vgsmail: News and Updates

News and Updates

30 January 2004

Outage report: As some of you may have noticed, until yesterday vgsmail ran on a dynamically allocated IP address, with the mapping being maintained by zoneedit. I liked this setup as it gave a very minor added protection against network scanners looking for linux systems to hack. However, it did have a couple of minor drawbacks (some web-caches didn't like this) and I finally made the decision yesterday to move to a static IP address. I requested that the change be made at noon, and at about 2pm my connection disappeared completely. After much confusion and about 2 hours on the phone this morning the problem seems to have been fixed (a combination of a fault with the ISP end and a dodgy router at my end). My apologies again for the outage.
A positive side-effect to the previous paragraph is that I have now opening up the new UK-directed route and am reducing the cost of all UK-bound messages to 3.4p, effective immediately.

11 January 2004

The routing change announced on the 7th is not going to happen today as it is proving to be much less reliable than expected. Therefore the rates will remain unchanged for another few days while I speak with the service provider about the problems I have encountered.

7 January 2004

Change of rates for all destinations: As from Sunday 11 January the rates for all destinations will be reduced to 3.4p per message. After a bit of fiddling, we have managed to work out a pretty reliable and slightly cheaper route. Hopefully reliability will hold up, but if not we will have to return to our previous route and hence the slightly higher costs.

6 January 2004

Happy New Year!
We have recently added a 5th service provider to our list which appears initially to be as good as the other providers we use, but significantly cheaper. I am going to test it for the next couple of weeks and if it proves reliable it will be added to our default routes which could potentially result in a decrease in message costs being annouced shortly.

24 December 2003

Christmas period support: vgsmail support will be unavailable on the 25th December and then again from 31st December to 5th January. During those times, credits might take longer to be applied to your accounts and faults might take a bit longer to fix. Having said that, I am very confident that we will have an incident-free period as the new server has been very reliable and robust over the last couple of weeks. Happy Christmas everyone!

13 December 2003

It appears that computers are designed with a continuous usage limit of about 18 months: as fast as we patched the old server, new problems surfaced. This precipitated an emergency move to the new server this afternoon and as of 19.00 today the new server is serving all vgsmail services. It seems to be stable now, but there might be a few things here and there which have not been setup correctly: if you encounter any problems, please email support@vgsmail.com and I will try to fix things as soon as possible. The new server should be faster than the old system and we have removed a number of dependencies in the system in order to provide a more reliable service. Sadly one of the consequences of vgsmail running on a non-profit basis is that we do not have indefinite and full-time support and we cannot maintain a fully redundant service. Having said that, I agree that the service over the last week has not been of acceptable quality and our first priority at the moment is to return to the reliable service we have provided over the last 6 months: I very much hope that you will bear with us over the next couple of days in case there are any further problems.

12 December 2003

Not a good week: yesterday the whole of vgsmail was down for about 24 hours. Things are now back to normal, although it is not entirely clear as to what the problem was. I think it might have had something to do with one of the settings on our router, but this doesn't fully explain what caused the router to suddenly stop routing packets.

9 December 2003

The billing database went wrong earlier this morning and as a result a very small number of messages were rejected with the message "Credit Failure". The problem has been corrected and the messages have now been delivered for free (if you are one of the effected users you will have received a refund notice). My apologies for this problem.

8 December 2003

Outage: At some point yesterday one of our hardware routers failed. Unfortunately it took a while to reconfigure a new router (which we had ready as backup). The system is now back up and running. I am not exactly sure what caused the failure of the previous router, but it might have had something to do with a firmware upgrade on the main router; it is strange that it took 3 days for this problem to become apparent. It might take a while for the new IP address to filter through the DNS servers.

28 November 2003

Outage: There was a brief (about 30 minutes) unplanned outage this afternoon due to the server hardware changes which are underway. Apologies... The actual problem is rather complex and involves linux distributions and hardware changes. Everything should now be back running as usual.

24 November 2003

The server hardware is to be upgraded this weekend. This should have no impact on service as the swap will only be made once the new system is up and stable. It might result in very slightly increased response times, but as the current hardware is very rarely fully loaded I don't think the speed increase will be noticeable.
As a completely seperate project, I recently implemented an SMS-to-IM interface. This allowed me to hold a MSN Messenger conversation with someone (albeit slightly slowly) via SMS when I was away from my computer. To my contacts, I therefore appear to be always 'online'. I am considering integrating this into vgsmail, but it would require a bit of effort and I will only implement it should the demand be high enough. If you would be interested (with absolutely no commitment) in using this type of enhancement, please send a blank email to IMYes@vgsmail.com; other comments as usual to suggestions@vgsmail.com.

29 October 2003

I have had a couple of issues with numbers ported from Orange UK to one of the other UK networks. There is now a route which appears to work for such numbers, but as I have no way of detecting them automatically I have to set the routing tables manually. If you wish to message someone on a ported number, please email support@vgsmail.com and I will set up the routing table appropriately.

30 September 2003

Between 18.05 and 18.33, Zoneedit (which hosts my DNS entries) seems to have done something slightly strange and started to report an incorrect IP address for the host www.vgsmail.com. I'm not exactly sure how this happened as I do not believe that anything went wrong at our end. The result for those affected was a '403 Connection refused' message when attempting to access the web-page. For most people it appears that their local DNS was correcting caching the address and they will therefore have not noticed any problems. For some, it might take a short while for the correct address to filter through.

28 September 2003

The new payment scheme as outlined on 17 September is now in force. Please note that charges may change as the bulk SMS market fluctuates: for warnings of changes, please check this page frequently and the current charges will be reflected here.

26 September 2003

It was just brought to my attention that the email-to-SMS service was not working. It seems that in the network reshuffle I did last weekend, I forgot to open port 25 (SMTP) on my firewall: this is now corrected and email-to-SMS has now resumed. My apologies, and sorry for the delay; suprisingly it took 5 days before anyone complained :). On a more positive note, the internet connection has been very reliable since I made the last changes.

22 September 2003

The changes to our network structure have now been made and hopefully things will now settle down. Pings to the outside world are about 1/2 what they used to be, and are seemingly stable. Naturally, we will monitor the situation, but in general I expect the service to be back to full capacity again. Thank you for your patience and feel free to drop me a line if there are any further problems with down-time.

21 September 2003

As you may have noted, the server was moved a couple of weeks back in an attempt to improve reliability. Previously most of the outages had been due to failures on the behalf of the internet provider I was using, and therefore I moved the server in an attempt to simultaneously change provider and add a 'backup' internet connection should the first connection fail. From this respect, the move was successful. However, a side-effect of the move was that the server is now connected to the outside-world via a couple of 802.11g links (don't worry, I'm using 128bit encryption and MAC address filtering to protect your privacy). Sadly the links proved to be slightly unreliable and over the last week there have been various short outages (generally no longer than a couple of minutes) when the link went 'down'. I have therefore spent most of today and will continue tomorrow in reconfiguring the internal network. Once the system is complete, there will be 4 redundant routes from the server to the outside world, each following a different physical route. I hope you will bare with me whilst these changes are made, and promise a much more reliable service as from tomorrow evening at the latest.

17 September 2003

After a long in-depth analysis of the pricing of messages and the history of vgsmail over the last 6 months, I am now announcing a more permanent fix to the pricing structure to account for the previously mentioned changes in charges by down-stream providers. The change will take affect from some point after Friday 19th September, although the exact date depends on when I have finished testing the new code. Before getting upset with me, please note the following:
- I have tried very very hard to keep the costs down and I make NO profit from running this service. Indeed, I am currently running at an unsustainable loss, and even after the following changes I will probably still make a very small, but manageable, loss.
- Costs to destinations such as UK T-Mobile and UK Vodafone have gone up by 50% in the last few months. Of our traffic, almost 30% is destined for one of those two networks;
- Costs to countries such as Austria and Germany have rocketed by a good 250%.
- You should also notice that the cost per message to many many destinations has actually decreased.
- As always, the greater our throughput, the easier it is for us to get bulk message deals and any subsequent savings will be passed on directly to our users. So tell your friends...
So here are the new charges effective this weekend. Please note that charge will be based on the number of the destination mobile, and so if the mobile has been ported between networks you may be charged incorrectly: if you get in contact with me about specific destinations I can set up the appropriate routing.
- UK T-Mobile: 3.8p/message
- UK Vodafone: 3.8p/message
- Austria: 6p/message
- Germany: 6p/message
- All other destinations: 3.4p/message

11 September 2003

Following from my note last week, please note that the cost of messaging has been increased to 3.6p/message. This is only an interim measure until I have worked out a more complete restructuring of our costs; this will hopefully result in the cost of many messages returning to their previous levels while a few destinations will cost more. Please check back here regularly for updates as I hope to make the final changes over the next few days.

5 September 2003

The status screen seems to be a bit unreliable at the moment, and I believe this is due to bad network coverage at the location of the server. I will look into installing an exterior antenna on the phone; in the meantime, do not trust the status page too much and ideally just send yourself a message if you want to check that are working correctly.

2 September 2003

Important: I am now getting worried about the increase in costs of sending to some networks as charged by my service providers. Some of the providers have put up their prices by 100% in the last month, and until recently I have been hoping to bear that increase by averaging it out with the lower costs on other networks. However this situation is becoming rather difficult to maintain and vgsmail is now running at a slight loss: clearly it would be silly for me to continue in this way. Therefore I am going to be forced to make a few changes to the cost of sending messages, and inevitably this will involve a small increase. There are two structures I could follow: either a global increase (to about 4p per message), or an increase effecting only some networks (all UK networks except Orange, for example). I will do the sums and report back here towards the end of the week. If you've got any comments, feel free to email me at suggestions@vgsmail.com.

29 August 2003

The move this morning went slightly less smoothly than expected, although the server is back up and running. I hope that things will now return to the stable state they were in before last weeks downtime. No further scheduled downtime is planned for the time being.

27 August 2003

During the morning of Friday 29th August vgsmail will be down for a few hours whilst the server is relocated. As a consequence of the outage on 22 August, I have decided to completely relocate the server to a new site with two completely independent internet connections, in order to provide a more reliable service. The move is only expected to take about 30 minutes, but to cater for the unexpected, I suggest you consider the whole of Friday morning as 'at risk'.

22 August 2003

As many of you will be aware, the server went 'down' at some point in the early morning on Wednesday, and has been down until this morning. The delay in getting the system back 'up' was due to the fact that I was off-site and had no way of accessing the server. In short, on my return I discovered that the hardware router between the server and the outside world had 'frozen'. A power-cycle is all that was necessary, and full service was immediately restored. I am now going to think about how to avoid this situation in the future, or at least find some way of minimising down-time of this nature. One solution would be to move to managed hosting or at least managed virtual hosting, although this would incur relatively significant costs and hence boast the cost of messages (something I am hoping not to do). Another solution would be to have a secondary server at a different location. I will report here as soon as I come to some conclusion, and as usual if you have any concerns, suggestions, comments, please drop me an email.

16 August 2003

In an attempt to transparently upgrade the hardware (and new 120G HDD) on my server, I just brought the whole thing down and the server has been unreachable for the last 30 minutes. My apologies: I was hoping to achieve this upgrade with no down-time, otherwise I would have posted a notice here and probably attempted to do the work during an off-peak moment.

28 July 2003

For the next 2 weeks, the system will be performing a number of diagnostic tests and a reboot at 5am each morning (historically corresponding to our period of minimum traffic). This is a precautionary measure while the system is running unattended, just in case anything goes horribly wrong. A full reboot takes about 3 minutes, and during this time the system will be unavailable.

27 July 2003

The SMS-to-email and system status screen is now back online.

24 July 2003

Planned downtime: The server is now up and running in its new (temporary) location. Total downtime was about 7 minutes. All services are now running except:
- SMS-to-email;
- System status screen (will not update).
The server will be moved back to its original location on Sunday when these services will be resumed.
Planned downtime: The server needs to be moved this evening, and therefore it will be down for about 10 minutes at some point between 22.00 and 23.00 GMT. My apologies for any inconvenience.

20 July 2003

IMPORTANT: Between the 29th July and 11th August vgsmail will be running in 'unattended' mode while I am away on holiday. I will have relatively limited access to email and other systems, although I will try to monitor the system as much as possible. I doubt any problems will occur, although if anything does fail it might take a bit longer for me to get the system back up and running again. I will be checking my email as often as possible. Similarly, credits will be processed as quickly as I can, although it might take a bit longer than usual: if your account is running low, I strongly recommend you submit payment before I leave.

18 July 2003

Outage: The "System Status" screen is now back online and SMS-to-email should be working again. The mobile attached to my computer appears to have shutdown for no particular reason. I've got a spare handset which will be used to replace the old handset as soon as a new data cable arrives.

17 July 2003

Outage: It appears that the mobile attached to my computer has failed again affecting the "System Status" screen as well as SMS-to-email. I'll try to sort it out today or tomorrow. All other services appear to be working fine

1 July 2003

The SMS-to-email interface now supports aliases, which makes it particularly easy to send emails while you are out and about. For example, if you have an alias called 'mum' set up with the correct email address, you can send off a quick email to her by sending your SMS to +447791892547 with (for example) the text 'mum Don't forget to do my ironing!'. To send an email to someone without an alias, just use the full email address: 'someone@hotmail.com Hello, who are you?'.

20 June 2003

17:01: Outage: Delivery is now confirmed for Vodafone and Orange; O2 and T-Mobile seem to be experiencing serious delays again.
16:44: Outage: Funny things happening with delivery to UK networks again. I've rerouted all +44 destinations and delivery to Orange appears to be restored. At present I am unsure of the state of the other networks.

13 June 2003

I have been informed by one of the upstream providers that this afternoon and tomorrow they will be 'at risk' meaning that delivery might fail or be delayed. This should not affect vgsmail as messages will be rerouted through a different provider, but I just thought I would put a warning here for reference.

11 June 2003

18:00: Outage: O2 has gone a bit slow again on all three providers. I think the messages are eventually making it through, but not in any sensible amount of time. Again, completely out of my control.

10 June 2003

There is now an account setting which allows you to receive multiple SMS messages for every incoming email. The default is to only receive one message (i.e. the first 160 characters of the email), but this can be changed to anything up to 9 emails. This setting also applies to sending of SMS messages to other people via the email-to-SMS interface.
Usage of vgsmail is increasing steadily, although I'd rather like to give it a big boast over the next few days as I'm about to make another bulk purchase of messages: if I can increase throughput just a little bit I'll be able to reduce the cost of messages again. If you use vgsmail and are happy with it, please feel free to recommend it to friends and on any news-groups listings you frequent.

8 June 2003

23:47: Outage: Routing has been very very bad today, in particular to UK O2 and UK T-mobile destinations. I've spent most of the day playing around with the routing table but have experienced the same problem with each of three providers I have available. These things tend to sort themselves out over-night, so hopefully we'll be back to full service again tomorrow morning. This does not appear to be affecting any other destinations in any significant way.

4 June 2003

Sorry for the silence over the last few days: things have been running rather nicely and there really wasn't much to report...
Version 1.2.0 of the java midlet is now available for download. The usual download locations apply (http://www.vgsmail.com/ota for over-the-air install). The following changes have been implemented:
- Enhanced message sending status screen;
- Alias support (go to 'Options' and 'upload aliases').

30 May 2003

It seems that the web address http://sms.vgsmail.com causes problems for a few people using bizarre web caches. Therefore, feel free to use http://www.vgsmail.com for the web or wap interface.

29 May 2003

A couple of improvements to the WML interface:
- A very rudimentary version of the 'Account History' page on the web interface is now available for you to check the delivery status of messages. I know it needs to be significantly improved, but at least you can check whether a message you sent has been delivered.
- The 'alias' box has been replaced with a menu taken from your alias database: I've got no idea why I didn't do this originally, as it's obvious really... I hope it doesn't break any browsers: let me know if it does!
As someone pointed out to me recently: although I cannot provide free delivery reports to SMS, if you do have a free email-to-mobile facility (such as orange.net) to allow emails to be sent to your phone directly, you can always enable the email delivery reports on vgsmail and change your email address accordingly.

28 May 2003

I've had several requests for delivery reports by SMS. Unfortunately I can not provide free delivery reports to a mobile phone (as do some networks) as I am charged for each message I send out. However, if you wish to pay to receive delivery reports, the functionality is now there (just got to your 'account setup').

27 May 2003

The drop-down box in the 'Send SMS' page (web interface only at the moment, although I guess there is no reason this shouldn't appear on the wap interface very shortly) has been changed slightly. It now contains a) all your aliases, and b) any other numbers you have used previously as recipients for messages.
Unfortunately I overlooked the (lack of) capabilities of the POP protocol and when I intended to provide a new mail notification facility for both IMAP and POP clients, I assumed that the POP protocol provided the ability to determine the difference between 'read' and 'unread' mail on the server. In the general case, this isn't possible, and the only work-around would be to use specific facilities available to some servers and not to others: I don't really want to do this, and so (for the time-being) I am not going to be providing email notifications for users with POP accounts. If you don't have IMAP, please shout at your system administrator, because it's far superior and you'll really appreciate it in the long run. Alternatively, I strongly recommend fastmail as a mail provider. The good news on this front is that I've had this service running flawlessly for a while now and am pretty happy with the performance.

26 May 2003

Now that delivery reports seem to be working relatively well, you can select to have them sent to your email address (go to 'account setup' on the web-interface). At present this is a global setting and you'll receive a delivery report for each and every message sent from your account. Please note, however, that the lack of a delivery report does not mean that your message has now been delivered: some providers seem to be a bit slow at sending me delivery reports, even though delivery of messages is pretty good. On the other hand, as far as I am aware, receipt of a delivery report DOES confirm that the message was successfully delivered to the recipient's mobile.

22 May 2003

We're featured on the UK Guide To SMS Text Sites.
I'm still noticing the occasional problem with delivery to O2 and T-mobile numbers. I'm told by the upstream providers that O2 have been causing problems recently. I am currently considering providing a much more reliable route to some numbers at a premium charge (probably about GBP0.045 per message): I don't like the idea, but if reliability falls below an acceptable level I guess I'll have no choice. Comments welcomed.
After a fair amount of fighting I am now getting delivery reports from all three of my providers. Two of them (currently used for all but UK T-mobile and UK O2) provide immediate updates, the final one will only be updated every 60 seconds.

21 May 2003

15:10: I have located the 'service status' problem to some code which seems to have gone wrong at my end. More generally, messages appear to be flowing again, but I'll keep an eye on things and post here if we go down again.
14:22: Outage: Following some tests, it appears that not one of my three providers are currently delivering to any of the UK networks in a reliable fashion. I believe this is a problem with the networks themselves, as it seems unlikely that all three providers would fail simultaneously. Some messages are making it through, but short of waiting there is not a lot I can do at present.
The 'service status' indicator seems to be suggesting that vgsmail is 'down', although as far as I can tell messages are being delivered to all numbers other than the mobile use on this screen... I'll continue to investigate, but in short: don't trust the service indicator for the time being.

20 May 2003

There have been a few delayed delivery issues with T-mobile and O2 today. I have routed messages to +4478 numbers through a different provider which should solve the problem. However, if you've noticed any other number ranges which are having problems please drop me an email (deliverfail@vgsmail.com).

18 May 2003

Added NatWest 'Fastpay' to payment methods.

17 May 2003

I have just checked in a very first step towards mail notification by SMS. It's rather experimental, so use at your own risk... Currently, only IMAP server support is available, although I'll be including POP and Hotmail support very soon. The system works by logging into your mail server at regular intervals (called the 'check frequency' on the setup page) and looks for any new mail in your inbox. If that mail is still 'unread' after a predefined time ('page threshold') a message will be sent to your mobile telling you that you have new mail. The clever part is that if you are sitting in front of your computer (and therefore read the new mail as it arrives) you will not be paged!
I'd just like to make it clear that all information stored on my system is confidential. I only allow ssh access and am the only person with such access. The only case in which I will divulge information to any 3rd parties is as required to do so by UK law.

16 May 2003

I've been asked a few times now (FAQ is being written) how to create a largish list of recipients (such as all your friends). At the moment I don't have any internal support for lists, but IMHO a better solution is to use the email-to-SMS capabilities. Just create a mailing list in Outlook or Pine or whatever you use for your email with each of the recipients of your SMS list in the format 07971123456@sms.vgsmail.com or youralias@alias.vgsmail.com. For instance, create a mailing list called family which might contain dad@alias.vgsmail.com, mum@alias.vgsmail.com and dog@alias.vgsmail.com. You'll need to authenticate the message by either putting your userid and password on the subject line, or enabling from-line authentication (account setup).

14 May 2003

With the overwhelming demand since my posts on uk.telecom.mobile, I've been forced to reduce the 'free credit' to GBP0.50 otherwise I'm just not going to be able to make things add up. I'll see how things go at this rate for a while and if the numbers add up I'll give all beta-tests a freebie.

12 May 2003

22:27: Full service has been restored. For those interested, it turned out that the power supply on the mobile attached to my server had failed. It probably failed a few days ago and the phone ran on batteries for a while. I've replaced the power supply. In the short term, there isn't a lot I can do to avoid this particular problem, although had it happened any other day of the week I would have been able to resolve it as soon as I discovered the problem. In the long term, I intend on getting an internal GSM modem.
Outage: The SMS-to-email service is currently 'down' apparently due to a hardware failure. I can't access the hardware from my current location and so I don't have any idea how serious this is, but the service will definitely not be restored until this evening. The outage ONLY AFFECTS:
- SMS-to-email;
- System status indicator (which will, correctly, indicate 'down').
All other services are currently working correctly: web-to-SMS, wap-to-SMS, java midlet SMS sending and email-to-SMS. My apologies for the down-time.

9 May 2003

Account history page now resolves destinations to aliases.
I've just uploaded a completely new email-to-SMS implementation. Please play and report any problems: I personally prefer this to logging in to the web all the time when I want to send a message whilst sitting at my computer. This code SHOULD cope with MIME encoded messages and other nasty things. At present, only the first 160 characters of the message are forwarded: this will be changed in the very near future. Functionality is as follows:
- To send a message, address it to THEMOBILENUMBER@sms.vgsmail.com (for example 07971123456@sms.vgsmail.com). If you have an alias defined, send the message to myalias@alias.vgsmail.com (for example dad@alias.vgsmail.com). To authenticate the message, you have two options:
  - On the subject line, put "userid password" (for example, "me mysecret");
  - Or enable "from-line authentication" in the account setup and just send the message from your registered email account.
- You can give out the address of your mobile phone as userid@sms.vgsmail.com, and anything coming in to that address will be forwarded to you. To enable this feature, you have to enable the "accept incoming email" feature in the account setup;

8 May 2003

Just reconfigured httpd to optimize for speed and the pages seem to appear a lot quicker for me now: let me know if it causes any problems.
Full message details (including text) are now available from the 'account history' page by clicking the message you are interested in.

6 May 2003

The rather slow loop-back tests which have run today seem to be a bug in the loop-back timer, and do not accurately reflect delivery time. I think I have fixed the code.
A very small change has been made to the java client (you should now get a 'message sending' alert before being returned to the text composition page). Usual OTA update should get you version 1.1.1 (http://sms.vgsmail.com/ota).

5 May 2003

More web-page cleaning underway.
Account options (including the 'from-line' authentication) can now be changed in the web-interface. Keep an eye on this page: many more options coming soon.

4 May 2003

Web-pages cleaned up a bit and are more consistent. I've tried to avoid using anything which might break browsers, but I have used tables quite extensively. If this causes any problems, and the wap interface isn't an alternative, please let me know and I'll provide a stripped down version.
I'm now getting ready for the official release, which will involve a few days of code-tidying and bug checking. As part of this process, there is now a system status page.

3 May 2003

New midlet version released. If you did an over-the-air install originally, you should be able to do 'check version' on your phone and it will automatically update to version 1.1.0; otherwise browse to http://sms.vgsmail.com/ota or download the jar and jad directly. Changes:
- Support for aliases (in the 'destination number' screen, select 'enter alias');
- Threaded-sending: sending of the message is now performed in the background;
- Bug fixes including the bug which appeared to delete the stored userid and password at random intervals.

2 May 2003

Midlet reported to work on Nokia 3650 and hence the 7650. Watch this space: new version out at some point over the weekend including alias support.
Two issues at the moment:
- First, delivery of messages. I have had a few reports of non-delivered messages. Happily, it seems that the new delivery reports are working (see yesterday's item): I have had no reports of messages having been marked as 'delivered' when they haven't. In total, the failure rate seems to be about 3%, of which most of those appear to correspond to phones which were switched off at the time of sending. I promise I am investigating each and every message, and won't stop until I get the failure rate down to 1% over a 5 day period: this is what I estimate the Orange SMSC to be based on my usage over a number of years.
- And payment. The beta-test is costing me a fair bit, so I've reduced the free allocation for any subscribers signing up to GBP1.00 (which is still 30 free messages!). I am quite generous in giving more free messages to people who help up with suggestions, bug reports and general support. If you need more credit, I can currently accept NoChex (Paypal to arrive soon). Just click on the link above. You can send any quantity you like and it will appear on your account as soon as I receive notification (currently, this is not automated so it will take a short while, especially over night or weekends). Please note: this is a non-profit venture. At present, I am hoping to recupe my costs by a very very small (about 1%) mark-up on the cost of sending messages. Therefore, please be sensible in the quantities you send via NoChex (if they are too small, the relative costs will get too big and I'll have to increase the cost of sending messages).

1 May 2003

By popular demand, the web form now includes a character count. Thanks to Neil for the javascript code. I hope it doesn't break anyone with a limited functionality browser: if so, let me know and I'll maintain a script-free page.
The new provider I am using provides delivery reports back to me, which (in theory) should accurately confirm delivery. I have updated the 'account history' page to reflect these reports. You can test this by turning off your phone and sending a message to yourself: the status should go 'pending' to 'submitted' to 'waiting' (and then when you turn your phone back on) to 'delivered'. Again, let me know if the reports are inaccurate.
Request: I'm now routing messages through two different providers in order to maximize reliability. However, I need to be informed if a message does not arrive so that I can update the routing tables. If you know a message has not been delivered (and for this purpose, a message which takes more than 5 minutes to arrive should be counted as having "not arrived"), please email deliverfail@vgsmail.com with an approximate time of sending and the destination number (or at least the first 5 digits of the number). If you know the destination network, that would also help.
13:58 BST: Report: I have had no response from my current provider, so I have temporarily rerouted UK-bound messages. They are now coming through again. Sorry about the on-going issues, but I guess that's what a beta-test is all about. In future, I now have a mechanism in mind to enable this switch at the first hint of a problem. I have re-queued all messages sent since 8.30 this morning: you won't be charged for the redelivery (although the 'send time' might appear a bit strange on your account history).
Outage: Once again I have been failed by my SMS provider. They are accepting messages, but they seem to be disappearing. I've logged a fault with them and will report back as soon as I get a response. I have set a deadline: if this issue is not resolved conclusively today I will switch providers (I've got an alternative up and ready... just a matter of flicking the switch).

30 April 2003

Outage: At 20.43 last night the SQL server process shut-down, basically meaning that nothing was working thereafter. I did not realise anything was wrong until 5.42 this morning when service was returned. At the moment I have no idea what caused mysql to die. I will also look into creating some mechanism for informing me (by email and SMS) of problems so that I can fix them as soon as possible.

29 April 2003

Wap-to-SMS client now accepts aliases.
Outage: I have just learnt to never commit a change (however small) without running my full set of test-cases against the live code. Anyone trying to send a message via the WAP page will have had trouble for the last hour or so: this is fixed... sorry.
Slight decrease in cost of messages to reflect a bulk purchase I have just made.
The java client has now been reported to run on the following Nokia phones: 6100, 6310 and 7250. As yet, no-one has contacted me with a non-Nokia phone.
'Aliases' can now be defined in the web-interface. They are also currently only active for SMS sending in the web-interface, but will shortly be used in all interfaces. Email sent to myalias@alias.vgsmail.com will be redirected appropriately, and the aliases will also be used in the sms-to-email interface.

28 April 2003

OTA install of java client available. Just browse to http://sms.vgsmail.com/ota on your phone. The total download should be about 5k.
A couple of bug-fixes to the java client. If you have downloaded the java client, check that you have version 1.0.1. If not, get it here: jar and jad.

27 April 2003

Java Client now available for download and testing. It has only been tested on a Nokia 6100, but should probably work on any Nokia phone. Please email me if you have a different java-capable phone so that we can get it working. Download the following two files (version 1.0): jar and jad. Within the client, you need to set your vgsmail userid and password (under 'options'), and thereafter sending messages is identical to sending messages directly from your phone (but 1/3 of the cost :). The client requires web-access which you will probably have to enable on your phone.
Someone just reminded me that the following has not been made clear. If you wish to auto-login and cookies aren't working for you (i.e. as long as you don't click on 'log-out', a cookie will be stored on your machine/phone and next time you go to http://sms.vgsmail.com/cgi/default.cgi you should automatically be logged in), you can simply bookmark the following page to avoid having to type in your password each time:
```
http://sms.vgsmail.com/cgi/default.cgi?.State=1&u=myuserid&p=mypassword
```
.

26 April 2003

Wap-to-SMS now available. Just create a bookmark on your mobile to
```
http://sms.vgsmail.com/cgi/default.cgi
```
.
SMS-to-Email now available for testing. To send an email, send a text message to "+44 7791 892 547", with the destination email address as the first word. The email will be delivered with the 'From line' set to your details as stored in the database, so the recipient won't even know that the email came from your mobile. This service is free.

25 April 2003

A limited account history page is now available on the web.
User will be sent an email if their message fails to be delivered after the prescribed number of attempts.

24 April 2003

In 'send sms' page, previously used numbers are 'remembered' and ready for quick selection.
14:12 BST: Outage: Things seem to be looking better; queued messages have been sent. Will keep an eye on things.
14:06 BST: Outage: there appears to be a routing problem with my internet service provider. Ironic that this is the first time in a year that I've had any problems with them. Messages will be queued for sending, but will only be delivered once this issue is resolved.
Much cheaper provider being tested: if it works out (i.e. reliable), price should drop to GBP0.025 per message.

23 April 2003

Main script now uses SpeedyPerl which should increase performance slightly.
Beta test begins. Free allocation of GBP1.50 (42 messages) for beta users: if you need more, please email me.
Sign-up process enabled and testing.
Rather rudimentary web-service now running.
Reverse billing of incoming emails allowed.

22 April 2003

Web service now up and running. Email to 123455@sms.vgsmail.com, userid@sms.vgsmail.com working.

To Do

The following will be implemented in the order they appear. This list is intended to be dynamic, so please feel free to email suggestions@vgsmail.com with any suggestions.

Aliases (myalias@alias.vgsmail.com goes to 447973123456@sms.vgsmail.com) (done);
Userid history on web-interface (done);
Wap interface (done);
Java interface (done);
Multi-message email-to-SMS (done);
Email-to-SMS throttling;
Sms-to-email: can use userid database to make emails appear to either come from the mobile (allowing the recipient to reply), or to appear to come from the user's email account (so that they recipient doesn't know the email was sent from a mobile phone) (done);
Maintaining look-out for further cheap service suppliers;
Prettify web-pages (looking for someone with artistic skills) (done);
Two-way sms: get bunch of phones and attach them to the server, allowing dynamic, expiring allocation of a mobile to a conversation.
Unique ID on the send form to avoid double submission.

Known Bugs

Reported bugs:

Send form doesn't allow 'account balance' to be accessed on T68.
Sessions expiry is not reset.
Some of the error messages are very cryptic.

Fixed bugs:

What do we do about complicated MIME-encoded emails?
No error message if the message fails to be sent (particularly if the account is not in credit).
HTML-code needs to be fixed in a few pages.
's in surnames causes problems.