by Michelle Lentz
There are still a lot of sites out there that don’t have a mobile version available. So if you’re on your Treo or Blackberry and want to visit a non-mobile-enabled site, you can now get the latest information from Dotgo.
Just send a text message starting with an internet domain name to the phone number DOTCOM (368266), DOTEDU (368338), DOTGOV (368468), DOTNET (368638), or DOTORG (368674) as appropriate. Dotgo will send you back the latest info from the site. For instance, 368638 writetech.net returns this:
In response, #1 returns this:
You can also use Dotgo to search for an answer. For example, 368266 wikipedia chardonnay returns this:
You can text back M to view more of the entry.
As a web site publisher, you can also customize your Dotgo response. You simply whip up a little index.cmrl file and include it in your root directory. The Dotgo engine identifies the file and returns your specialized information. Dotgo includes some decent instructions for accomplishing this.
I noticed that Dotgo has a beta advertising program about which you have to email them for more information. I’m fairly convinced that mobile is the future of the Internet, or at least a large part of the future. This interactive method of accessing the Web via text message could be just the beginning.
__
Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.
Discussion
Good tip! We’re already looking at DotGO for some of our SMS applications, since you can build a decently interactive text-based service. DotGO does reserve the right to limit free messages, though, so it wouldn’t work for a high-volume ad-free messaging campaign. FYI TextMarks and Clickatell also provide similar free services, although they do put ads at the bottom of the return messages.