I am in love with Google
Google Labs has an SMS interface to it’s vast stores of useful data. I am in love. Now, instead of traversing through the crappy Sprint “web” interface to find movie times, weather and other interesting information, I can just send a SMS message to GOOGL(46645) and ask the great oracle.
Examples: Movie listings: “batman begins 20878″ returns a listing of all the showtimes for batman begins at the Rio and the Kentlands stadium (the two theaters in the 20878 zip code). weather: “weather 20878″ returns the current and next 5 day forcast for Gaithersburg weather. You can also get directions! If you have the luxury of playing with SMS on your phone, I highly suggest you try it
)

I am not in love with my cell phone provider over this. My cell phone service is through Virgin Mobile, but I can’t use Google SMS. When I asked why not, their customer service rep answered, “That service is not supported by us, so you are unable to use it.” Stupid Virgin Mobile. “Text message without boundaries” my ass!
Google uses something called “US shortcode”(?) for the number, I ran into something similar on a Starburst package (SMS this number to see if you’ve won!) I saw this kind of thing all over Europe, and it’s nice to see that the US is moving in that direction, but perhaps it’s only the major carriers. I’m suprised that Virgin Mobile isn’t working, because I think that uses Sprint’s network.