If you start sending and receiving text messages on your cell phone, look into getting a plan.
Before I got my basic media plan ($10 a month for 400 messages and 1 MB data), I paid 10 cents a message. As long as I stayed under 100 messages a month, it was cheaper not to get the plan. Problem is, once you start text messaging, it grows on you real quick.
Maybe you start off with some information service, like Air Quality SMS. One of your friends sees you doing SMS, and they figure out how to do it themselves and you wind up trading messages once or twice a day. Don't forget television programs that allow you to vote via SMS (usually at an extra charge, I might add). Then you discover you can microblog with Twitter or receive automated alerts from Google-- and it's over.
So, like any data obsessive geek, I'm reviewing my SMS stats for the past seven months-- to reassure myself that I'm really saving money with this plan. Or, is this another resource going to waste like my "rollover minutes." Four of the seven months I've sent more than 100 messages, but three of those seven months are in the mid to high 90s. I do the math and wind up figuring out I've saved something like $12.50. Not bad, but far from a stunning and compelling amount. Of course, when I factor in the fact that I've been using my cell phone for web page testing and learning about creating web pages for portable devices, I can't really figure out an easy way to attach a dollar amount to that.
Is it possible to "get more/do better" with SMS than I am now? For example, if there were a service that sent me a text message once a day with-- I don't know, let's say the Dow Jones/Nasdaq closing prices-- I'd be more in tune with what the stock market is doing, and I'd only wind up using 31 messages a month to do it. Or maybe I could set up something on my work computer to notify me when there's a problem or outage? No, bad idea-- I'd definitely wind up over 400 messages in a month then, considering how often there are issues.
Still, it's worth pondering. Can I use my SMS texts in a smarter way than I am now?