Send an email message from an Iridium 9555 Sat Phone

In my last post, I talked about how to send twits from the middle of the Atlantic ocean using the twitter email relay client twittermail. But there is still a bit of a problem. Sending emails from a wee boat can be a bit of a pain. Usually you have to pull out the PC and/or fire up the SSB and cross your fingers a bit. If you have tons of cash you might even have a live imersat connection. Well for 69 cents you can sen an email using the text message feature of the new Iridium Sat phones.

Many cell phone companies (as well as Iridium) allow you to start your text message with an email address followed by a space and then your message. The final message can only be 139 characters minus the length of your email message. Not a lot, put plenty of room for a tweet.
Using the Iridium 9555 as an example, you would first create your message, such as:

mytwittermailid@twittermail.com Wow what a great day of sailing! 140nm under sunny skies.

To create the @ symbol you have to press the * key and then select from the symbols. After your message is compiled you hit 'Send'. A new menu comes up and you select the 'New recipient' option. In the number field, enter +*2 and press 'OK'. Now press the 'Send' message and you are good to go. In our example, the text message got relayed to email which got sent to twittermail which relayed it to our twitter account http://www.twitter.com/indigoSV.

Sounds simple. It seems like it took us forever to figure it out.


From Indigo in the BVI … I am outa here!