If you think you can keep yourself under the 200-message-per-month limit of
most iPhone calling plans (remember, that’s sent and received), great! You’re
all set.
Then again, how are you supposed to know how many text messages you’ve sent
and received so far this month? Your iPhone sure doesn’t keep track.
The only way find out is to sign in to www.wireless.att.com and click My account.
(The first time you do, you’ll have to register by supplying your email address and a
Web password.) The Web site offers detailed information about how many minutes
you’ve used so far this month—and how many text messages. Might be worth
bookmarking that link in your iPhone’s browser.
But if you risk going over that limit, you’ll be glad to know there’s a way to
send all your outgoing text messages to be free.
Enter Teleflip, a free service that converts email into text messages. Teleflip
requires no signup, fee, contract, or personal information whatsoever.
Until recently, the chief use for this service was firing off text messages from
your computer to somebody’s cellphone.
But the dawn of the iPhone opens up a whole new world for Teleflip. It lets
you send an email (which is free with your iPhone plan) that gets received as
a text message on the other end. You pay nothing.
To make this happen, create a new email address for each person you might
like to text. The email address will look like 2125551212@teleflip.com (of course,
substitute the real phone number for 2125551212). That’s it! Any messages
you send to that address are free to send, because they’re email—but they
arrive as text messages!
