Announcement methods

[travo]

Hey Im just planning out a game at the moment, and I had an idea recently that premium users can be contacted when anything ingame happens involving them. I was wondering what you guys think.

Im planning to use a jabber server for the main chatroom, seeing how I can go, using XMPPHP (http://code.google.com/p/xmpphp/) I can send a message to the user saying that something has happened. I was thinking about implementing this for all users, not just premium ones.

Heres the premium part.

If the user is not online in the chat, I can try messaging them using an IM protocol of their choice, at their specified address. So far I have found http://www.fanatic.net.nz/2005/02/15/send-a-message-using-php/ for msn and http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/3373.html for yahoo. I will look into AIM and ICQ if the idea takes off.

In the event they are offline, Im not sure, either send an email or do nothing...

What do you guys think?

[Mufasa]

Have you considered SMS? Fairly cheap (especially if you do the email to SMS option) and SMS is pretty universal these days

[travo]

I have, but then I was reading http://community.bbgamezone.net/index.php/topic,1717.0.html

Note also that USA isn't really used to text messaging and a lot of their providers don't have text messaging even in the standard package, is a expensive option. Most likely that voice calling is so much cheaper in the US than it is in Europe.

So Im not sure if it would be that worth it, because Im sure there would be other countries that are similar, but at the same time I really have no clue

[Mufasa]

Hmm, I don't think that's true anymore. A LOT of carriers build in text messaging plans -- however, even if they don't, so what? The user would be the one to specify they'd like to receive the alert right? So the user is the one that would need to check what their rate plan is

[toxin]

A few SMS sited I found
http://zeepmobile.com/
http://gizmo5.com/pc/products/features/two-way-sms/
http://smseverywhere.com/
http://www.aspsms.com/

[travo]

Good point Mufasa

Thanks for the links Toxin, I havent seen those ones before, when I googled sms api, I got all australian sites... Those ones are relatively cheaper lol.