TextMe Blog

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TextMe to Launch new Version of TextMe on Android Wear at Google I/O

Since we started TextMe 4 years ago, we have been working hard at bringing you the very best possible communication experience on any device. We started with Smartphones, then Tablets and have been experimenting with new platforms in the last year, including launching TextMe on Google Glass.

We view our mission as doing anything we can to remove barriers that get in the way when you want to communicate with your friends and family. Today is a big milestone in this adventure.

With the launch of the Android Wear Platform we saw an opportunity to bring the TextMe experience to a new level. As much as many of us already live with multiple connected devices : a TV, a computer, a smartphone and a tablet, none of these devices are always ‘’on you’’, always accessible, in less than a second. This is about to change.

With the launch of the Android Wear Platform, many devices manufacturers are about to launch some really exciting wearable devices that, we believe, will have a profound effect on how we all interact with technology and mobile applications like TextMe.

When building TextMe on Android Wear, we chose to focus on 2 scenarios, where running TextMe on your watch will transform your TextMe experience :

 1.Deal with Incoming Calls from your watch : how many times have you missed an important call because your phone was in your bag, on your desk ? Well, with TextMe on Android wear, you will be able to see your incoming calls on TextMe on your watch. From the watch, you will be able to decline or accept a call and potentially tell your friend : ‘’I am in a meeting, I ll call you right back’’ directly from the watch, without pulling your smartphone.

    2. Receive and send Stickers directly from your watch : Many of you love sending stickers from TextMe to all your friends. You keep telling us stickers are a great way to share an emotion or a joke, with no need for words. Well, with TextMe on Android Wear, if you receive a sticker, it will be directly display on your watch, and you will even be able to respond with a sticker, directly from the watch.

Bear in mind, this is just the beginning, but we could not be more excited about these new platforms and how they will allow us to help you communicate with your friends. Stay tuned for more exciting news on this topic in the future.

Greg Kokanosky Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, TextMe

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Big day for TextMe at DBX!

Today is a very big day for the TextMe team. During DBX, Dropbox’s first developer conference, we are releasing our most exciting Android app to date. 

We have been working very hard on the new version of TextMe for Android. Our goal has simply been to build our best product to date.

Within the TextMe team, we are very heavy users of Dropbox. Just like the other more than 175 million people who use Dropbox to make their life easier, we rely on Dropbox to manage both our personal and work life and be more efficient.  In the last few weeks, we thought hard about we could do to leverage the Dropbox platform to make the TextMe experience better and decided to focus on a simple use case. With our new integration of the Dropbox Chooser, TextMe users can share their Dropbox content via text message (real sms) with anyone in the world, directly from the TextMe app on their Android phone.  Of course, they can also use the feature to share their Dropbox content with other TextMe users.  Our users will not be limited by what’s on their device anymore (or any specific device for that matter). We think we have made sharing photos and videos a lot easier and a lot faster.  The same feature will, of course, come to iOS soon.

We think this integration makes it dead simple to access your documents on Dropbox and share them instantly (via text message) with anyone, no matter what phone, app or OS they are using.

Along with the neat Dropbox integration, our new Android app enjoyed a massive upgrade with lots of goodies we are proud to offer to our users. 

Full native support for Android tablets with a brand new UI for tablets

Native and Free Video Messages 

Users can now use their Free TextMe credits to send SMS to more than 140 countries in the world

Massive improvements to our overall experience

New UI for our Android app on smartphones

Many more ways to earn free TextMe credits by watching videos

Lots of cool Android widgets to personalize your TextMe experience

Receive your TextMe messages on Google Glass or Pebble watch

Thank you to the more than 12 Million of you who have signed up for TextMe since we launched the app.  We will continue to raise the bar and make sure TextMe offers the best universal communication experience in the world.

For those of you who will be at DBX as well, please come and say hi!

Greg Kokanosky, CTO and Co-Founder, TextMe

Contact:

Email : [email protected]

Twitter : @TextMeapp

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TextMe teams up with Open Garden

Want to communicate without connectivity, Wi-Fi or otherwise Simple, just use 

TextMe powered by Open Garden!

As you may have seen, Open Garden has just teamed up with TextMe. Is that just a case of the coolest cross-platform free communication app teaming up with the coolest mesh networking app you may ask? Well, that is that indeed and much more.

Let us start with TextMe, if we may. Our mission is clear, turn any connected device into a smart phone for free. Simple, you may say; alas, many a time are we blocked in our noble endeavor for lack of bandwidth, or even worse, lack of access. Yes, dear user, we know how painful it is not to be able to phone, video chat, chat, text, send IM, with TextMe when Wi-Fi is down or 3G or 4G networks are found wanting.

So we thought of something.

The dumbest smart phone (there is one, it may be from Finland) packs more bandwidth than the entire Nasa needed to send people to the Moon and back. That is what I call “too much” bandwidth, and - that is the beauty of it - most of the time, it is not being used, IT IS IDLE.

Seeing this, one company, our partner Open Garden, developed some fiendishly clever software so that idle capacity could be shared especially with Open Garden users lacking connectivity.

See? at the same time, TextMe users with (triumphant trumpets) a constitutional right to communicate for free but (boo) no connectivity and (chimes) in the other corner, (start the violins) lots of people with idle bandwidth offering it to others; (the biggest drums available) : problem solved !

So go on, download TextMe - together with Open Garden - and turn your preferred device into a free phone everywhere there is an Open Garden user near you.

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Even more freedom of speech, text and video coming to your Droids

Don't you think it is a bit unfair that iOS devices would behave like little chatterboxes - Siri here and Siri there - when Android phones only utter their names in the gravest voice possible : "Droid" ?

We do, and so are we coming to the rescue with our brand new Android application, so that Droids' and Droids' users freedom of speech is fully respected. 

Our new Android application will allow users to send text messages, call any phone numbers in the USA, Canada, and 40 other countries for free, and enjoy Free Video Calls.

It was long overdue but as you know, we are only coming out with a product once its meets our quality standards (don't laugh in the back, we do take quality personally).

So here is what you need to remember, when thinking about TextMe - which we believe you do all the time pretty much the same way we do : with the new Android version, TextMe is now the first and only full featured communication application to be available both on iOS (iPhone and iPod Touch) and Android devices.

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Let's Celebrate ... And Call for FREE!

Fireworks, families gathering in the summer sun, red white and blue festoons floating in the wind, yes! Let us all salute the Union in our own way. This is a small one from our team for every american user, and especially for our brave men and women from overseas using TextMe : on July 4th calls to the US using TextMe are to be free. So wherever in the world you may be, on this glorious day, don't hesitate to perfect the Union by giving a free call to your loved ones. It's on us.

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Let’s Talk

It has been a long time since our last post; let us talk. When I say us, I really mean you! We have been working hard at it and we are now proud to introduce our brand new free voice service. Our users already enjoyed free IM, free texting, free voice mail and now each of you will be able to put and receive Voice and Video calls for free using TextMe

Our vision for TextMe is actually very simple, we believe in delivering a completely free telecommunication experience to our users, across all platforms and all types of communications. The introduction of voice is yet another step in that direction. A major one we believe.

We took our time to do it well as we also remain deeply convinced the key to success is quality, from the very first experience of the service: our engineers have been burning the midnight oil to deliver the best app and our customer service will focus on getting your feedback so that we keep on improving.

Now, you will notice as well that our designers have not been sitting idle either: we have completely overhauled the look and feel of our app from the color environment up to our new logo. While keeping it simple, we wanted to bring it to the next level by incorporating seamlessly the voice communication capability into a crisper design. Whether we succeeded remains for you to tell us.

 But enough with the chitchat, let’s talk! Give it a try and let us know what you think!

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Thank you guys! Thanks to your votes, About.com just granted us the 2012 iPod/iPhone Readers' Choice Award for best texting app. We're not going to hide it, awards are good for the ego ; we can only be ever so grateful for your endorsement as we realize there is robust competition out there. Together with our stellar reviews on the App store, we have the weakness to believe this award validates our core strategy, a strategy centered on quality and reliability.

You see, we could have spent TextMe resources on something else than trying to deliver a free, reliable and smooth communication experience, but we chose otherwise. But enough with self-congratulation already, our engineers have dived back in their lines of code, so stay tune for more great features coming soon and remember, there is something about TextMe!

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The Wonderful World of Mobile World Congress 2012

Well, you know what they say, sometimes shift happens. And hearing the panels and announcements made at the Mobile World Congress, a lot of shift has happened already.   Sure you had the customary launch of the next iPhone- iPad-killer and it’s true that the Beam is a beautiful thing but, come on guys, aren’t we all waiting for when the iPad3 will be out! I believe device fatigue has become systemic: obsolescence is organized around ever shortening life cycles, the next big thing is weeks away if not tomorrow! It is like the industry had decided collectively to Osborne itself. Also, the 2012 MWC showed time again that device manufacturers have yet to solve the problem of platform fragmentation. They seem to actually refuse to do so, still ardent believers in the silo sales model and terribly afraid of losing their fast eroding differentiation power.   The big lesson, if you ask me, delivered by the 2012 MWC is that hardware isn’t ruling the game anymore. Don’t get me wrong, it is still very very important to have super-tech gizmos we can drop on our toes and I cannot wait to bother the team with wall-to-wall corporate PowerPoints springing from my phone, how cool would that be!   It is important, and yet, Apps rule. A lot of power is now in the hands of little guys like us who provide services previously cordoned off by operators and hardware manufacturers. It is striking to see how in a couple of years, we moved from a telecommunication universe where everything revolved around device manufacturers and telecom operators to a mobile centric world where the App providers have become the pied piper of the corporate pack. Yep, you could see clearly this during the panels of 2012 MWC and nobody’s talking about going back. The app exeprience matters more than the device itself: I want to play Angry Birds the same way on all my devices, don’t force me to pick just one device for playing Angry Birds!   Then, there is the Facebook announcement. Facebook is certainly powerful enough to project a reality distortion field that is so strong, it makes its partnership proposal with telecom operators relevant. Yet, we reckon the jury will be out for a while on this one and that the Facebook move in mobile is a defensive one.   As far as we can tell, Facebook has not – yet - found a business model on mobile, not – yet – decided on a Facebook phone. Take for example how things may go with Zynga and how threatening that may be for Facebook. As Zynga’s mobile business catches up, potentially becoming dominant, less and less of its game dollars will flow through Facebook meaning significant lost revenues for the social network.   What do you do when you have not found a way of entering the communication ring by yourself, like Apple did in the brave old days? Well, you partner with the operators until you can either bypass them or grind them down. Here is what I believe Facebook has really said during the 2012 MWC: “we don’t know yet how to crack mobile but until we do, we will work with the grey haired guys as a second best”.   On a different note, the 2012 MWC was also interesting for what was said on platforms. Android is going stronger by the day. Alternatives face an uphill battle (one may say a vertical battle) to reach critical mass. Nobody believes anymore in RCS, the OTT (Over the Top) app framework, since Apple jinxed it in style. Similarly, Joyn is a desperate move by operators probably leading nowhere fast as the world does not need another platform and one can count on Google not to facilitate unification outside Android.   It’s a wonderful world, I told you so. Christophe BACH Founder

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TextMe is a finalist in the About.com Readers’ Choice Awards!

Thank you TextMe users: thanks to you, we have been nominated as a finalist in the About.com Reader's Choice Awards in the Best Texting application category! Please keep helping us and cast your votes online to help us win: Vote for TextMe here! Your support and help is awesome! We feel honored to have you as users!