Ex-Googlers Launch MightyText, An iMessage For Android Users
techcrunch.comTangentially related: I find it really ironic how the IM landscape has changed over the decades.
At first we had proprietary protocols like ICQ, AIM and MSN. Then we got clients that reverse-engineered the protocols and supported logging onto multiple networks, which was nice, but the cat-and-mouse game between IM vendors and the people reverse-engineering the protocol was annoying for all parts (i.e clients stopping to work and wasted effort on the IM vendor side).
In all this mess, Jabber was born, trying to standardize IM with the XMPP protocol and the Jabber implementation.
It never flied.
And now we are at a point where all these additional IM services pop up. Ironically, all of them are using XMPP under the hood but all of them go great lengths in adding crypto to make absolutely sure that they are not interoperable.
This is one of the rare cases where a standard was created which everybody is actually following, but which didn't create any kind of interoperability between clients.
It pains me endlessly that I must know whether I can contact person X via iMessage or WhatsApp or now this. And this time it's not even about reverse-engineering protocols. It's just about checking whether your client is a "legitimate" one. There's no technical reason besides actually removing checks and making server names configurable why WhatsApp couldn't talk with iMessage or why GTalk can't talk with WhatsApp and so on.
Jabber and GTalk are completely interoperable, though.
Except that user name quirks are required to login to gtalk with an xmpp client :(
>It pains me endlessly that I must know whether I can contact person X via iMessage or WhatsApp or now this.
I think the situation is short term though (5 years?). Right now there's a battle for dominance on the mobile front and everyone is taking the proprietary route in an attempt to gain market dominance.
AOL had this chance with standardization years ago with AIM but they not only screwed up the entire company but this product as well.
I remember an article on HN says the XMPP creator is inventing a better alternative to XMPP. Anyone remember?
I really don't think IM and SMS-like messaging is the same. IM is real-time and synchronous.
The great thing about SMS is the asynchronous nature of the conversations.
What's even cooler about iMessage and Whatsapp is that the conversations are stored and you can access them from different devices.
I believe there should be a standard to connect services like iMessage, Whatsapp and the likes. XMPP does not permit that.
Both iMessage and Whatsapp are using XMPP which does in-fact support store and forward of IM messages - hence it's being used by these services.
The only additonal part is the background notifications which use Apple's (or Google's on Android) proprietary system. But once you start your client app, they connect to the server via XMPP and use that for message delivery.
using FB's jabber/xmpp servers here for fb-chat, working well.
I'm using a xmpp transport and chat with my facebook contacts through google talk.
MightyText is a "SMS remote control" for your Android phone. It gives you a browser-interface from which you can send/receive SMS.
It's critical to realize that you are interacting with the MightyText webapp over the internet, it runs on their servers. When your phone receives a SMS it will upload it to their servers so it shows up in the web-interface.
When you write a SMS in their web-interface then your phone will later pick it up (by polling their servers) and send it out via your phone's GSM.
Notice something?
Right, all your SMS conversations now run through their servers. Also, if their servers get compromised then the new owner will gain significant control over your phone; at the least they will be able to send SMS in your name. This is a disaster waiting to happen.
If you're looking for a better implementation of this concept (convenient web-interface to send/receive SMS) then look for "EasySMS" in the android market.
EasySMS runs a webserver directly on your phone, which you connect to with your browser. It's your own local MightyText. No middleman involved, no need to upload all your SMS to remote servers, no need to give a third party remote-control over your phone.
I installed Mightytext and while going through the setup process, noticed it needed access to ALL of my phone and SMSs ... it is bad enough all my stuff is on Google servers, but I at least know they take their security very serious! Mightytext does not even mention security anywhere on their site, Twitter, FB, etc!
> Right, all your SMS conversations now run through their servers.
I may misunderstand but all of your text conversations are available through their servers while they still go through your phone. You can still just directly send a text from your phone, right?
Yes, that's right.
My point was that you're then sharing all your conversations with their servers. That's imho a bad trade-off when you can just run the web-interface directly on your phone.
hmm, if its so good, why does it have a 3.7 star user rating?
the others (desksms, mightytext) are much higher.
i know that's not your point (security concern), but, still.
People seem confused as to what this is. MightyText lets you text from your computer as if you are texting from your phone.
I've been using this for around 2 months now. It is VERY buggy. Sometimes you'll experience delays in receiving and sometimes you don't even know if your text was sent out. You have to kind of get used to its 'quirks'.
Having said that, it has gotten a lot better and I expect it to continue. Anyone who texts a lot during the day should love setting up MightyText.
I tried it and agree it's very buggy. If they can't get rid of the obvious bugs, how am I supposed to trust that my data is not exposed by much more subtle ones? I've un-registered and deleted my data.
How'd you delete your data?
I'm trying to remove my account too..
I revoked address book access, deleted the conversations individually (I couldn't find a feature to delete them all), revoked access from Google Accounts, and removed the app from my phone.
Am I the only one seeing this app as a white-hate trojan horse on mobile?
By installing the app, you enable MightyText to take your SMS and send SMS in your name. You have to trust them.
This smells like danger to me.
Yes... it is confusing. I had to read the article and the Play page to make sense of it.
My current interpretation is:
"This app lets your phone forward texts to your computer, tablet, or any other device. It also works in reverse so you can text people from any device. The texts are synced on all devices."
google voice integration for sprint does this, I don't see how this is better.
Not everyone has Sprint, and Voice doesn't integrate MMS.
Why can't Google centralize its messaging apps already, including adding SMS into it? Sure, the carriers might not like it, but get with the program Google.
I don't see how it is different from DeskSMS. This is not like iMessage at all, it just syncs your SMS messages to your computer. It doesn't actually enable your computer to send or receive SMS messages. So if I am roaming or have my phone turned off, I don't get messages.
looks pretty close to DeskSMS. they seem similar.
the problem with the "phone off" thing is -- then you don't get texts to your # at all.
I hope carriers will work with MightyText to do direct integration.
I've been using MightyText in beta for months. It doesn't resemble iMessage in any way, and it's not supposed to. I have no idea where the headline came from. It's not an IM service. It is, simply, an app for sending and receiving text messages through your phone from a PC. So if you're at a computer and you receive a text, or you want to text someone, instead of taking your phone out of your pocket and using the little screen and the little keyboard, you do it right on the computer. Simple, useful, end of story.
Okay, I'm still confused. Is it "iMessage for Androud users" in that it automatically recognizes other MightyText users and sends those messages over the data connection? That point isn't especially clear.
Also, why is there so much emphasis on browser sync? Is the browser install a dependency? Does this work if, say, my browser is closed or my PC is shut down? I would assume that it does, but with the browser sync instructions so heavily emphasized in the install instructions, I'm not sure.
It's not "iMessage for Android users" in any way. The headline is nonsense. If your browser is closed or your PC is shut down, MightyText does nothing for you. The browser interface is the interface.
I'm curious how this is significantly different from say, Google Voice's SMS implementation; Aside from the obvious "making and receiving" calls functionality, it looks just like Google Voice to me, which I use exclusively for its ability to send text messages without having to resort to using my phone.
Edit: Nevermind, after installing and playing with it, it even consumes my native SMS messages. A nice touch for sure.
yes the difference is that it integrates directly with your android phone # and sms.
been using it for a few weeks, really like it.
For others like me that skimmed the article quickly trying to figure out how it was different than all the other iMessage competitors on Android right now, let me save you the trouble and show you the big difference:
> Uses your current Android phone number.
This is awesome. I hope it takes off quickly.
WhatsApp is also based on your phone number and it works across all major mobile platforms (iOS, Android, WP, BB)
> mobile platforms
And that's the problem. I want to have clients on all my devices (desktop, tablet, smartphone) accessing the very same account, like GTalk.
I should have read the article completely first.
I was thrown off by the comparison to iMessage in the article title.
if you want to "whatsapp" someone, you both have to have the app installed.
Calling it iMessage for Android is misleading. MightyText is basically a web interface for your SMS's.
This is good but what I really want is SMS integrated with email. Think about it SMS is a text based conversation just like email- how much better would it be to have all the other functions of email (especially gmail) tagging, archiving, threads, filters, ability to mark as SPAM.
SMS as a separate product made sense when it was first introduced- email on phones didn't exist. But in 2012 it's time they were integrated.
As an aside I also wish that carriers would stop doing voicemail and the various (broken) text->voice services and just record the message as an MP3 (low quality is good) and message it to me- again having it turn up in my mailbox would be even better.
Does it count toward my 250 texts per month, or is it free?
i think its whatever your phone's plan is cause it sends from your phone.
OK, then that's not as good as google voice, for me. Thanks.
Doesn't work for me.
https://mightytext.net/app -> " Error in GetUserInfo: timeout" whether I'm logged into Google or not.
Too bad. I like DeskSMS and I'd prefer something like it only free.
I get the exact same error. Have you found anything since you posted this?
A few hours later it worked on my work computer with XP. Still doesn't work on my home computer with Arch Linux.
Error
Test
I noticed yesterday that my android gtalk app was updating a thread when I switched to it. It seems like a recent change and it's entirely server side. Has anybody else noticed?
This is not particularly recent, in my experience. GTalk has been syncing between gmail, my phone, and my tablet very well for a while now, but it's certainly a welcome feature.
Wait, I thought WhatsApp or Google Voice were the replacements for iMessage. It needs to work everywhere like Google Voice, or save you international SMS like WhatsApp does.
the main reason i use android over iphone is the seamless integration of google voice, and gv already gives me access to my sms & vmail from the browser.
imho, the solution isn't to build yet another android app but to make google voice a natural/default choice for android users. if you have an android phone and haven't tried google voice yet, i highly recommend you give it a shot. having used it for the last few years, i can't imagine ever going back to carrier sms/vmail.
I agree. The killer thing about Google Voice is that it lets you block calls via a web interface.
It's not hard to figure out how to block all "private" and "unknown" calls. So that means surveys or telemarketers or whoever have to use a number that you can block.
The Google voice extension for Chrome works very well for texting. Nice to use a full-size keyboard.
Such a simple idea, but love how it's done. Surprising that Android doesn't offer this as a standard part of it's OS. Well done MightyText!
How is this different/superior to gtalk in anyway?
If some of your friends have no access to gTalk, or prefer SMS, then this might help. However this will store all your SMSes in their server from now on.
We are using Chikka (http://www.chikka.com/) in the Philippines since 2001
For interoperability, I like email. It is well supported across most platforms, and everyone has already adopted it.
It's not totally perfect, but HandcentSMS will auto-group iMessages sent to you for you on Android.
just started using it. Its simply amazing... users seems to love this app like crazy - https://twitter.com/#!/mightytext/favorites
Sticking with koush's DeskSMS for now. Support the indie devs!
Let me just say it - what a silly name.
just downloaded. i can text so much faster now. is this for real? wow.
A BBM for Android?
How is this different (besides visually) from porting my number to Google Voice? It seems to have the exact same set of functionality.
Also, koush's DeskSMS has been around much, much longer and is the exact same as this.
I'm not sure if this helps, but I think Google Voice is still unavailable to 95% of the world (i.e., it's Americans-only) so that may be a large difference (if these guys support non-Americans, anyway).
Ah, I always forget my American privilege. You're right of course.
One difference (relevant to me, at least) is that Google Voice does not yet support MMS messages.
On Sprint it does
It's a bit of a hack, you only see photos if you enable text to email and read it as such.
I believe mightytext has actually been around longer than koush's DeskSMS.
Whoops, I tend to assume a feature on TC indicates a recentish launch.