I have a Google Voice account, and last week they finally enabled a feature to forward your SMS messages to email. This is a long-awaited feature, and much appreciated, as I no longer have to keep a browser tab open to Google Voice all day.

But it’s not enough, because I’m not necessarily by a computer all the time, and because SMS tends to be most useful when one is out and about, and it tends to be for things that demand instant notification and attention.

I don’t want to enable Push or Fetch on my normal email account, though, because I only want to be notified about SMS messages, not all the other emails I receive on that account. Plus, Push/Fetch tend to introduce an unfavorable Pavlovian aspect to my life, and I want to avoid that as much as possible.

SMS, again, is different, because text messages usually call for a more immediate response. But I don’t want to shell out $0.99 for that Gmail Push notification app — I haven’t paid for a single iPhone app since I got my phone! — and again, I don’t want Push on my Gmail anyway.

So I set up a new Yahoo! account (only because Yahoo! Mail already provides push service for iPhone). It’s dedicated solely to my Google Voice SMS notifications, and while it’s not as in-your-face as a full-on notification (like the one you get with a “normal” text message on the iPhone), it’s just about right for my tastes.

Normal Push Notification on iPhone

Email Push notification

The other advantage of doing it this way is that I can also reply to text messages from that email account.

So there!

My cell phone died so I got a new one, a Sony Ericsson z310a, aka Cingular’s “el cheapo” model. It’s got many good and many bad qualities, which I outlined in detail but then my post got borked and Wordpress auto-save did NOT pull through – grrr!

Anyway, it looks less cheap and ugly than my old Samsung p207, but feels more cheap and is still not as neat as the slider phones I’d been eyeing for awhile. The front LCD display is monochrome and tiny, even though it looks large because the whole front is shiny.

The inside display is not too hi-res, but it does have these cool light effects along the sides of the phone which you can customize for each caller. Also, I can sync my calendar and backup my contacts list (nerd w00t!), as well as transfer photos via infrared or Bluetooth.

Most of all, though, this new phone was free, and I still like it better than my old phone.

The phone looks like this:

And the inside display contains this picture that I stole from someone on flickr:

Which leaves me pretty darn happy with it, for now, anyway! We’ll see if it outlasts my two-year contract, which my last phone nearly failed to do.

update Okay I’m really annoyed by the fact that I’m going to have to buy a Bluetooth earpiece for this thing. The speakerphone sucks. Grrr!