Abstract
Mercury is a free application for Microsoft Windows that allows you to send text messages (otherwise known as SMS') via 11 web-based gateways without having to log onto their site. It provides a unified look and feel as well as address book, sent items and enhanced composing functionality such as the ability to automatically split long messages up over muliple texts and send the same message to more than one person.
Important notice! Please read! The last official version of Mercury was released in September 2005. At the current time of writing that makes it almost 5 years old. Although an interim update was issued June 2006, it mainly added a bunch of bug fixes and support for American SMS providers, the latter not getting any kind of take-up. It is considered stable enough to use though.
The application should still work (although it's never been tested in Vista or Windows 7 and will definitely generate UAC alerts) and some of the gateways (probably) still work too, although I suspect only the ones which you need to pay for.
If you're looking for a way to send free SMS' from your computer then the chances are that this application will no longer work for you. Although I have limited experience of the state of mobile in other parts of the world, the UK network operators offer you unlimited text messages with contracts and usually 300 (or more) if you top up a pre-pay phone with as little as £10 - so excluding the conveniance of typing on a computer keyboard - there is no real reason to use this application any more.
The code and this site has been left up and you're welcome to download and have a play. The application itself (whilst messy in places and written in an old language) has some useful things which developers might like to tinker with.
-- Richard (25th July 2010)
Supported gateways
A detailed list of the 11 supported gateways can be found on this page.
Support for other gateways can be achieved through the writing of an SMS gateway definition file. Take a look at the protocol if you are interested in getting Mercury working with another site.
Requirements
Mercury runs on computers running Microsoft Windows. Although all versions are supported, Mercury runs best and has been tested extensivily on the 2000 and XP versions.
If you do not run Microsoft Windows, or you would rather a command line version of the application for greater flexibility and use within scripts, web-sites or situations where a graphical interface is not required, then please look at mercurysms.
Screenshots
A small number of screenshots are available to view below. Click on image or the description to view a full size version. These pictures were taken from version 0.4.3 and the look and feel is very similar to the current version.
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| Entering a message | Editing a contact |
Licence
Mercury is distributed under the GNU GPL. In short, this means you get the code absolutely free. In addition you can freely make modifications to that code and redistribute it, as long as you use the same licence. For more details about the GNU GPL see the Frequently Asked Questions.
Download
- The latest version is 1.0.1 released 27th September 2005.
- You can download the installer by clicking on this link (2.1 meg)
- You will be prompted to allow the application to download and install the gateway definition files when you first run it.
Source code
You can download the source code from here. It contains the Visual Basic 6 source code, help files, install scripts, images and documentation on how it works. It is 3.2 megabytes in size.
Support
As of 21st December 2008 no support is provided for this application. Given that it hasn't had an update in over 2 years, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
If you're really stuck feel free to drop me an email, although I cannot guarantee a timely response.
Unstable (preview) releases
If you fancy living on the bleeding edge, so to speak, you can download preview 1 (dated 16 June 2006) of Mercury 1.0.2. This is an unstable preview and should not be considered indicative of the final release.
To install, backup your current Program Files\Mercury folder (in case of any problems) and then decompress the contents of this zip file (336k) into that folder. This will overwrite the current executable and help file with the new version. A list of changes can be found in the history section of the help file.
To ensure that my time is concentrated on getting this version working rather than helping people with trivial problems, please do not attempt to use this unless you are completely au fait with how Mercury works and Windows in general.
However, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions regarding this preview then please feel free to post them in the Google Groups forum.
This software and website are not affiliated or endorsed by any of the SMS providers listed here.
The host of this website are in no way resposible for its content or software supported by it.
Mercury copyright 2000-2005 ©
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