Monday, August 20, 2007

Free SMS Software Gets Better

There's nothing quite like watching a program already in use to improve it further. Three weeks ago I released the first version of my free SMSQ program, which allows a database program to send and receive SMS messages.
The program has been in constant use for over 2 weeks already, and numerous minor improvements have been made. We are now on version 1.0030, and there is a support utility called SMSsend that allows you to generate messages from a batch file or shortcut. For example, you can send the administrator an SMS whenever the server reboots, or you can use the Windows Task Scheduler to get the SMS program to run file maintenance on the weekend.
All of these features arose out of a genuine need when running the system in a live production environment. Today I installed the software on an old Windows 98 clunker, and discovered that the MDAC files were missing or out of date. I also added some other minor cosmetic changes. There's nothing like a real world problem to make software better.

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