Have you thought of getting a google voice number, and
adding everyone's cell phone number to it, but just use the number for
texting
that way one text would go to all
phones.
There may be some issues to work out, but it might
work
This group always has great suggestions for my odd requirements, so
here I go again....;-)
My two club softball teams are going to out of
town for nationals at the end of June (~26 families). (We might even make
ESPN...) We need a way to send messages to each other, and as a group. Up to
this point, I have been running a private group email list that everyone can use
to send and receive emails for the group. But not everyone has Internet or email
on their phone, so the group email list is not the best option for everyone. My
android phone can send a text message to a group, so I can handle the issue of
schedule changes. But, not everyone's phone on the two teams can send a group
text, which makes those impromptu 'team lunch' difficult for someone in the
group to schedule, unless I become the group sms operator, which is **not**
something I want to do! I am wondering if there is some open source technology
that can help us....
My requirements
1. Send sms to a whole group,
part of a group, or individually
2. Work on low end cell phones - ie no
Internet plan or email
3. Does not require a lot of setup, either for me or
for each person going. The people on the trip are not techies, but parents of
11-15 year old softball players (and the players as well).
4. Free, or really
low cost as I only need it for ~10 days.
I have a Debian server on Linode
for our web site, so I could add some more software....
I thought of
these ideas:
1. pass out a cell phone list to everyone. That solves
individual sms messages, but not group/sub group messaging for those who don't
have that on their phone
2. twitter - maybe a private group? I have not used
twitter before, but I will have challenges getting everyone to sign up for an
account.
3. some other sms micro-blog app on my own server?
4. Face to
face communication.....how old fashion!
5. Phone trees......from my
experience, only works in an emergency.
I am focused on sms only because
it seems to be available to every player and parent on the trip. I am open to
any other suggestions y'all may
have!
Thanks,
Mark