Just for reference, here are the carrier email addresses for sending email as an SMS. Look up the carrier for the phone in question, then send an email in this format [telephonenumber]@[carrier-name.com]

Carrier Email to SMS Gateway

Alltel [10-digit phone number]@message.alltel.com
Example: 1234567890@message.alltel.com
AT&T (formerly Cingular) [10-digit phone number]@txt.att.net
[10-digit phone number]@mms.att.net (MMS)
[10-digit phone number]@cingularme.com
Example: 1234567890@txt.att.net
Boost Mobile [10-digit phone number]@myboostmobile.com
Example: 1234567890@myboostmobile.com
Nextel (now Sprint Nextel) [10-digit telephone number]@messaging.nextel.com
Example: 1234567890@messaging.nextel.com
Sprint PCS (now Sprint Nextel) [10-digit phone number]@messaging.sprintpcs.com
[10-digit phone number]@pm.sprint.com (MMS)
Example: 1234567890@messaging.sprintpcs.com
T-Mobile [10-digit phone number]@tmomail.net
Example: 1234567890@tmomail.net
US Cellular [10-digit phone number]email.uscc.net (SMS)
[10-digit phone number]@mms.uscc.net (MMS)
Example: 1234567890@email.uscc.net
Verizon [10-digit phone number]@vtext.com
[10-digit phone number]@vzwpix.com (MMS)
Example: 1234567890@vtext.com
Virgin Mobile USA [10-digit phone number]@vmobl.com
Example: 1234567890@vmobl.com
Free Email To SMS Gateways (International + Smaller US)

These are all I could find from Wikipedia and other sources. If you’re aware of any other ones please share them in comments and I’ll add them to the list.

Carrier Email to SMS Gateway
7-11 Speakout (USA GSM) number@cingularme.com
Airtel (Karnataka, India) number@airtelkk.com
Airtel Wireless (Montana, USA) number@sms.airtelmontana.com
Alaska Communications Systems number@msg.acsalaska.com
Aql number@text.aql.com
AT&T Enterprise Paging number@page.att.net
BigRedGiant Mobile Solutions number@tachyonsms.co.uk
Bell Mobility & Solo Mobile (Canada) number@txt.bell.ca
BPL Mobile (Mumbai, India) number@bplmobile.com
Cellular One (Dobson) number@mobile.celloneusa.com
Cingular (Postpaid) number@cingularme.com
Centennial Wireless number@cwemail.com
Cingular (GoPhone prepaid) number@cingularme.com (SMS)
Claro (Brasil) number@clarotorpedo.com.br
Claro (Nicaragua) number@ideasclaro-ca.com
Comcel number@comcel.com.co
Cricket number@sms.mycricket.com (SMS)
CTI number@sms.ctimovil.com.ar
Emtel (Mauritius) number@emtelworld.net
Fido (Canada) number@fido.ca
General Communications Inc. number@msg.gci.net
Globalstar (satellite) number@msg.globalstarusa.com
Helio number@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Illinois Valley Cellular number@ivctext.com
Iridium (satellite) number@msg.iridium.com
Iusacell number@rek2.com.mx
i wireless number.iws@iwspcs.net
Koodo Mobile (Canada) number@msg.koodomobile.com
LMT (Latvia) number@sms.lmt.lv
Meteor (Ireland) number@sms.mymeteor.ie
Mero Mobile (Nepal) 977number@sms.spicenepal.com
MetroPCS number@mymetropcs.com
Movicom (Argentina) number@sms.movistar.net.ar
Mobitel (Sri Lanka) number@sms.mobitel.lk
Movistar (Colombia) number@movistar.com.co
MTN (South Africa) number@sms.co.za
MTS (Canada) number@text.mtsmobility.com
Nextel (United States) number@messaging.nextel.com
Nextel (Argentina) TwoWay.11number@nextel.net.ar
Orange Polska (Poland) 9digit@orange.pl
Personal (Argentina) number@alertas.personal.com.ar
Plus GSM (Poland) +48number@text.plusgsm.pl
President’s Choice (Canada) number@txt.bell.ca
Qwest number@qwestmp.com
Rogers (Canada) number@pcs.rogers.com
SL Interactive (Australia) number@slinteractive.com.au
Sasktel (Canada) number@sms.sasktel.com
Setar Mobile email (Aruba) 297+number@mas.aw
Suncom number@tms.suncom.com
T-Mobile (Austria) number@sms.t-mobile.at
T-Mobile (UK) number@t-mobile.uk.net
Telus Mobility (Canada) number@msg.telus.com
Thumb Cellular number@sms.thumbcellular.com
Tigo (Formerly Ola) number@sms.tigo.com.co
Tracfone (prepaid) number@mmst5.tracfone.com
Unicel number@utext.com
Virgin Mobile (Canada) number@vmobile.ca
Vodacom (South Africa) number@voda.co.za
Vodafone (Italy) number@sms.vodafone.it
YCC number@sms.ycc.ru
MobiPCS (Hawaii only) number@mobipcs.net

Pass a fourth parameter to the mail() function with the header information.

<?php
$to = "jane@example.com";
$subject = "Hello World!";
$body = "This will be sent from email-addr@example.com";
$headers = "From: email-addr@example.com\r\nX-Mailer: php";
mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);

Great little gem that let’s you quickly and easily send out mail from your ruby scripts.

gem install pony

require 'rubygems'
require 'pony'

Pony.mail :from=>"me@example.com", :to=>"you@example.com", :subject=>"hello", :body=>"world"

I normally install postfix for my MTA. However, I’ve never really used sendmail so I’d decide to give it a whirl for a new application I’m working on. I don’t use it for anything but handling the mail that the application needs to send out, like new user welcome emails, password resets, etc.

apt-get install sendmail

Sendmail, unlike postfix, won’t work out of the box. Postfix will prompt you for the necessary config setup when running the install. Sendmail won’t, and therefore it’s not ‘out of the box’. You’ll have to make some modifications on your own. Nothing major but this is what I’ve found in order to get it to work, reliably and quickly. The first thing I did was add the fully qualified domain name to my /etc/hosts file

#vim /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 www.mydomain.com

After this I added the fully qualified domain name to my apache default configuration file

#/etc/apache2/sites-available/default
ServerName www.mydomain.com
#vhost info etc...

Reload and restart…

/etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload
/etc/init.d/sendmail restart

You can test sendmail like so

sendmail email@example.com
hello
from
me
.

This should deliver a message to you (the “.” on a new line, followed by a new line, closes the message).

There is a helper method for handling the obfuscation of email addresses in Rails.

mail_to "me@domain.com", "My email", :encode => "hex"
 # => <a href="mailto:%6d%65@%64%6f%6d%61%69%6e.%63%6f%6d">My email</a>

If you want to then extract an email address(or all email addresses) from a block of text here is the code. I created a helper function called “emailitize” and put it in the ApplicationHelper module inside helpers/application_helper.rb

module ApplicationHelper
  #takes a string and will return the same string but with email addresses encoded and hyperlinked
  def emailitize(text)
    text.gsub(/([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+\.)+[a-z]{2,})/i) {|m|
        mail_to(m, m.gsub("@", "<small>[at]</small>"), :encode=>:hex)
    }
  end
end

It’s important to remember that you’ll need to pass a block to the gsub method. You can’t do something like this instead

text.gsub( /([^@\s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+\.)+[a-z]{2,})/i, mail_to('\\1@\\2', '\\1@\\2', :encode=>:hex) )

It will work except the encode will fail. It will evaluate the ‘\\1@\\2′ strings rather than as dynamic variables.

You can then use this function in your views

<%= emailitize @job.how_to_apply %>

More information is available in the Rails and Ruby docs:

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/UrlHelper.html#M001887

http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/String.html#M000817

If you run into problems using ActionMailer > 2.2, Postfix and OpenSSL while sending mail from your application, try changing the following:

  vim /etc/postfix/main.cf

Change

 smtpd_use_tls=yes

to

smtpd_use_tls=no

OpenSSL support with Postfix does not work out of the box. You can either generate valid certificates or tell Postfix not to use the certificates. More information is available in this discussion forum.

http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=2656

You’ll need a mail transport agent (MTA). I installed and used postfix using Mac Ports.

sudo port install postfix

You’ll need to start postfix, to send mail from your Rails application. You can set it as a startup item and it will start on boot. However, since I don’t send too much mail from my Rails app, just for testing normally, I start it manually.

sudo postfix start

That should do it!