Acknowledgment of messages to cellular phones through the internet

Abstract

End to end acknowledgment of SMS messages based on sending an acknowledgement back to the sender of the SMS that the message was received after successful delivery.

1 - 3 . (canceled) 
     
     
         4 . A method of distributing messages and acknowledgements from an internet website hosted on at least one server, comprising:
 (a) receiving, at the internet website, a message from a sending cell phone addressed to multiple cell phone recipients;   (b) causing the received message to be sent to each of the multiple cell phone recipients;   (c) receiving an acknowledgment at the internet website from a specific one of the multiple cell phone recipients, wherein the acknowledgement indicates that the message has been received by the specific one of the multiple cell phone recipients, and storing information at the internet location indicating that the message has been received by the specific one of the multiple cell phone recipients;   (d) wherein the information stored at the internet website is accessible to the sending cell phone in a format that the sending cell phone can display visually; and   (e) wherein the information stored at the internet website is also accessible to be viewed by a party that is not the sending cell phone and not the specific one of the multiple cell phone recipients that sent the acknowledgement.   
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 4  wherein the message is a short message service (SMS) message. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 4  wherein information is configured to be displayed visually on the sending cell phone as written text. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 4  wherein the information is configured to be displayed by software on the sending cell phone. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 4  wherein the information is configured to be displayed by a browser on the sending cell phone. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 4  further comprising receiving at the internet website from the specific one of the multiple cell phones the approximate geographic location of the specific one of the multiple cell phones. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 4  further comprising receiving at the internet website from the sending cell phone the approximate geographic location of the sending cell phone. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 4  further comprising receiving from the sending cell phone indications, for each of the multiple cell phone recipients, of whether acknowledgment is requested.