SMS Notification Plugin for Pidgin IM Client

Pidgin Instant messenger Along with Yahoo Messenger’s eye candy looks, there was another feature which impressed me a lot, and that feature was SMS notification. It sent instant messages to my phone via SMS and I could reply to them as well. My friend, Karthik, has discovered a plugin, which does pretty much the same thing on Pidgin.

If multiple contacts leave messages while you’re away, you won’t be bombarded with a lot of SMSs. Instead, gSMS will pack all those messages and conveniently report it to you in a single SMS.

There are some drawbacks, of course, like you get just the name of the contact who sent the message along with its date and time, but not the actually message. And since the SMS is routed through Google Calendar, it’s not possible to reply back.

Here’s a list of things needed by gSMS to work:

  • Pidgin installed (of course)
  • A Google Account (and SMS reminders activated on Google Calendar)
  • A supported mobile network to receive Google Calendar notifications via SMS.
  • Network Time Protocol Synced PC (check Date and Time settings in your control panel and enable Internet Time)

gSMS configuration window

Once you have all the necessary stuff, download gSMS from here and copy gsms.dll to Pidgin’s plugins folder (typically "C:\Program Files\pidgin\plugins" for Windows users). Run Pidgin and go to tools menu and select plugins. Activate gSMS and configure it.

This post was published by on February 25, 2008

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://green-flamingo.com Nathaniel

    Sounds pretty good. Not too crazy ’bout the drawbacks though.