The utility has to be configured before it can be used. It uses a few configuration screens to configure the SMS provider and cell phone, the email account, filtering rules for the emails and an SMS template.

The default values are to check every 15 minutes for new emails int he configured account. The username and password of the ICQ account have to be added to the software. If the user selects Skype as the SMS provider nothing has to be configured as those information are taken directly from the Skype client.

Labels can be selected if Gmail is chosen as the account type. Both Gmail and POP3 have to be configured with the username and password. Two rules can be defined to process incoming emails only during a specific timeframe and/or by using a sender whitelist.

The program has to be running in the background to be able to check the email account regularly and send sms messages out if new emails have arrived that are matching the rules.

GSN SMS Notifier runs on Windows XP or Windows Vista and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

The United States are leading the field with 30+ supported carriers followed by India, Russia, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain and Germany. It’s a bit problematic that you have to know the carrier of the person that you want to send the SMS to but it usually is not a problem to find out by analysing part of the phone number. That does not fall into weight when you send a SMS to your own phone to test the service though.

I ran into a problem when I tried to send messages using Firefox, the verification image was not readable at all. A switch to Internet Explorer solved that problem. I’m not sure if it was caused by my version of Firefox or if it is a general problem.

Other than that it was fairly easy to use. After selecting the country and entering the phone number I was able to enter the text of the message which was limited to 80 characters unfortunately and the verification code. It took only a few seconds before I received the SMS on my Nokia N73 mobile phone. It contained the text that I had entered and some advertisement for another Gizmo service.

The extension will add a cell phone icon after installation to the browser. If it does not appear automatically you need to customize the toolbar layout to drag and drop the icon into an appropriate place. A click on the cell phone icon opens a form where you enter the cell phone number, the carrier and the text that you want to send. Text that has been marked before clicking on the cell phone icon will be automatically entered as the message that will be send.

Not all US phone carriers are supported yet, only the largest are. You can email Google to ask them to include another US-based cell phone provider.

The service could also be used to send, more or less, anonymous SMS. It’s not completely anonymous because of server logs but there is no direct connection between the person who is sending the SMS and the phone number that appears on the recipients phone.