1 out front

using terms from application "iChat"
on received text invitation theText from theBuddy for theChat
accept theChat
set theBuddysHandle to handle of theBuddy
set theInvitationMessage to theText
set chatID to id of theChat
tell application "iChat"
close front window
end tell
send "IM from " & theBuddysHandle & " " & theInvitationMessage to buddy "+1##########" of service 1
end received text invitation
end using terms from

4. Save this in \Library\Scripts\iChat
5. In iChat -> Preferences -> Alerts set an event and tell it to run the apple script you just created.


Result: Now when you receive a new text message invite, the senders name and the message will be forwarded to you as text message(s).
Currently the only way to reply is to start up an IM program such as Mundu, fring, IM +, etc. and join the chat that way. With a bit of work this short script can probably be enhanced a little bit to route messages back out. A couple other features would be ‘quite hours’, IE if someone messages me at 4am my machine wouldn’t forward the message, also to check to see if there are any IM sessions active and if so, then don’t forward the message.
At any rate, this small script gets the job done as far as letting me know someone’s looking for me on IM without killing my Touch Pro battery.

If anyone has found better solutions to forwarding IM’s to SMS please let me know.

pt

[pvpmc]

This would be pretty sweet I wish I could help out but hopefully someone on this site or xda could assist

[PMDColeslaw]

Gmail chat actualy has built in sms forwarding now. so if someone is on gmail they can use chat to send you a text. You can respond via text to their chat as well. They do have to have your phone # attached your contact though.

[pringlet]

Yea, you're right. You can send SMS to phones from Gtalk but is there any way to forward received message auto-magically?

[PMDColeslaw]

Originally Posted by pringlet

Yea, you're right. You can send SMS to phones from Gtalk but is there any way to forward received message auto-magically?

Well, I'm only thinking outloud here, but if you are able to write a script that forwards gtalk to AIM then couldnt you write a script that forwards it to your SMS/MMS email address? (yournumber@carrierspecific.whatever) any text emailed to that address comes through as a text message. I'm not sure if you could reply from text or not.

[fuuup]

Originally Posted by PMDColeslaw

Gmail chat actualy has built in sms forwarding now. so if someone is on gmail they can use chat to send you a text. You can respond via text to their chat as well. They do have to have your phone # attached your contact though.

The problem with it is that the other gmail user needs to enable and add that feature. And then they would need to add your phone number. After that, they have to actually to click and change the messging type from SMS to gchat... and vice versa depending on whether or not you're at your computer. It's kind of a mess. I don't know why google didn't just add one extra bit of code so that their protocol would automatically be able to tell if you're on your phone or at your computer and get rid of that user step. I mean there's a bit of a learning curve... normal folk can barely use computers... how long is it going to take them to figure out what an SMS is and whether or not they should choose that option. That's what pisses me off about google, they have all of these great ideas and services, but they always leave out one small detail that ruins each one.

I think what he's trying to accomplish here is something that is transparent to the other user. When they go into google chat to look for him, he appears as being online. They can send him messages and they get forwarded to his phone.

I'm not sure why google didn't set it up this way in the first place. Both yahoo and AIM have pure IM forwarding through SMS. Replies are even supported. It's basically a command line interface through their servers using only SMS.

Here's a link to the setup for AIM: http://mobile.aol.com/aolproducts/im...PrdIForwarding

Here's a link for Yahoo IM: http://mobile.yahoo.com/messenger/sms/manage

Now both aren't completely transparent... it shows an icon in the other users client telling them that you're mobile, but online. It's about as close as you can get to what you're trying to do. Pure SMS means ZERO battery drain.

I just got those two configured, and I'm working on a way to get gchat to both stay online and do two-way SMS instant messaging. I'll post back if I can figure it out. If not, hopefully some of this will help you guys out and maybe we can figure it out together.

[fuuup]

I don't remember too much about the jabber protocol... haven't read anything about it in years, but I remember being under the impression that it was able to connect to multiple services including gtalk and SMS. If that's true, you might be able to create one central account using the jabber protocol and have all of your other IM protocols route through that.

Eh.. I think I need to do some more reading on it.

[pringlet]

Hey fuuup,

Good thinking man, gtalk is based on jabber protocol. maybe there's something that exists for jabber that could do this.

pt

[fuuup]

Originally Posted by pringlet

Hey fuuup,

Good thinking man, gtalk is based on jabber protocol. maybe there's something that exists for jabber that could do this.

pt

I found this earlier: http://jabtxt.com/

It's a free jabber gateway that allows you to do SMS to/from jabber, but I'm either a little too tired or there isn't enough documentation to determine whether or not this is what we need.

Ultimately, I think we should be able to consolidate all of our IM services under one jabber ID, and then use that ID to communicate with our friends from different services.

I believe the communication flow should look like this:

Phone (SMS) -> SMS to Jabber Gateway (possibly jabtxt.com) -> Main Jabber gateway connected to all desired IM services -> Friends' IM client... and vice versa.

The fact that google uses the jabber protocol for chat will definitely be helpful, since it makes it 100% compatible with the any jabber gateway. I just need to figure out how to configure and point each gateway in the right direction... or find out if that is even posible. The main thing would be linking the SMS gateway to the main jabber gateway.

It'd be great if it ends up working, which would mean that it would operate without any client software leaving us with zero battery drain. I've been testing yahoo's command line sms->IM service and it works pretty well. A lot quicker than OZ and any other SMS based IM application.

I'll probably be up for a few more hours.. we'll see how it goes.

[fuuup]

Alright, I've tried all kinds of different configurations with jabber and I don't think there's any way to get the same seamless functionality that AIM and YahooIM provide. I can probably write something specifically for it, but it would still need a dedicated server to run the transport.

The easiest option I've found is just to use jabtxt.com. The good thing about it is that it provides two way SMS messaging and will work on any phone regardless of OS. You don't have to run any extra software on your phone and there is no battery drain.

The downside is that you wont be using the same chat ID. Your friends will have two listings of you on their contact list. One would be the usual gChat ID, which they'd use when you're at your computer, the other would be your mobile ID which would look something like this (with sprint):

5555555555.sprintpcs@jabtxt.com

Which they can rename to anything they want. When you receive a gChat message from them on your phone, the from number will look like this:

username@gmail.com.jabtxt.com

And you can save that to your phone as a contact. That's basically what you'll put in the phone number area when you send them a text message.

Other than your friends having to deal with two contacts on their chat list, it works perfectly... this is what google should have done in the first place.

So the easiest way to get started is to send a text message to each of your friends using the phone number format listed above. Just their gmail address and then add the .jabtxt.com suffix to it. They'll get an authorization request and then it's on. Mobile gChat whenever you want it.

Enjoy.