I like the fax machine idea. Reminds me of an idea I had. Get some receipt printers for my friends and we can print to each other's printers to send text messages
it's easy to do as well. most of these printers can be setup to easily work by catting text directly to /dev/lp0.
That brings back memories. I once built an XHTML page served over WAP 2.0 (on 2G networks) from my home server that could send messages directly to the printer in my mother's office. It was incredibly clunky, but a lot of fun. I forgot to tell her before I tried it, so random pages just started coming out of the printer one day.