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Four cool little cell phone messaging apps

Rafe Needleman Former Editor at Large
Rafe Needleman reviews mobile apps and products for fun, and picks startups apart when he gets bored. He has evaluated thousands of new companies, most of which have since gone out of business.
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Rafe Needleman
2 min read

SAN DIEGO--There are a some interesting cell phone messaging services here at DemoFall. For example, 3jam makes SMS a multi-person medium. They call it "reply-all for SMS" It's useful for groups of friends or coworkers who are trying to coordinate a place to meet or something similar. See previous coverage. New at DemoFall: a Palm application that integrates with your Treo's address book, to make starting 3Jam conversations easier.

MobileSphere is releasing Joopz, a Web service that lets you send SMS messages from its site to any phone. Many cellular carriers offer this as a service already -- sort of. With Joopz, you can also get replies on the Web site, and Joopz lets you do group chats as well. If you need to leave your PC but you're in the middle of a conversation, you can forward the rest of the discussion to your cell phone and continue chatting there. It'll also send you reminders, like OhDontForget does. Joopz is a free service, and I expect I'll end up using it.

Pinger is a quirky little service that lets you quickly send a voice message from your cellphone to an email account (the recipient gets your message as a link that points to an audio file). It really should be integrated with other messaging services, but using it could not be easier, since it's all voice activated. You can also send Pinger messages to MySpace friends. Talk about viral.

Flurry's pitch is that it turns any cheapo mobile phone into a Treo or Blackberry work-alike. Once you run through the simple setup on the site, it sends a link to your phone that directs you to a personalized download. Based on the demo, it looks like a very strong email (and RSS reader) application that has a sensible user interface, as well as good customization features on the Web site. The application is free, and looks like it's worth checking out if you're not a smartphone user.