Lifehax0r: How To Get Meeting Reminders from Google through SMS (for free!)

One of my favorite website is Lifehacker.com and as a hommage to Lifehacker, here's my own lifehack.


My current job involves a lot of meetings.  Either I initiate meetings by creating meeting invitations through MS Outlook 2003 or I receive meeting invitations from my clients, also through MS Outlook 2003.  A few weeks ago, I was on leave when a client sent me a meeting invitation and cc:'ed my Gmail account.  To my pleasant surprise, the meeting invitation format of MS Outlook 2003 was recognized by Gmail.  So I accepted the meeting invitation on Gmail and to my further surprise, my Google Calendar account automagically added the meeting!



My Google Calendar is set to send SMS alerts to my cellphone whenever a meeting is due so on the day of the meeting, I was alerted by my cellphone with the following message:

From: Google
Reminder: xxxxxx Meeting @ Mon Oct 15 10:30 AM in XXX Conference Room 16th Floor Main Building (Bernie Jxxxx)

This gave me a rather bright idea.  Whenever I receive a meeting invitation, I forward the invitation to my Gmail account.  Then I log on to Gmail to accept it and viola: my meeting is added to my Google Calendar.  I am now alerted of that meeting even if I am not in front of my office computer!

I am not sure if this will work with other email clients like Lotus Notes or even Outlook Express.  But the workflow is so slick, I can't resist sharing it here.

This lifehack is not entirely free.  I had to send an SMS to Google Calendar to verify my cellphone number but that's the first and only overseas SMS I had to send out (and pay for) to make this work.

Here's the customary screenshot gallery (click on the image to see full-size screencap):

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