Texting to North America

Here's another tip from David Pogue (NY Times) that lets you send a *text message* to any North American cell phone. From your computer. For free. In your e-mail program, address a message to 5552145434@teleflip.com. (That is, the cellphone number, plus @teleflip.com.) In seconds, your message pops up on the person's cellphone, without ringing and disturbing the movie, the meeting or whatever. And you don't even have to pay for sending a text message, which you would have had to do if you sent it from your cellphone. Not to mention how much easier it is to key in a message on a real keyboard
It would have been great if this had worked for Australian cell phones but at least when I tried it (unsuccessfully) they sent back a very polite message saying I hadn't appeared to have used a valid North American number - but if I thought l had, I could contact their support department for help. Very decent of then.