I’ve been experimenting with different ways of getting twitter notifications by SMS now twitter has turned that off in the UK.

If you search “RSS to SMS” on Google you find Pingie – which seems to offer the ideal solution. It will send text updates from an RSS feed (and you can get a feed from twitter of @messages by using tweetscan, or your friends timeline from the bottom of your twitter home page).

Unfortunately, Pingie seems to be US texts only — but it also sends email updates if you put an address in,  and fast too.

So — if you can sort Email to SMS you’re laughing. Surfing around I found a page that might offer a solution.

Here goes nothing, here’s how to get your tweets on via text:

• The page on Mutape will work out your UK phone provider’s email to SMS gateway service email address and tell you how to activate it – either online or by a text. For O2, T- Mobile and Orange anyway — For O2 for example it’s your international phone number +447etc@mmail.co.uk.

I’m not sure this is free, but it seems to be – Mutape says :”Most networks provide this service completely free, but some do not. It is advisable to check with your own provider to check this out before using the service heavily. In most cases the cost of the message is covered by standard texting plans (e.g. free texts).” Use at your own risk etc.

• Get the RSS feed URL for the tweets you want – all from twitter.com/home at the bottom, @messages from a search at tweetscan for your twitter ID.
• Pop over to Pingie and set up an alert for the RSS feed and, here’s the cool bit – use the email address you’ve just worked out.

And Bob will perhaps be your uncle. I’ve had both bits of this working separately, I’m going to try both together now…