Recently, I’ve found I can’t exactly rely on 3G or wireless when out or about. However, sometimes email is the only way someone can contact you about that urgent appointment or coffee date, and what’s more modern than email? Twitter DMs.
Thanks to O2 and Gmail filters, you can get urgent messages SMSed to your phone, a trick I first heard about with Beejive IM (a mobile IM client that can stay connected when not running, and email you). Simply text ‘on’ to 212, and your email-to-phone address of <yourphonenumber>@mmail.co.uk will magically work. Set up Gmail filters to forward direct messages, email from certain people or matching certain labels/keywords, etc: your imagination is the limit.
A word of warning, though. Firstly, the SMSes aren’t free. According to my bill they’re 8.5p each (I’m not sure if that’s pre-VAT; it probably is). A small price to pay if you know you’re getting urgent notifications, but if you’ve succumbed to the auto-DM spam (“Hello, thanks for following, check out my ebook!”) then your inbox will be full of fluff in no time. Also, you only get a few characters of the message after headers, mostly enough to make you decide whether to check your email or not: you need to send additional SMS messages for the rest, and it all adds up.