Sens SMS via your Dashboard

With the release of Leopard on Mac, it seems that receiving and sending messages from Address Book has been removed. Worry not though, you can still do this with the emitSMS Widget.

The widget only works with certain Bluetooth mobile phones from particular brands like Nokia or Motorola, so you first need to check in the drop down menu that your model is supported. Once you’ve found your model you’ll have to ensure that the Bluetooth connection is working. This can be a little tricky.

Sending an SMS is a breeze. Use the box to type in your message. On the flip side you can set the widget so it allows you to write longer messages. Instead of typing in your contact’s phone number, emitSMS syncs up with your Mac’s Address Book to quickly access your contacts’ phone numbers. This works really well and makes sending SMS much easier. There are a few other useful features on the flip side of the widget, like being able to get a delivery receipt or storing messages. Our only real pet peeve would have to be the “send” button itself, which is a little small.

emitSMS is a very useful widget to send SMS via Bluetooth from your Dashboard.

Write text messages on your dashboard and send them through mobile phone via Bluetooth. Works with most Bluetooth enabled phones from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson and others.

Write the phone number in the top line, the message below and press send. The Bluetooth icon color will inform you when message has passed through your phone and onto the cellular system. Hovering the mouse pointer above the icon will display additional information.

You will be charged the same amount by your phone company for messages sent through the widget, as for regular messages typed and sent through your phone. One short message can contain up to 160 characters, but the widget will allow larger messages by using several short messages if needed, as supported by your phone. When using letters outside the west European alphabets each short message only has room for 70 characters.

The widget can use phones that Address Book does not support, but there are probably phones where Address Book works and this widget does not.

The widget can search your address book for people, allowing you to refer to friends by name instead of number. Note that only contacts in your computers Address Book are searched. Messages can be stored in a text file, inside “Application Support:emitSMS widget” in your users Library folder. That would be “$HOME/Library/Application Support/emitSMS widget/” to the unix inclined.